To Broadcast Or Not, That Is The Question

In this current day and age, it appears that every sport wants a slice of the money available from television. Yet how many truly warrant receiving money from the television stations for airing their particular sport?

Does their sport bring in new viewers? Does it increase their subscribers? Will it pull in new advertising dollars?

Like any business arrangement that is going to work it has to be a partnership. Both parties need to work with each other to ensure that such a deal is a success.

Now in addition to TV rights at the top end of sport there is the matter of so many sports wanting to broadcast via a livestream all manner of games under their control. The feeling being that just by offering this service they are going to grow the sport, yet how many sports support such ‘broadcasts’ with a proper marketing campaign or a long term strategy?

How many simply believe by offering this everything will automatically fall into place?

A recent conversation with one sport revealed that despite having offered a streaming service for a number of years they had failed to collate any data on their viewers. They did not know their strongest demographic by age, how long they viewed or on what device most people were viewing their content.

Surely such data is crucial and enables you to make informed decisions and attract sponsors?

Of course, as this space and social media continues to evolve at a rapid speed how many sports have the staff with the relevant knowledge to be effective to the maximum in this space? As dealt with in Podcast #65 it tends to be only the really big clubs or major events that have the budgets to employ the right people to ensure the right results. So, what hope do smaller sporting organizations have trying to compete?

While the internet has given sports fans access to more information and more sport, they have forced many sports and sporting organizations into a very difficult place, a place where they must feel as if they are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.

Just as with having games broadcast on television the crucial question that must be asked is why are you doing it? What is your end goal?

Once you have established that, you will then be in a good position to determine how much money you are prepared to invest and the key components you are looking for to achieve those goals

As many sports and clubs have discovered televising or streaming games can indeed grow your appeal and the number of spectators, it can also offer a new revenue stream, but it can also have a negative impact. Some fans will stay home rather than shell-out the admission fee. Although if the quality of what they see is good it can have the opposite effect and encourage people to actually attend.

There is a prevailing feeling that every game in non-professional competitions needs to be livestreamed. Some feeling that this is equality, it is being fair to each club. However, they fail to look at the impact on the sport as a whole.

In many situations where we witness local competitions being streamed it is often doing the sport a disservice having every game live-streamed due the quality of the matches. Often the sports in question are highlighting just how poor their competition is. Which does the sport, and the clubs concerned no good whatsoever. It actually ends up damaging both parties’ ability to attract sponsorship, and the club, new players or coaches.

When it comes to television, again having games televised can do the sport more damage than good. As once again broadcasting some games exposes the lack of quality and in fact loses fans.

What is essential when entering such an agreement is that the sport and the broadcaster work together and lock in key aspects of the broadcast that ensure that there is consistency in terms of what is being produced and that it is of a quality that will enhance the sport.

Whatever the agreement there also must be a discussion on how the sport and the television stations are going to market the games. After all most sports do not have the pulling power of the Olympic Games or the English Premier League, so they need to have a large promotional budget, as today more so than ever they are competing with more distractions for their potential audience than ever before.

An example of this was the Hockey India League (HIL). This was a great competition that the author was privileged to commentate for three seasons. In 2012 it was announced that Star Sports won the broadcast rights and signed a multi-year agreement. In 2014 Star Sports, committed to “an investment of over Rs.1500 crore in the sport of Hockey over the next 8 years – an investment hitherto unprecedented in the history of the game thus making Star India well and truly the biggest global investor in the game of Hockey.”

Star Sports was set to create a new global benchmark in Hockey broadcasting with the telecast of the second edition of the HIL. There was no expense spared as they employed International Management Group (IMG) to produce the content, used 20 cameras, and came up with new graphics. They came up with some outstanding advertisements to promote the competition and flew some of the top players to India to film them.

The hockey was electrifying at times, the crowds in some areas a sight to behold, and the competition itself a huge success. Yet after two years of investment Star Sports were not seeing the promotion required from the franchises to promote the games to potential viewers. Their viewing figures despite the quality that was being produced were not growing the way they had expected.

By season four they cut their investment. Gone was a lot of the expertise and knowledge, especially on the production side. By season five the quality of the broadcast had fallen a long way. There would be no season six.

A similar situation has arisen here in Australia with the A-League football. A change of television station has seen the competition almost disappear from public consciousness. Fans were expected to buy yet another subscription to another service to watch games, and with diehard fans already paying for the English Premier League and the European Champions League this was one request too many.

Sadly, once again the product being aired has not helped the cause. The aim is to make the A-League look as if there is investment, but the production is according to many in the know being done on a shoestring budget in television terms.

There has been little or no marketing to promote the league and again it has faded from the public’s mind. Another aspect that does not help in trying to market the league or to attract viewers is the football being served up. The development of players in the past 15 years has been a disaster in Australia, and this has impacted on the quality of the football in the A-League. None of this is helped by teams playing not to lose, rather than taking a leaf out of Ange Postecoglou’s book and going out and trying to win.

Which raises the question is the A-League benefitting from having every game broadcast every week, let alone behind a pay wall?

For all those who fought for football to finally have a television deal and a strong league, the current situation is heartbreaking.

Another question is whether there is too much International sport these days and is that having an impact on the levels below? (Too Much International Sport?) Who genuinely has time to watch all of the matches? It used to be with the FIFA World Cup that this was possible, and many fans did just that but when at France ’98 the number of matches jumped to 64, it became much harder to do so.

Television can make or break a competition. As mentioned, there is so much sport on television these days that if the quality of what you are watching is below the viewers’ expected standard, they will change channel.

So many of the big sports stations now have three or four, or even more channels for fans to choose from so the options are there to watch something else.

Most of these stations now try to have the sports themselves produce the games, and they will simply pay to air the matches. Only with those big ticket events will they invest in the production, these are the events they pay the big dollars to broadcast.

In hockey the FIH Pro League commenced in 2019. This was a competition that the hockey fans around the world were told was going to “revolutionise the sport.” It had been “five years in the making” and it was “the major plank of the Hockey Revolution.”

The process to decide which teams were to be included in this nine-team global competition for men and women we were told was “extensive.” Yet before the first edition India, withdrew and then the Pakistan men. The punishment was supposed to be a ban from international hockey if you withdrew; but sensibly that did not eventuate. (Is The Pro-League Heading In the Right Direction?) Just as well as since then we have seen, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, who came in as a replacement for the former two, pull out as well.

This has clearly not helped the competition, and neither has Covid and the decision to plough on with the competition during these testing times.

The competition was initially run over six months and saw teams play two games home and away against all the other nations competing around the world, with a finals series played between the top four teams.

Credit should be given to the FIH who managed to sell the concept of the tournament to broadcasters in eight of the nine countries in which the Men’s teams were competing and all the Women’s participating countries. These broadcasters were buying an idea, a concept. None had seen the end product, so they were buying the broadcast in good faith.

That first year a great deal of effort went into the look of the broadcasts; I know as I was involved. The FIH wanted a uniform look for every game no matter where it was being broadcast. This is nothing new, it is something that all of the top sports do when being broadcast. It gives the viewer a trust and comfort in knowing what is coming.

During that first year the FIH clearly hit financial problems as suddenly costs were being cut. Especially when it came to umpires and video referral; this cost cutting was cumbersome and looked amateurish.

By year two the league was arguably no longer a league as sports fans know it. Teams would now only play against four nations at home and against the remaining four nations away. This was disastrous as one year in major structural changes were being made, yet fans had been told that this is had been planned for five years!

The Covid Pandemic played havoc with the competition, and eventually despite not all teams having played the same amount of matches they opted to reveal a winner based on percentages; luckily, they managed to get this right this time. (The Dawn Of A New Rivalry)

The tournament took a break as Covid gripped the world, but it returned in September of 2020. When it did there was a new dimension to the broadcast scenario. The FIH in partnership with NAGRA a Kudelski Group company and the world’s leading independent provider of content protection and multiscreen video solutions, announced the launch of “Watch.Hockey,” a fan engagement app that was to be a new digital “home of hockey” to the millions of hockey fans.

Covid was blamed for commentary being done remotely, rather than having commentators at the venue. Yet this was already planned as a cost-saving and had been in place prior to the Pandemic. It has definitely impacted the overall coverage of the sport, as it has other sports.

Hopefully in time Broadcasters will realize those sports where commentary can be done remotely and those which cannot.

Sadly, for the Pro League the coverage has really dropped from the high standards the sport had set at the start of the competition and the giant steps made by Star Sports. This in turn has damaged the reputation of the sport and has affected viewership. How many of those who paid for the TV rights at the start of the competition are going to sign up again, and at an increased or same level of investment?

Which raises a very pertinent question, has hockey opted to shy away from mainstream television and try and steer all its fans to their digital platform?

Star tried to make a difference, they cared about the sport. After all India is the spiritual home of the sport. When Star Sports announced the investment that they were making in the Hockey India League Former Pakistan Hockey Captain Tahir Zaman, stated publicly “Hockey like cricket holds a lot of potential, especially in the sub-continent. Both Pakistan and India have been powerhouses in the sport, but while some of the other games like Cricket made rapid strides, Hockey got left behind. A large part of that was due to the fact, that one could not make a living out of the sport in the past and we played the game purely for the love of the game. However, now with investments by entities like Star Sports into the game and global leagues like the Hero Hockey India League, I see a bright future for our sport. This can only be good for the development of the game. At grass root level, more and more people will aspire to pick up a Hockey stick and serve the game.” The vision was there, even if it did not eventuate. There is still hope the league will return.

As a digital platform is there any desire to improve the product? Surely all they care about are numbers of subscribers. Ultimately their belief is likely to be that a single camera feed is just as good as a linear production with all the bells and whistles.

Does such a platform care about the viewer the way a television broadcaster does? Or are they solely interested in securing subscribers? Is there truth in the belief that viewers are just numbers for a streaming platform, whereas viewers are consumers and customers for a TV station?

This is a colossal problem for not just hockey but many other sports with the evolution of digital broadcast and consumption, working out what is really best for their sport.

The Pro League was supposed to be the sport’s shop window, and no matter how good the play is on the pitch if the coverage is inferior, the hard fact is you will always lose viewers. Especially today when viewer expectation is much greater. It is not just hockey that is finding this out many other sports are facing this reality.

Once again, the FIH Pro League has suffered as there is little or no marketing of the games. Being in Australia it is hard to judge what is being done in the host countries where games are being played, but to many fans here unless they go looking for the games, they would never know they were taking place.

Marketing to support and promote the broadcast was and is needed now more than ever, especially with the change in the length of the season. Now the season starts in October and is going to run through until June. It will run for nine months of the year, a long time to keep fans engaged. However, there were no games in December and January. So, fans were geed up for the start of the competition, and then nothing for two months…

With no promotion or marketing the league is always going to battle for attention. It was vital that the broadcast of that first game after the two-month break had to be of the highest quality to pull people back in, it wasn’t.

Television and streaming can be a great tool to help grow the following of a sport, but it comes with some equally large risks. If you do not deliver quality, you risk losing and alienating those who are followers of the game.

Too much coverage can also be damaging, as can showing games that are simply not entertaining. Sport after all, and whether we like it or not is now regarded as a form of entertainment.

In many sports it would be wise to take the ‘less is more approach.’ Pick the events, competitions, or matches that are going to have mass appeal and put your financial clout behind them. Bring in producers and directors who know the sport, use experts rather than cheap options. Invest in the sport that pays your living. Do that and the rewards will come, and the sport will flourish.

If you cannot afford to invest in putting together the best broadcast and back that with effective marketing of the competition, maybe you would be better off admitting that you can’t afford it. Adopt the approach to the sport by the saying if a job is worth doing it is worth doing properly.

That would let those involved in the sport know that you have the sport’s best interests at heart. That you those running the game care about its image, how it is portrayed and that they themselves have integrity.