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The EPL is now invisible thanks to Optus

21st May, 2017
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Manchester City's Sergio Aguero has continued his incredible run of form. (AFP PHOTO / IAN MACNICOL)
Expert
21st May, 2017
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The English Premier League is now practically invisible in Australia, but don’t expect those who buy and sell the broadcast rights to admit that Aussies are no longer tuning in.

It’s a good thing Liverpool are playing Sydney FC at ANZ Stadium on Wednesday night, because it will be one of the few times Australian fans get to watch the Reds play live this season.

Has the first year of Optus’ deal to broadcast the Premier League gone well? Of course it hasn’t.

But because we now live in a world where facts are optional and reality is easily ignored, the spin merchants will have you believe that the broadcasting of English top-flight football in Australia has never been better.

Never mind the low take-up rates, the significant hit to earnings, the ongoing technical glitches and the “sharply reduced press coverage” of this season’s competition.

Optus will tell you their Premier League coverage is going swimmingly, because to suggest otherwise would be to admit they over-estimated the willingness of Australians to pay yet another subscription cost.

You can’t blame them for trying. Australian consumers already pay through the nose for pretty much everything else, so what’s another inflated phone bill on top of all the rest?

But where Optus’ chief executive Allen Lew may have viewed the popularity of the Premier League in Singapore and assumed the same media landscape could be easily replicated here, he failed to take into account the fact Australians are sick and tired of paying over the odds for products.

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And you won’t find anyone from the company admit that while the tiny city-state of Singapore boasts some of the Asia-Pacific’s fastest internet speeds, the vast continent of Australia lags light years behind.

We don’t even have the necessary infrastructure for Optus to adequately stream the Premier League into Australian homes, which is why the #OptusOut hashtag has been synonymous with the #OptusEPL hashtag all season long.

Manchester City's Argentinian striker Sergio Aguero

(AFP PHOTO / IAN MACNICOL)

Of course, this ‘over-the-top’ streaming is supposed to be an improvement on simply paying the previous rights holder a subscription fee to watch via a traditional cable TV connection.

About the only thing over the top about it is the price.

Maybe Australians aren’t interested in being forced to pay for telephony just so they can watch a game of English football?

You’d think the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission would be interested in a company that makes you purchase one product to receive another, yet their total silence on the matter makes you wonder what – if anything – they actually do.

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And there’s another pernicious side effect of the Optus deal we’re yet to acknowledge.

The fanboys would have you believe that consumer costs will go down by taking the broadcast rights away from one provider and splitting them up among several different providers because viewers can now choose which content they wish to purchase.

Yet the opposite is true, and because live sport is expensive to broadcast, viewers invariably find themselves paying several high-priced subscription fees instead of just one.

Of course, you can always do what I did last night and simply watch games on SBS.

But even that is tinged with the knowledge that the network gave up its exclusive rights to the FIFA World Cup for one Premier League game a week – meaning we have another streaming fiasco to look forward to in 2018.

Before the season kicked off, some online fans seemed happy that Fox Sports’ 18-year stranglehold over the Premier League had ended.

Surely it’s now a case of better the devil you know.

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Ironically, I’ve watched as much football this season as ever. It’s just that hardly any of it has been the Premier League.

Meanwhile, the competition’s highly-paid executives are no doubt patting themselves on the back for signing a lucrative three-year deal.

Only problem is – no one’s watching it.

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