TV Rights, best avoided

Apple TV has secured the US F1 rights.

You would think firesticks would have a huge affect

Yes and as popular as it is, they’ve never developed a mass market prime time product on Free to Air which is backed by ads. They have remained on pay tv (with some streaming more recently) which largely relies on subscription revenue. If you are on free to air with ads, there’s no reason to illegally stream.

In comparison, the NFL had a mixed product, relying far more on advertising led broadcasters. The Premier League worked in exploiting the pay tv market, but there’s no evidence that it can work in the advertising led broadcast market.

The ideal position to be in is to have a track record with ad led free to air broadcasts, subscription tv and then have an appeal to streamers looking for market share. The NRL and AFL have that in Australia. Subscription tv is on a long term decline but a lot of people (particularly) older ones pay it out of habit and others don’t want to do illegal things so will keep paying it, the subscription tv guys are therefore desperate to keep the rights and the EPL have benefitted from that. The fact that the EPL rights last time barely moved in £ terms despite them selling more games suggests the subscription tv guys have reached their limit and they will no longer be able to pay what they did. So they’re basically relying on streamers.

I believe in the U.K. and Ireland that Premier League makes nearly as much as head of population as the NFL do in the U.S. yet the U.S. economy and purchasing power per person is substantially higher. It just isn’t sustainable, they’re out performing.

The dream for the Premier League is to just get a Netflix to buy global rights and just monetise their bigger international appeal as the Sky/TNT model declines. But I can’t see it growing massively. Why would it? The purchasing power in a lot of places where the EPL is popular is terrible and as mentioned, I think the U.K. rights are in essential decline. There’s obviously value for Netflix being the only place to watch them but we’ll see what that really is.

I think if the EPL had taken a bit of a pause on gobbling up the subscription tv companies paying more for their rights and sacrificed a little bit in the short term by selling a game a week to ITV (for example), that they’d be in a better position.

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Would be great to see the EPL decline

Its muck and sky sports is.for dullards

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