The ever-changing media landscape has evolved to the point that sports are now seeing the benefits of running with their own live streaming platforms ahead of traditional broadcasting routes.
The topic of OTT was a key discussion at a recent Digital Transformation summit at the Association of National Olympic Committees in Lausanne, which I was fortunate enough to be a part of.
Federations of Olympic sports have the challenge of engaging and sustaining their audiences between the major events, which naturally get the most exposure. World Curling were one of the organisations represented, and they provided some insight in to their growth and specific areas of the world where they do well.
One of the questions I asked of StreamAMG, one of the partners behind the summit, was how do sports identify a tipping point in deciding whether to go down the road of having their own OTT.
If you’re putting content out on YouTube, or have a unpaid deal to have games broadcast on TV, you are at least getting eyeballs on your sport. If you go behind a paywall of your own, you are limited to the number who pay. And how do you grow that number?
During my time working in the British Basketball League, the league had several deals around streaming games. The BBC showed occasional games via the red button – great for exposure, but no longevity. Every game was then broadcast on livebasketball.tv, a sport-wide subscription service. The numbers for individual games were very low, in the tens on average, and there was no financial incentive for clubs.
A switch then went to showing every game for free on YouTube. Great for making it accessible and eyeballs, but how much of that turned in to paying fans, subscribers or customers? I daresay not many. With so many options to capture people’s attention, even slinging a game up for free anywhere is unlikely to get you the results you want.
The answer is perhaps something in between, similar to how single-player sports like darts, tennis and snooker have done. They have their OTT platform for their regular events, and then sell the rights to their showpiece events to broadcasters.
“A great gateway to learn about the consumer”
The beauty of owning your gateway is that you capture every detail about your fans. People talk about the benefits of being on terrestrial television and getting a million viewers – but is that any use when you don’t really know anything about them?
When someone registers to watch on your own channel, you start to learn about them. You understand what people want when watching your sport. What habits they have. What makes them come back to watch more. What match-ups or types of content are most successful. Where are they from. Who do they support. Do they watch live or on demand. And when you understand that, you can monetise your data.
An OTT platform is designed to make money – be it through subscriptions, sponsorship or advertising.
“You don’t have to rely on a broadcaster or media opportunity, you can do it easily yourself”
Clubs themselves are now publishers in their own right, often with greater resource than the media outlets that have traditionally covered them. While that’s great from a sports business and club point of view, it’s not so much from a journalistic one. Clubs will put out what they want you to know. They won’t ask the difficult questions or cover uncomfortable topics, like a proper media organisation would. Clubs won’t be held to account.
But what it does mean is that leagues and governing bodies can put out quality content and live footage under their own channel, and therefore monetise it themselves and control their own IP. Rather than give access to media companies, they can own and place the content as they see fit, and generate the revenue through the subscriptions directly.
The trade-off here is how to determine when it’s worth you soaking up the production costs, versus having a broadcaster pay for them and potentially a rights fee on top of that.
When selling to a broadcaster, leagues and clubs can to a point take the money and sit back. The onus is then on the broadcaster to produce the end product with their co-operation.
One interesting takeaway was the comment “broadcasters are not your friend”.
Rugby league: a real life case
Rugby league’s Super League finds itself at a crossroads in its current negotiations following the expiration of their current deal with Sky Sports, who have broadcast the competition since its inception in 1996. For the past two seasons, every single game has been broadcast via Sky Sports – prior to that, it had been limited to two or three via its main channels. While that agreement remained in place, the remaining games each week were broadcast via Sky Sports +.
This was good for fans – they were able to watch every single game on the same channel. Occasional games that were broadcast by BBC were also available. But there was no uplift in the broadcast deal for Super League, meaning they were giving away three, four or even five extra games per week for broadcast for the same fee they were receiving for two or three.
That will be changing going in to 2027, with Super League likely to stick with Sky Sports on a similar agreement to previous, but the extra three or four games would be made available via a different streaming platform, perhaps DAZN depending on NRL involvement.
You could argue that Super League has missed its opportunity to develop its own, thriving OTT platform. Rugby league has, in some ways, been ahead of the curve but hasn’t quite been able to hammer home its potential.
Super League TV, largely a YouTube based series of feature and magazine content, was present 10-15 years ago, also showing highlights of each game. The sort of content that used to be published then wouldn’t look out of place now. The Our League app, rugby league’s own platform, streamed games from various competitions and appeared to be the long-term strategy, but that was abandoned and is now instead a mere fan app. Super League + was effectively created in its place, though every game being shown on Sky Sports + rendered that somewhat redundant.
An example of some SLTV content from 2013
The trouble for rugby league, of course, is the large rights fee – they currently receive roughly £21.5m per year. That also doesn’t take in to consideration the fairly sizeable production costs of each match. Clearly, going with their own OTT isn’t going to replace that, at least not for a long time. However, where there is an opportunity is to broadcast the secondary games on its own OTT platform, in addition to the broadcaster fees.
A sport central OTT seems to be the best way forward. Clubs outside of Super League have attempted via a range of third parties to live stream games of their own. Indeed, one of the IMG criteria which rugby league clubs are graded by, awards points to clubs who do broadcast at least five games.
But as clubs have found, the cost of production mostly outweighs the benefits. One club, who paid around £1,400 for a live stream broadcast to the required production standard, sold less than 100 stream passes, therefore losing money. That’s not something that they can accumulate week in, week out.
When rugby league has centrally provided live streams, it has sometimes been met by opposition over price. People want to watch the game for free, via say BBC, without realising the bigger picture. Perhaps in this case, rugby league was a bit too ahead of itself.
Compare with ice hockey, where streams are routinely charged at £15-£20. This is because the clubs that stream them don’t want to risk people not turning up to the game. Their big market is of course away fans, given the Elite Ice Hockey League has teams in all four of the home nations.
A recent match I attended was postponed due to a problem with the ice, and I was amazed to see many of the comments relating to people demanding refunds for their live stream.
Which points to another fact – it’s hard to get subscribers, but easy to lose them.
Getting fans on your OTT platform is one thing, keeping them is another, especially when you’re charging for it. If the quality is poor, the feed goes down or the experience is negative, you potentially lose that fan’s trust and custom forever.
The upcoming Rugby League World Cup is hidden behind a paywall in the UK, after organisers turned down a reported paltry offer from the BBC. While they may have got a small short-term financial gain, to not have a) the eyeballs from a terrestrial TV broadcaster, or b) the data gained from operating your own OTT platform, seems short-sighted in these times.
What would you like to see from your sport? What would make you subscribe to a streaming platform?
