How league right holders are struggling with the shift from traditional instadia experience to online fan experience
New Delhi : The traditional instadia watching experience has now shifted to a digital paradigm posing a challenging situation for league right holders. The most recent case of IAAF World Championships in Doha, that had all fan traffic on online streaming with no fans left in the stadium, challenges the pattern of tracking fans as viewers.
In the quest of gaining fans, running league owned OTT platform or striking a viable broadcaster deal has become the bone of contention for upholding the viewership ahead of the curve.
The fans are the backbone of any league or sporting tournament. Without fans, not only the athletes lack motivation but the meaning of LIVE TV experience nullifies for the exchequers. With the overtaking of digital era that has made videos available anywhere and everywhere, YouTube remains the favorite source for sports fans who want to catch online glimpse of the matches. With 81% making it to YouTube (source : Report by Grabyo) digital platforms remains at the top in consuming sports experience with 63% fans watching sports on smartphones, 53% on laptop, 43% on TV and the rest consuming it on tablets and other platforms (Source : Report by Grabyo).
While the viewership has increased with the oncoming of online platforms making it accessible for most, the competition is also increasing amongst the broadcasters who crack big time deals with the league owners for broadcasting. To gain maximum viewership through FAANG’s (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google alphabet) various questions circumvent the deal as brought on table in a report by Delloitte.
- Delivering high quality and unbuffered match experience to fans
- Securing from data breach and maintaining the rights of IP
- Rate of engaging fans actively
- Possessing enough know-how to carry a sports broadcast with a global reach
- The amount of sports content justifying the finances that goes into buying the deal
Digital Broadcasters Streaming Successfully
While we chart out the top five questions that bother both the broadcaster and the right holder, many Indian broadcasters are stealing the deal having excelled in the sporting forte. With Hotstar and Sony LIV leading the broadcast deals of all “premium” sports, leagues and regional tournaments are still struggling to find its space on the online platform where the traction is already attained via regular sports broadcasting.
Self – owned OTT platform for non premium sporting events ?
While the Asian sporting region is heavily dependent on pre existing OTT platforms that sell their space with a set of accumulated fan base, Hotstar and Sony LIV leading the table, international tournaments like La Liga, Ligue 1, ManU have already launched their own platform to distribute their content gaining exclusive fan base related to their particular sport only. In this case, non premium sports and emerging sports leagues are vouching for broadcasters deal certainly aiming to top their platform with maximum fan following.
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