One small step....

The way the viewing of live sport is changing

One of my favourite comedy films is the Laurel and Hardy episode Thicker than Water where Stan and Ollie wind up in an auction room bidding against each other (accidentally) for a grandfather clock.  They end up paying an over-inflated price ($290) for the item. This is not just an excuse to incorporate my inherent love of L&H into a cricket article. The film is also a sort of metaphor for what’s been going on in the sports rights bidding war these past few years. Broadcasters desperate for access to the biggest guarenteed driver of viewers/subscribers – live sport – tripping over each other to own the rights. It’s how the ECB secured £1.1bn for all domestic cricket for 2020-2024 – mainly from Sky, staving off the challenge of BT Sport, Amazon and others – a deal subsequently extended to 2028. Its also how the BCCI attracted an astonishing $6.2bn (£5bn) for the IPL (2023 – 2027) from a combination of Disney-Star and Viacom18, outbidding arch rivals like Zee and Sony.  

Today’s revelation in the media that last Sunday’s Super Bowl drew a record US TV live audience of 123m (second only to the Apollo moon landing in 1969 which was estimated to have been watched by 125-150m) proves that sport still delivers, even if Taylor Swift’s presence (as girlfriend of Kansas’s City chief’s Travis Kelce) helped those numbers along. 30 second advertising slots raised $7m a pop. All the Superbowl official broadcasters – CBS, Nickelodeon, Univision, Paramount+ and NFL+  were happy – for now. The NFL accounted for 93 of the 100 most watched TV broadcasts in the US last year.

But, as we all know, consumption is changing. The IPL media deal is a clear indication of that. Of that $6.2bn deal, $3.02bn was for the domestic TV rights – won by Star. But the digital rights went for slightly more ($3.05bn) bought by Viacom18 (part-owned by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Group who own Reliance Jio - India’s largest mobile phone operator.) So not only are the digital rights now marginally dearer than the TV, in contrast to the previous rights deal when digital represented only a third of the overall $2.55bn deal, all purchased by Star. But also they were bought by a mobile phone company. Viacom18 streamed the tournament on Reliance Jio. 32 million viewers watched the 2023 IPL final on digital platforms – mostly their smartphones – another record figure.

If anyone is in the slightest doubt that streaming is the future for sport, then confirmation comes with the news that US rivals Fox, Disney and Warner Brothers Discovery intend to form a partnership to share their live sports programming on a new streaming service to be launched in the autumn. The rationale is three-fold. One, the pandemic expedited consumers’ preference for watching sport on devices (rather than TVs), probably while working from home. Two, the stream quality of the coverage and the screen-sharpness of modern devices has enabled the portability of matches from your living room to trains, planes and even automobiles (never mind kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms.) Three, live sport has become so prohibitively expensive for one broadcaster to own.

The Laurel and Hardy film has a salutory end. Having reluctant paid for the clock, the hapless pair walk out of the auction rooms carrying it between them. Needing a rest, Stan asks to stop – unwisely in the middle of the road. As soon as they put it down, a truck comes round the corner and runs over it demolishing it to smithereens. The same expressions will start appearing on domestic sports administrators faces if they rely solely on TV rights for salvation. But the streams – if done creatively and collaboratively and with community engagement in mind – could become rivers of revenue. Watch this space.