John Griffiths of Spicy Mango ponders the future of sports broadcasting

What’s the future for sports broadcasting?  John Griffiths, Chief Commercial Officer, Spicy Mango, has been reflecting on this part of media.

This year has seen a delayed Olympics and amid the claims of a highly successful games which you’d expect from the IOC, the host country and broadcasters, can the same be said for fans and viewers?

Doubtless it was a great achievement to pull it off at all but, certainly here in Europe, it all felt a bit flat and underwhelming really. This was partly down to the time difference, so that if viewers wanted to tune in live it meant pulling an all-nighter. This was compounded by the distribution rights here in Europe, with many countries having to view behind a pay-wall subscription service or very limited free-to-air coverage.

Without getting into all of the details, the IOC essentially decided to sell European broadcast rights largely as a single block to Discovery/Eurosport for a healthy sum of money. Commercially, this means dealing with just one contract rather than 40 or 50 across multiple European countries and all the complexity that involves. Technically, it also means that OBS (Olympic Broadcast Services) has to deal with much less rights licensees for the distribution of content, which is far easier and means that any onward distribution for sub-licensees is someone else’s responsibility to manage.

But for this simpler life, the IOC has lost something far more valuable that potentially challenges their own inclusive values. An audience.

UK viewing figures from BARB show that even with limited access to events, the BBC audience for Olympic coverage was frequently around the 3.5M figure for the evening highlights and round-up programme. Eurosport’s wall-to-wall coverage rarely showed an audience of more than 50,000, with only half a dozen events exceeding this number. The impact of such low viewing numbers will not be felt immediately but over the coming years, as yet again young people have no experience of seeing these top level athletes achieve amazing feats.

And the Olympics is not the only sport to see such a huge differential in viewing figures. Take Rugby Union for example. A Six Nations game featuring Scotland beating England, broadcast on ITV in February had 6.5 million viewers. The British and Irish Lions against South Africa in August this year on Sky Sports had about 450,000. It’s impossible to say for certain but had this been on a free to air channel, then perhaps over 5 million viewers would have tuned in, including many youngsters.

This year’s Autumn Internationals see the best of the Northern hemisphere taking on the best of the South, and almost none of the matches are on FTA. The majority of matches will be shown on Amazon Prime, a subscription based streaming service. Additionally, Premiership highlights will not be shown on FTA for the first time in years. Hardcore fans can visit the Premiership’s website to see highlights of all matches for free or subscribe to BT Sport, but casual fans who would typically tune in via their EPG will have almost no exposure to the matches this year.

Can this approach of being behind a paywall and the short term cash it provides ensure long-term fan engagement and guarantee the success of this business model? Or is the private equity sitting behind so many sports now not interested in the long term, but merely the short-term financial results?

Cricket is another example – The Hundred tournament commenced in July and the BBC and Sky showed a simultaneous broadcast. The BBC audience had an audience of 1.24 million, whereas Sky’s reached just 176,000. The loser here must be cricket for future participation.

The examples could continue across multiple sports, with even football (soccer) having a consistently higher audience on free-to-air.

There is nothing technically that the free-to-air broadcasters can’t do that the pay-tv does and FTA broadcasters often lead in technical innovation. So, what’s the reason? Is it purely financial greed from the sport’s governing bodies? The cynic may say it is and they may be right. Surely the sports governing bodies can see and feel the discomfort of an ageing audience, dwindling grassroots participation and generations of youngsters that have not seen so many sports on TV for decades?

Perhaps the answer lies in free-to-air and national broadcasters pooling resources to counterbid against pay-tv, subject to local competition rules. Whether the channel is commercial or licence fee funded, they could be allowed the freedom to bid in a consortium and compete with the financial might and reach of global players.

The long-term benefits for consumers could be a greater choice with more sports available, better financial and participation outcomes for a wider range of sports and an even distribution of sports on free to air and pay-tv platforms. There is a win-win solution – but not while sports organisers and governing bodies choose the biggest cheque as their short term priority.

Written by John Griffiths, Chief Commercial Officer, Spicy Mango