You Think You Know It But You Don’t: The Sports Content Landscape (Part 1)
Yup! We are uncovering some secrets of the sports content industry that has been around for more than three decades –since the 80s!
Although the landscape has been gradually changing since broadcasters competed with internet-based rivals such as Yahoo and nowadays with the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime, these secrets we are about to unveil are the ultimate reasons why CLUBS and FANS need to reclaim their rights when the opportunity arises.
As a sports OTT platform, SportsFix is aiming to alter this situation. SportsFix is establishing a digital ecosystem, backed by blockchain technology, smart contracts, and our native cryptocurrency SportsFix Token to create dynamic, fair and transparent platform for sports communities. As a startup in the sports media industry, we believe it is time to take part in reimagining the sports content landscape. And we need you and sports fans around the world participate in being game changers!
We are going to break this topic into two parts. In the first part, we are discussing how the current distribution system of sports tournaments and leagues are considered unfair for fans and clubs. The second part, we will discuss about how the fan and club relationship needs to be upgraded, engaged, and personalized.
So, what is going on with the current distribution system?
Convoluted Distribution System
As sports fans, we mainly favor to watch and follow our home team. Yet, we are forced to pay for league and tournament content on our Pay TV, even when we don’t watch it. So, have you wondered why it is impossible to watch our favorite teams only?
The main reason why we cannot choose what we want to watch is due to the antiquated broadcasting model through traditional TV distribution. Pay TV channels, such as Disney-owned ESPN, Comcast-owned NBC, or Pay TV operators, like Sky and Comcast, bundle sports content with other channels into large ‘Cable’ offerings designed for maximum profit generation.
The current model we are experiencing with Pay TV is centralized, bundles content and severely limits franchises from having direct engagement and monetization pathways to audiences or fans. But the fact is when you subscribe for a Pay TV channel you are likely to watch only small fraction of the entire content broadcasted from your sports channel!
We may blame Pay TV for that but their role is limited to only determining which content to acquire, how it is delivered, at what time, and to which device for which price per pay-period.
There are more backroom deals going on between intermediaries that pushes up the price of the content for sports fans.
Middlemen Markups and Artificial Pricing
Middlemen markups and artificial pricing are some of the reasons why we pay so much for watching sports.
Retail price is determined when rights holders, the original creators and legal owners of the distributed content, produce their sports content. Rights holders, then, leverage middlemen for optimizing premium and non-premium content distribution.
The highest margin goes to two prominent stakeholders in this industry, rights holder agent and local agent. Rights holder agent, the gatekeeper of the industry, packages rights of premium and long-tail content and sell those either to local sub-agents or directly to broadcasters with a significant markup. While the local agent, who has a better market knowledge and network than rights holders or their agents, is usually left with remnant content that the rights holder agent was not able to sell directly.
And as sports fans, we sit at the bottom of the distribution chain, forced to pay expensive subscription fees or sheepishly watching unauthorised live streams over the web.
No Turning Back
There is no going back to a world of restricted choice.
Broadcasters and sports leagues are aware and started preparing for a post-television era, experimenting with shows transmitted over the web and watched on smartphones, while internet companies from Youtube, Facebook, to Twitter are hoping to stream live matches on their platforms.
Part of the landscape, SportsFix offers fans a new over-the-top approach where we acquire the legal live streaming rights for sports content at the league level, unbundle the content to individual games or highly personalized and contextualized digital content items.
Fans can participate in our token economy based on actual consumption of sports content that will create a one-on-one engagement opportunities with clubs, sponsors, and other fans across the globe through the exchange of our utility token!
The benefits of this are two folds, access and affordability.
Stay tuned for our the second part of this article on why fans and clubs relationship needs to be upgraded and personalized!
IT’S GAME TIME! And we’re changing the way YOU watch sports!
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