Sports TV broadcasting: goalposts shifting on viewing habits

The competitive tension, and breadth, of multiple free-to-air and subscription TV broadcasters remain sport’s saviour.

Global sport needs linear television as much as television needs sport

Almost two years ago at a Google “Big Tent” event at the Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, then-Australian Football League boss Andrew Demetriou finished his session with an animation showing how the future AFL fan would consume their football.

The neat animation showed connected fans messaging friends, ordering their food, presenting tickets, editing clips from the game for their social media feeds and watching edited highlights on their mobile devices before, during and after the game. There was nothing particularly revolutionary about this connected future other than the AFL’s final message: a ­future where you don’t deal with “traditional media companies”.

Demetriou and the AFL had their moments of hubris and empire-building. Many anticipated the AFL would move to broadcast and distribute the game itself, cutting out “traditional” broadcasters.

It hasn’t panned out that way. Global sport needs linear television as much as television needs sport, and this week’s AFL deal with News Corp Australia (publisher of The Weekend Australian), Seven West Media and Telstra, was ­further confirmation.

Despite the fragmented digital world, the competitive tension, and breadth, of multiple free-to-air and subscription TV broadcasters remain sport’s saviour. And most powerful revenue stream. The one reliable mass aggregator of TV audiences today is live programming. Sport remains, with news and reality TV, the best live proposition. And their mass audiences remain a compelling advertising proposition.

AFL’s format is particularly attractive, Seven chief executive Tim Worner said this week. “The AFL is a long game with more advertising opportunities than other codes, including 30-second stoppages. The 30 seconds after a goal is the most valuable screen real estate on television.” Which is why Nine is hurrying to ad breaks every time an NRL player is lying prone on the ground. NRL doesn’t have the regular ad openings.

The top TV event of 2014 (in metro markets) was the AFL grand final with a recorded audience of 2.828 million viewers likely dwarfed by out-of-home viewing. The NRL grand final, with its strength in the regional NSW and Queensland markets, was the top event nationally, with State of Origin matches close behind, interspersed with reality show finales for The Block, My Kitchen Rules and others.

But, as sports rights consultant Colin Smith says, only one in five reality shows “are successful and then they have a lifespan of five to seven years max.”

“So you take in the costs of the other four and they get expensive, whereas sport is enduring and kids love it, they’re just watching it in a different way,” he says.

Predictions for the future of TV broadcasters appeared bleak due to the onset of digital global giants such as Netflix and YouTube (a Google company). Privately, they both say they have no interest in sport and earlier this year, Netflix’s chief content officer, Ted Sarandos said: “Part of our core consumer proposition is on-demand … And I don’t know that on-demand sports is markedly better than live sports. So that’s why we haven’t been that excited about it …. There’s economic reasons as well. I think in general, that sports is great for live television.”

Also, TV broadcasters are changing their paradigm. “What media companies are recognising, it’s no longer a pay or free-to-air TV thing, it’s a game across all platforms,” says Marc C-Scott, lecturer in digital media at Victoria University. “It’s going to become less about who’s broadcasting and more about getting what you want when you want.”

Research shows that change is being driven by younger viewers. Daily TV viewing remains static at around three hours, yet, Smith says, “young people, the millennials and below are watching less linear television and watching more on mobile devices.” And they’re not watching less sport, just engaging platforms other than the lounge room TV.

“The positioning of linear TV will change and my view is linear TV is now going to be multiple platform,” Smith says.

“Linear television, for young people, those days are over,” he adds. “The question is, will they ever come back when they’re 35 or 40 years old, back to the big TV as couch potatoes?”

Smith is not so sure, but, he says “FTA and pay have got to be anytime, anywhere and live. They’ve ticked the live box, not they’ve got to be anywhere, anytime.”

Which is what the new AFL and NRL deals promise, ahead of some confusion.

In its new deal, Nine will screen its NRL games live on its Jumpin app while Foxtel has indicated its mobile platforms Play and Go will carry AFL matches, as will Telstra.

And this week Seven announced plans to make available its three channels, 7, 7TWO and 7mate, as live streams from December. Its openness to streaming was sparked by a sporting success: its streaming of the Australian Open tennis this year exceeded its most optimistic expectations.

“It’s a case of coming down to a bit of a pricing battle between what Foxtel delivers and what Telstra will deliver in AFL, but they already know Australians want to watch sport on any screen, when they want,” says C-Scott.

“I still can’t see people sitting down watching a full game of football on a smartphone though.”

TV networks globally feel the same way. They realise the appetite for live sport is undiminished

That’s why the networks will still deliver the big sports live. Only now the battle is on to ensure they deliver it beyond the lounge room and broadcasters become digital players before the digital players become broadcasters.