Highlander35
Steve Williams (59)
Amazon will come out hard swinging too
Broadcast options for Australian Rugby
- Thread starter WorkingClassRugger
- Start date
Amazon will come out hard swinging too
Slim 293
Stirling Mortlock (74)
Losing content, subscribers, and money......... evolving?
Slim 293
Stirling Mortlock (74)
kiap
Steve Williams (59)
I encourage all on here to read the article from yesterday by Anthony Bergelin, a chap who knows a thing or two about club rugby:
The comments are worth a perusal as well.
The comments are worth a perusal as well.
Adam84
Rod McCall (65)
Evolving?
-Subscriber revenue falling, revenue per subscriber has fallen 25%
-Advertising revenue falling
-Production costs rising
-Foxtel’s HFC contract to run Foxtel through Telstra cable expires in 2023, all existing customer will need satellite dishes installed just to watch Foxtel
-Struggling to refinance debt facilities, forced to borrow hundreds of $millions from News Corp just to avoid going under. Telstra refuse to provide any more finance. A further $2billion In debt will need to be refinanced in the next few years.
To throw salt into the wound, competition continues to increase, both for drama and sports.
mst
Peter Johnson (47)
I can't help but wonder if this clever way to put a control mechanism in play for RA and their next broadcaster?
Consider that as per the Pulverism of pissing money up against the wall, RA has "... secured the rights to the Shute Shield, a good thing given the financially unsustainable nature of the current agreement with Club Rugby TV that sees the clubs having to come up with $300,000 a year."
RA now can reshape any broadcast content so it doesn't compete against itself. Potentially, and it where I believe people are making a presumption based on history and blind emotion people, think that the Clubs TV rights, the talk of a national competition and no commitment on the future of the NRC means that the it has to be about the Club level stuff.
In reality the Clubs can now be put back I their niche state TV market segments (if at all) and controlled. The next broadcaster and RA can then kill off the NRC to repurpose it in to a national competition and no worries about clubland playing silly buggers with competing TV deals and its past white-anting.
RedsHappy
Tony Shaw (54)
This too worth a read esp in this thread:
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/rugby-...te-shield-tv-rights-deal-20200214-p540x2.html
Anyone thinking RA gaining its recently much-hyped ‘all of rugby’ media rights will uplift the whole shebang to new heights of media value should have a think about the viewership figures revealed via that link.
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/rugby-...te-shield-tv-rights-deal-20200214-p540x2.html
Anyone thinking RA gaining its recently much-hyped ‘all of rugby’ media rights will uplift the whole shebang to new heights of media value should have a think about the viewership figures revealed via that link.
Joe King
Dave Cowper (27)
Can I just ask a question?
If say, the club comps were to run like usual during Super rugby, with the top teams qualifying for a national club comp to be run straight after during the test season, then is there any way to distribute evenly the returning non-test Super players among those clubs that qualify for div 1 of the national club comp?
It would require some sort of mechanism to do it.
Sure, it may be a little tricky, but wouldn't it be worth figuring out a way to overcome this hurdle to allow all the returning non-test Super players to play in the main comp?
Might also create a bit more interest than expected.
If say, the club comps were to run like usual during Super rugby, with the top teams qualifying for a national club comp to be run straight after during the test season, then is there any way to distribute evenly the returning non-test Super players among those clubs that qualify for div 1 of the national club comp?
It would require some sort of mechanism to do it.
Sure, it may be a little tricky, but wouldn't it be worth figuring out a way to overcome this hurdle to allow all the returning non-test Super players to play in the main comp?
Might also create a bit more interest than expected.
RedsHappy
Tony Shaw (54)
Doesn’t that depend upon:
- the level of sustained viewership interest in each level of comp; ‘multi comp on one platform doesn’t necessarily mean viewers value all comps and want to access them most days’ and
- if ‘multi platforms’, how hard viewers today perceive it to be to switch from say Foxtel to one of the secondary FTA channels so’s to watch a lower level comp and thus value the utility of a single platform convenience.
I just mean ‘single platform’ isn’t intrinsically valuable in and of itself, it depends up the nature of the viewership population, how they value each comp, and how they value or need the convenience of a single platform.
kiap
Steve Williams (59)
It may be that, mst, but (stepping over the politics angle for a moment) I think the core point of the article holds true.
In essence, he's saying that a large NCC competition with so very many teams cannot be long sustained by amateur clubs with amateur players.
I agree with this; The 22 clubs would be whittled down to around 7 at the top in a few short seasons. Such teams that survive would be those who are semi-pro and move even more in that direction. It would became NRC almost by another name (minus Fiji and WA). Not Sydney in blue and gold … but Sydney Uni. And so on.
A bit more old tribalism? Maybe, but I think that's overstated. Plenty of tribalism from Force fans with a team only 15 years old.
And in the meantime, Shute clubs not making the cut fall into obscurity … if they survive the collateral damage taken along the way.
Lorenzo
Colin Windon (37)
Ever seen a club rugby broadcast promoted during a Super Rugby broadcast on fox? I haven't, though in fairness I mute those clowns as much as I can.
We aren't there yet, but there will soon be a time where streaming is so ubiquitous that if having a "free" broadcast won't need FTA. Maybe the club matches are all streamed on [name of sports network here] at 3pm for free and then the subscriber only provincial comp is played at 5, 7,9 (AEST)?
None of this means that there aren't loads of other things that need fixing, notably the actual appeal of the provincial comp.
Rebel man
John Thornett (49)
As opposed to Optus sport, Optus TV has already died once hardly has any presence now obviously there are some problems as they face competition in the entertainment space from low cost streaming platforms.
But if they hold on to the AFL and NRL they will continue to dominate Optus sports as outside of EPL fans nobody has it.
You can see that the business model is restructuring, I can see the entertainment side of the business dying the future is with Kayo, if they could provide live streaming in 4K the traditional business model would die
While I wouldn’t be opposed to Optus picking up the rights as some time a new approach can freshen things up we shouldn’t be looking to go to Optus because “Foxtel is dying”.
Also remember Optus’s job of broadcasting the FIFA World Cup hardly fills you with confidence
Lorenzo
Colin Windon (37)
Foxtels business model almost exclusively relied on being the only player in town. Now that there is absolutely no room for collecting big margins on cheap non-live content, they are struggling.
If the future is with kayo, they better figure out how to collect more than $25 a month per user or sign up about 7.5million more users.
If the future is with kayo, they better figure out how to collect more than $25 a month per user or sign up about 7.5million more users.
Rebel man
John Thornett (49)
If Optus want to pay more then Optus it is, I have no issue with Optus but the notion we have to leave fox because it’s dying is ludicrous
Rebel man
John Thornett (49)
The Waratahs and Reds won the comp in the last decade and it attracted no new viewers to super rugby as it was locked away on pay tv. Look at the rise of the big bash when it went to 10 again the NBL going to 10 helped that competition bounce back. You are never going to attract new viewers on pay TV
Adam84
Rod McCall (65)
And Kayo is a key contributor to the ‘revenue per subscriber’ declining 25% due to the cheaper subscription, and the Foxtel subscriber churn rate increasing to 14%, they’ve even admitted that much themselves. They’re cannibalising their own business with the only increase in subscribers accounted for in the countless ‘free trial’ subscriptions on offer across News Corp and Telstra.
With $2billion in debt facilities set to expire in the next 3 years, any sporting code would be wise to demand 1 years payments up front as a matter of insurance against Foxtel bucking under its own debt.
Adam84
Rod McCall (65)
I don’t recall anyone saying “we have to leave Foxtel because it’s dying”, people are just being pragmatic about what the landscape holds for the future of sports broadcasting, and stating that sticking with Foxtel for the sake of it being Foxtel is pointless when it continues to demonstrate falling revenue and rising production costs.
Lorenzo
Colin Windon (37)
This is a simplistic analysis. The cheapest entry point into foxtel (incl sports) in late 2014 was $50 a month with a 12 month commitment, and only in SD. Even Foxtel play (not even SD) was at least 50 dollars a month.
Things have changed. You can get onto optus sports or Amazon or Netflix in about 2 minutes and most people need absolutely no new hardware to do it. I think having some free content is great but the landscape in 2020 is a lot different to 2014.
A crazy number of Australians have a subscription tv service now. ~5m Netflix accounts. ~3m Foxtel. ~1.7m for Stan. Chuck in Disney, Amazon and Optus sports and you're looking at more than 10 million accounts. That's more than one per household.