Rebels3
Jim Lenehan (48)
12 Aus teams is never going to happen and nor should it.
Tv revenue won’t drop, but it doesn’t mean it will increase which causes the biggest issue as your overheads will be guaranteed to increase, as will salaries.
Fox is feeling it isn’t getting much value out of a large portion of the content Super Rugby provides. Pay TV is driven by 2 things, direct debit subscriptions (who and what drives these) and advertising revenue. From my knowledge having rugby on pay tv drives subscriptions. The general demographic has disposable income and attracts high value clients for advertising, so there is two positives rugby brings to Fox. The issue is Super Rugby isn’t providing content at times that translates to advertising dollars, on some weeks there is 1 game during peak revenue spots to sell advertising revenue to, therefore getting value back on the initial investment is difficult. This is where the conversation of dropping SA comes into it from a broadcasters view. It has nothing to do with eye balls in South Africa vs in Australia, without been cruel 10 South Africans watching rugby is probably the value of 1 Australia when you’re talking advertising revenue purely basic economics of one been a third world country with a considerably inferior economy to the other.
SuperSport (South African broadcaster) are in a position to generate more dollars from their investment due to the times that games are on display over there as it’s mid morning breakfast television when in NZ and Aus, then prime time when in SA. Compare this to NZ and Aus where it’s afternoons, nights and early hours of the morning which traditionally are extremely low generating time slots, hence cheap shows and replays like Texas Walker and infomercials filling spots. Moving away from SA would allow Sky and Fox to provide more content at enviable times to generate a profit from as well as capitalize on Sunday time slots, which are currently frowned on due to the travel commitments, themed rounds (Anzac day) etc. that our competitors can easily capitalize on. This would lead to potentially a greater investment from our own providers as they could monetize it greater.
The lack of consistency in time slots and predictability of when teams would play are massive deterrents for FTA providers as consumers like consistency to fit their habitual lifestyles. The likelihood of Ch10 blocking out Fri 730 and Saturday 730 to accommodate rugby is very slim, if they are looking to fill space every 2nd week with a movie rerun during a highly valuable advertising revenue time because there is no game on (We can already see in the NRL how ch9 insists on games during origin period as they want consistency in product, despite calls that the quality declines). They’d rather invest in another show where they can build consistency of viewership. Having SA makes the consistency almost impossible.
SA is a great rugby nation, but it is causing so many issues on the financial growth of the sport here, this is why they have to go. Also if NZ hadn’t been top of the pops for the past 15yrs they would think very similar, let’s see how the next couple of years go if NZ doesn’t manage to become the top of the tree again.
Tv revenue won’t drop, but it doesn’t mean it will increase which causes the biggest issue as your overheads will be guaranteed to increase, as will salaries.
Fox is feeling it isn’t getting much value out of a large portion of the content Super Rugby provides. Pay TV is driven by 2 things, direct debit subscriptions (who and what drives these) and advertising revenue. From my knowledge having rugby on pay tv drives subscriptions. The general demographic has disposable income and attracts high value clients for advertising, so there is two positives rugby brings to Fox. The issue is Super Rugby isn’t providing content at times that translates to advertising dollars, on some weeks there is 1 game during peak revenue spots to sell advertising revenue to, therefore getting value back on the initial investment is difficult. This is where the conversation of dropping SA comes into it from a broadcasters view. It has nothing to do with eye balls in South Africa vs in Australia, without been cruel 10 South Africans watching rugby is probably the value of 1 Australia when you’re talking advertising revenue purely basic economics of one been a third world country with a considerably inferior economy to the other.
SuperSport (South African broadcaster) are in a position to generate more dollars from their investment due to the times that games are on display over there as it’s mid morning breakfast television when in NZ and Aus, then prime time when in SA. Compare this to NZ and Aus where it’s afternoons, nights and early hours of the morning which traditionally are extremely low generating time slots, hence cheap shows and replays like Texas Walker and infomercials filling spots. Moving away from SA would allow Sky and Fox to provide more content at enviable times to generate a profit from as well as capitalize on Sunday time slots, which are currently frowned on due to the travel commitments, themed rounds (Anzac day) etc. that our competitors can easily capitalize on. This would lead to potentially a greater investment from our own providers as they could monetize it greater.
The lack of consistency in time slots and predictability of when teams would play are massive deterrents for FTA providers as consumers like consistency to fit their habitual lifestyles. The likelihood of Ch10 blocking out Fri 730 and Saturday 730 to accommodate rugby is very slim, if they are looking to fill space every 2nd week with a movie rerun during a highly valuable advertising revenue time because there is no game on (We can already see in the NRL how ch9 insists on games during origin period as they want consistency in product, despite calls that the quality declines). They’d rather invest in another show where they can build consistency of viewership. Having SA makes the consistency almost impossible.
SA is a great rugby nation, but it is causing so many issues on the financial growth of the sport here, this is why they have to go. Also if NZ hadn’t been top of the pops for the past 15yrs they would think very similar, let’s see how the next couple of years go if NZ doesn’t manage to become the top of the tree again.