Setanta may have died a deserved death, but their legacy lives on in the debate around how and where the next England game should be shown. There seem to be alot of naive views on this, so I thought I would throw my opinion in as well. If Rio Ferdinand has one, then surely I must too.
Although perhaps the announcement of the digital rights has come potentially too close to the game, I think the fact that there are digital only rights shows progression. Some believe it is doomed to fail and at a £11.99 price point on the day of the match, you can see why people are thinking that. However, listening to a game on radio 5 has never compared fully to watching a game live and actually seeing the goals knocked in.
Why I believe this will be a success:
1) The core audience that Perform are trying to reach is the 18-34 demographic. The highest penetration of video viewing online is within the 18-29 demographic, topping out at 90% online. These users are watching video daily online in a number of different forms – short-form (YouTube), interest based (e.g. football on Perform) and catch-up (iPlayer). Given this is the ONLY option to watch it, then I think we will see a high level of penetration within this audience and beyond.
2) It is the start of something new. The future of football viewing lies in digital screening. HD quality football is what fans want and then only true way of delivering this is over a fast broadband connection. (This reduces the number of connections/downloads/uploads/compressions that a satellite signal is susceptible to) With this, we will see more competitors entering the market for games like the England game, World Cup, European Championships. I wouldn’t think UEFA are too far away from implementing this sort of model.
Why it could fail:
1) Although pay per view has entered into alot of realms of sport, boxing for example, it has yet to really take over in football. Football fans like the fact that they don’t pay for football content. However, we are going to see more models like this, so fans need to get used to it. The problem is, they aren’t yet. Plus people believe we are working within a “freeconomy”.
2) One of the points raised by the BBC was “i don’t want to sit in front of my laptop for 90 minutes”. A good point, although to me not entirely valid given you can plug your laptop into your TV. However, most people do not have this facility, so perhaps this may cause issues as well.
I do think its progressive, but do understand people’s worries. However, there will be a brand out there who will reap the rewards of being pro-active in this area. By the way, you can watch it on the Daily Star for free….but that seems to have been missed by a few marketing commentators.
