hollywood and the music industry were able to... not totally eliminate this but significantly reduce this by accepting where customers actually were and adjusting the business model with spotify, netflix et al. is football going to whine about it or accept the new reality and adjust? - ThreadSky

graceonfootball.com • 5 days ago

hollywood and the music industry were able to... not totally eliminate this but significantly reduce this by accepting where customers actually were and adjusting the business model with spotify, netflix et al.

is football going to whine about it or accept the new reality and adjust?

Reposted from Matt Slater

I know this is the type of story that has many of you looking for your smallest violins but I suspect your favourite teams have been bankrolled by pay-TV money, so there are consequences to pinching this stuff.

🔗 www.nytimes.com/athletic/616...

Comments

timetravel.camp•5 days ago

I have to assume the PL has explored the idea of simply taking their proverbial and literal ball to their own subscription-based streaming platform and mathed out that they won’t make as much money?

timetravel.camp•5 days ago

In the case of Spotify et al., the music industry was able to transition to streaming largely because their “content creators” totally lack any collective bargaining power so the rentiers were / are able to keep basically all the money for themselves.

asonnamedbort.bsky.social•5 days ago

we all know they're going to whine about it because they don't want to accept a model where they still get money but it's in any way less than they're used to.

graceonfootball.com•5 days ago

the aforementioned industries did the same thing before eventually accepting that's not going to work

asonnamedbort.bsky.social•5 days ago

if they'd taken Sir Jim's lead and cut some of the kitchen staff maybe it would've worked

afcathal.bsky.social•5 days ago

Well said Grace

kierdoyle.bsky.social•5 days ago

I often wonder how unique I am in paying for a pirated source that unifies the soccer sources (and regular TV) across all leagues, instead of splintering them across 400 streaming services and TV channels

macaree.bsky.social•5 days ago

one of the great things about being in the states when football was lower-interest is that i could pay for a subscription that let me watch every game in the major european leagues live and on demand

macaree.bsky.social•5 days ago

and the not-so-great thing is that for a while i felt obligated by my job to *actually* watch every game live or on demand. it's a miracle that i didn't keel over and die

kierdoyle.bsky.social•5 days ago

The early DAZN years in Canada were great. $250 for the year and I get all the top 5 except for Spain.

Now it’s all divided. The US isn’t bad. Paramount + Peacock + ESPN+ ain’t half bad (though doesn’t cover everything)

luxurycommunism.bsky.social•5 days ago

👁️

peet2.bsky.social•5 days ago

Now you have me curious… 🤔

kierdoyle.bsky.social•5 days ago

Unless you live in the greater Toronto area you’re outta luck

peet2.bsky.social•5 days ago

ah... well, I'm still curious as to the details even if I don't have access.

graceonfootball.com•5 days ago

tbh as bad as the broadcasters are, i think the football leagues are actually even more guilty on this. sky and tnt asked PL to end the 3pm blackout on grounds it's a "gateway to piracy", they were given a flat no.

chris-begley.bsky.social•5 days ago

In the US, for some unknown reason, NBC shows games either on the main network, or USA Network, or on their streaming app. But if it is the actual television, you can't watch it on the app until the next day! Incentivising people without cable to find a different way

heyheygillian.bsky.social•5 days ago

They're absolutely right, though.

"why should I pay for X when I can't even see all the games" is something you hear a lot.

The chances of someone pirating/streaming a game rather than thinking 'oh well, no PL football, let's go and see my local non-league team' I would wager are fairly high

heyheygillian.bsky.social•5 days ago

Obv as someone who works in the broadcast industry I don't want to move to an app-type model, especially as cutting TV funding would hurt smaller clubs much more, but it feels like a very simple thing the FA could do that would mitigate the issue quite a bit.

graceonfootball.com•5 days ago

i'm a sceptic of the direct to consumer model tbh. i feel like people do actually want the premier league, champions league etc bundled into one thing.

heyheygillian.bsky.social•5 days ago

Sorry, misworded the above - I meant the simple thing they could do would be to end the blackout.

I absolutely agree with you that it should be bundled! When I started watching football more I was surprised how much stuff was now not just no longer free-to-air but split across multiple providers

heyheygillian.bsky.social•5 days ago

Especially things like Scotland games - now only on YouTube as the broadcaster that bought the rights since pulled out of the UK market. Why are national team games not ringfenced like the FA Cup etc?

markposts.bsky.social•5 days ago

This doesn't explain piracy in the countries without a blackout

aveek18.bsky.social•5 days ago

Huh, this is surprising: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/is-football-piracy-higher-in-t-3yHJ1cUiSzen9K6zEZTKrA

The blackout surely must increase piracy, but evidently it's very high in other countries for other reasons

markposts.bsky.social•5 days ago

Yeah, La Liga are so worried about it that they're fighting with Cloudflare about mass-blocking websites

My assumption is that England is helped a lot by the quality of the domestic league and consistency of coverage not just in football but in the wider sports bundles

philippab.bsky.social•5 days ago

You need Canal+ over here to watch the Prem, which costs nearly €40 pcm. Plus €30 pcm for DAZN to watch Ligue 1. So if you only want to watch a couple of Prem matches, it's also financially problematic (disregarding Bein for various other things, and the omnishambles that is European competition).

graceonfootball.com•5 days ago

Ligue 1 is only available in UK now as its own streaming service for £10/month, which feels completely insane.

paulrjohnson.net•5 days ago

As someone that used to watch a lot of Ligue 1 (so is bought in generally) and would continue to do so if readily available... £10 a month is fucking egregious haha

markposts.bsky.social•5 days ago

It does kinda Makes You Think about the unbundling cost though.

Trying to think about what offering would tempt me (not that into Ligue 1 but interested by a couple of teams)... I think a big factor for me would be good extended highlights. There's so much football I'm not gonna watch full games

graceonfootball.com•5 days ago

i would honestly have to think it's mainly just french ex-pats or people with close ties to the country paying for it

markposts.bsky.social•5 days ago

Premier Sports for La Liga is also stupid weird. Idk how these decisions get made but I really don't think the decision-makers take into account the hassle of signing up for a) another service b) another service that is hard to watch on all devices

graceonfootball.com•5 days ago

i don't think it's the only factor, to be clear

graceonfootball.com•5 days ago

media piracy will happen anyway if it's much easier than paying for it. but it'll happen more if it's the only way to access something.

markposts.bsky.social•5 days ago

Right, but also presumably pirating the 3pm kickoffs isn't eating into the value, unless the point is that it's a gateway to pirating rather than paying Sky for the e.g. Super Sunday games

paulrjohnson.net•5 days ago

I assume the argument is that the 3pm blackout encourages piracy because folks go looking for ways to watch their team, and once they've found those means they become viable for all games.

markposts.bsky.social•5 days ago

Like, I (weirdly, maybe just dogmatically tbf) think that the bigger impact on piracy would be a better value prop than the same type of value prop (pretty expensive per game and really bad user experience) but the blackout goes

graceonfootball.com•5 days ago

example i know about: pre-netflix, rest of the world had to wait months to watch new episodes of american tv shows. and thus, torrents of us tv were disproportionately popular outside of america.

csmarmot.bsky.social•5 days ago

The coercive nature of bundling media products is driving me toward piracy. I have no option to just pay for the football. I must buy a plethora of other media, including Fox News, in order to watch football. I watch nothing but football. I would rather have the option to pay the league directly.

graceonfootball.com•5 days ago

record labels whined and whined before accepting people weren't going to pay for buying whole albums anymore. hollywood whined and whined before accepting people weren't going to buy dvds. how long will football whine before realising people aren't going to pay £70+ a month for it forever?

jarekfa.bsky.social•5 days ago

How do they still determine which albums get gold, silver and platinum status if people aren't buying full albums. Or am I so old and out of it to not realize that albums going platinum isn't a thing anymore?

notwillyoung.bsky.social•5 days ago

A certain amount of streams of an album or single constitute a physical sale of 1 and count towards the number of units sold.

tomwoodhead.bsky.social•5 days ago

There's a formula to convert streams into sales. Not sure what the ratio is, but basically 100, or 1000, or whatever streams = 1 sale

graceonfootball.com•5 days ago

i don't know how they do that, but i know the top 40 is based on streams now

notwillyoung.bsky.social•5 days ago

It does also include physical sales. They use a hybrid method.

tomwoodhead.bsky.social•5 days ago

It's an interesting one, because football is much more analgous to Hollywood than the music industry (in that nearly everyone involved is at least being paid a proper wage for their efforts), but I think the scaleability if they were to reduce price would be more similar to Spotify et al

tomwoodhead.bsky.social•5 days ago

I guess what I mean is, the Spotify model could actually work and be relatively fair, applied to football, due to the finite number of teams/games, as opposed to flat-out exploitative for all but the 1%, as it is in music

kwiksave.bsky.social•5 days ago

Yep. I'd happily pay £30pm for all the games, if we got them all.
Like they do in none UK countries.

Until then it's IPTV for me.

bassman93.bsky.social•5 days ago

I think there's still a financial reckoning to moving towards those models tho.

graceonfootball.com•5 days ago

that might be coming anyway if piracy keeps growing, or if people just hit a limit on how much they'll pay in subscriptions.

bassman93.bsky.social•5 days ago

Yeah, it's more just the denial of that is easier rather than actively opting into it.

davethetentakil.bsky.social•5 days ago

I think it's more likely that the Premier League will need to adjust to lower revenue, as its prospective broadcast partners offer less money the next time rights are up.

In America, the National Hockey League has had financial crises when broadcasting partners walked away.

davethetentakil.bsky.social•5 days ago

I'm sure the Premier League thinks itself too important to ever be in such a situation, but there's a limit to what Sky, DAZN, Fubo, Peacock, et al are willing to offer.

sbienkowski.bsky.social•5 days ago

It’s worth bearing in mind that movie studios don’t make anywhere near the money they once did 20 years ago and didn’t it take Netflix like 10 years to make its first profit?

sbienkowski.bsky.social•5 days ago

Although I suspect in this instance, the PL and the broadcasting ecosystem that bankrolls it is built on a bubble. British sports fans pay far, far too much. And there’s nothing left to give. Hence the piracy.

pucksherburn.bsky.social•5 days ago

The issue is computer/network literacy.

Consumers have it & a lot of executives don't. I had to watch a 90 minute seminar about "What, why, & how" to use my work VPN. I'd been using a VPN for 4 years for video games. Our VPO was shocked I knew about them because he had just learned about them.

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply