It's something you need to really plan for. You have to do the research. Identify the real world market and its size. How much they'd be willing to pay and for what exactly? The most importantly, you have to ensure the production quality is of a high standard.
Perhaps the market doesn't exist in large enough quantities for subscription based service to be viable. Doesn't mean it isn't still an option. Maybe that same research proves that there is demand for games as a free service based around advertising. It could still be worth the risk.
What producing your own content allows for is the decisions on where you offer the content to be entirely in your own hands. Advertisers pay for reach. By producing the content internally and then approaching broadcasters international with large reach within their respective markets you could add value to advertisers.
Apparently they did all the research and preparation but did not account for the risk / cost that broadcasters can absorb as well as the challenge of established deals / alliances / contacts etc etc.
Also you need to carefully consider cross advertising that will clash with ARU deals / SANZAR / franchise etc, and network / broadcaster deals.
So for example Fox Sports has all the equipment and infrastructure in place. The cost of this is shared across multiple broadcasts across the year. The ratings risk / advertising revenue is spread across content thus diversifying the market and mitigating the risk to income.
Like any business with limited trading, wage cost are higher and hiring professional as a reasonable cost is difficult. So its contractor at an exorbitant cost with limited care or quality.
Selling to broadcasters can be tricky. depending on the sport you need them more then they need you.
So if you don't invest to be independent you are at the mercy of a contractor that limits your business capability model.
If you do invest you have $$ tied up doing nothing for significant periods of time. A closed business does not pay its way.
If you get it wrong in this (Aussie) market it would be a hard to recover being so competitive. Especially with a sport that is desperately needing to be mainstream on FTA to increase revenue and be competitive in the market.
So taking it back in any form to a niche market via a web subscription is a major risk and could be a backwards step and shrink advertising revenue.
When you are a heavy hitter like the NFL, EPL or in our market AFL and NRL you then dictate terms, until then we are reliant on others like Foxtel to keep us afloat, relevant and mainstream.
The NRC is a perfect example of this. If Foxtel didn't bear some of the cost to broadcast, it would not receive any real air time except to a small niche market.