Sports Rights, Business Wrongs

Had an interesting chat about sports rights today with Jason O'Sullivan who is the VP, Digital Media at ESPN STAR Sports in Singapore. There is a growing trend for Federations and rights holders to package and sell online rights distinct from broadcast rights. One of the challenges is that many of the people bidding for the latter are network operators and ISPs, who see exclusive content as a loss leader to get people to buy their communications products. That drives up the prices of those rights. For media companies, online advertising revenues are growing, but not to the extent to monetise massive investments in new media licensing. So, what about premium content? ESPN in the US has been successful with broadband platforms like ESPN 360 but O'Sullivan sees small upside in subscription revenue in Asia for the immediate term. In his view, broadband, disposable income and credit ownership are limiting factors in emerging markets. After all, in India even Pay TV is generally "don't need to pay" TV.

Comments

[Niki Scevak]

Hey mate, just on the ESPN360 thing: it's not a pay per view platform but rather a weird deal whereby if your ISP pays ESPN, their broadband subscribers can access it.

So in New York, Verizon DSL pays ESPN and so subscribers can watch as much as they like for free. But Time Warner Cable doesn't pay ESPN and so their subscribers are barred from the site no matter what they do. The consumer doesn't have any choice, it is all at the ISP level.