EPL revolution just the start for Optus

The problem with the Optus solution is as a long standing customer with Optus. Neither the tech support or in store personnel had a clue on the requirements for their EPL option and this was even in early July 2016. By that time, talking around the 10 July, with lack of response from Optus. I went directly to the club that I support, namely AFC Bournemouth, having lived there when the team almost exited the Football League Pyramid in the UK. AFC Bournemouth answered succinctly the technological requirements, the price and when games and behind-the-scenes interviews, etc would be available on their streaming service. By 20 July went to a differnt Optus Store in Sydney and they said ok, you sign up by 30 July it is free for this season, and then 2017/18 season and 2018/19 Season, I would have to pay for the service for those seasons. With the service for broadband, there was no saving on my current plan for 2016/17 EPL season, and roughly $180 per season for the 2017/18 and 2018/19 EPL seasons, on top of my current outlay for Internet and Foxtel. As others have alluded to with big name club channels on Foxtel subscription service for $0 extra dollars for the next 3 EPL Seasons, and lack of timely responses with Optus. I have decided to purchase a year pass to watch my team AFC Bournemouth for roughly $5 a month, still cheaper than the cost of optus system by well over $100 for the next 3 years

I'm keen to read those who highly regard Foxtel explain why 70 per cent of Australia rejects Foxtel. Australians are not shy when adopting new technologies but the Foxtel audience has stagnated at 30% or less for 20 years. I recall from high school business studies the Four Ps of marketing: Product, price, place and promotion. The Foxtel product is excellent and in Australia the Foxtel brand is almost a synonym for Pay Tv , so their promotion over the 20 years has been very effective. Yet, 70 per cent of Aussies don't buy Foxtel even though Australia is often referred to (albeit only by other Australians) as being a nation obsessed with sport. I think the reason Foxtel is a failure in Australia is due to significant issues with 2 Ps: price and place.

I think Clayts that yes it is currently convenient to have all the sport in one spot BUT that is for the current generation of 30 year olds and over. Just like AM radio, newspapers, CD's etc.... things change over time. The next generation of adults will be used to streaming, watching content on mobiles/tablets, reading and obtaining their news via online means rather than the "convenient" option. I haven't bought a newspaper since 2007 when I got an iphone and then an ipad. I honestly think that eventually FTA tv will lose it's power and that anti-siphoning list will be gone. It might not happen now, but in 20 years time it's a real possibility. Hence Rupert and co. trying to protect their investment but a company like Telstra looking at alternative options. The kids of today, will be the adults of tomorrow and their tastes, likes, interests will be different to the current generation.

Not sure I really understand the Foxtel hate on here. It is $60 month to have all your sport, not just the football, all live and all in PROPER HD, all in one spot, with one box. What is Optus charging people to just have the EPL in semi decent HD? I think Foxtel's coverage of the A League and Premier League is/was brilliant. Will Optus's be any better? Was Foxtel's EPL coverage really that bad? I'm no fan boy of foxtel but the convenience of having everything in one spot and not having to rely on internet for sport is a good thing I think. What about those that have bad internet? Each to their own but I'm not entirely sure some people have really thought it all the way through whether they will actually be better off or not with this Optus thing

false rumours? wouldn't have thought so.

kaks, you've been told :)

AR, what does the absence of boxes in NT mean to the A league stats, very little directly. But it is an example of a broader issue that has been identified several times in this thread alone, but somehow it appears you have either not recognised it, or chose to ignore it. The ratings boxes/systems are not truly representative, they are owned by the commercial TV stations, to provide data to Nielsen which sells that data to advertisers. Now the place where football lives in Australia are Foxtel (only 33% of Australians have it) and SBS and ABC (W league) now as I have shown it is both of these Channels that are saying the system is not representative. They poorly represent NESB communities etc. Does anyone know how long the boxes are in a particular household? Because this has a huge potential to taint the results

Ok then..

MF As I said to AR, the 1% is a statistical error based on (I am assuming a normal distribution) but this data is not normally distributed. It is selected data, so the 1% is not a true representation of the error. Lets put it this way if 3,500 households Australia wide are representative of the whole of Australia within 1% error, why do we bother with elections? or expensive referendums? shouldn't they just be asked who should lead and that would be good enough? As I have said, the people are SELECTED they are not normally distributed, you have to meet certain criteria.

"What are the chances that zero people watched that particular show?" That's a very valid point, as it pertains to viewing figures of indigenous programs where all NT viewers are being excluded. As you say, it's highly unlikely that zero people watched the show. But if we turn to the issue at hand - ascertaining the tv ratings of ALeague matches for the purpose of ascribing value to the ALeague broadcast rights - the NT exclusion doesn't matter. It is an entirely separate issue. ALeague ratings are subject to the same system as netball ratings, WLeague ratings, AFL ratings, BBL ratings and so on. And gthat system is apparently accurate to 1%. Until we get digital connection to every single tv in Australia, I'm not sure what we can do about it.

MF I think you will find today that net advertising in Australia is about 57% or there abouts... Fully agree in Australia the protection of sport to be on FTA stations by both the ALP and Col has resulted in the commercial FTA being able to keep their chosen sports. As for Football wanting to be on a commercial FTA totally correct to help build or say help start the conversation process from the player base. I am feeling more confident today than twelve months ago about the next media deal.... when you only have one buyer it becomes difficult to increase revenue... but add a couple of new buyers and things do pick up... I have read reports that say by Christmas 2017 only weekend papers will be published with both News and Fairfax going online during the week. This will also effect future viewing ...

PH I think you are right that for that sort of granularity, the statistical method employed will not work, but if you are talking about high level numbers (national figures, capital city figures, key demos, etc), then a 1% margin of error is unbelievably accurate - certainly accurate enough for advertisers to commit millions of dollars of their ad budgets. As AR said, if the national figures have a 1% margin of error, then what is happening in a tiny market like the NT will have absolutely zero influence on national advertising campaigns. Also, with the same method used over many years, you can see that the bigger picture, longitudinally, is pretty spot on, if it wasn't, you'd be getting wild swings from month to month, year to year, etc.

Mid There is no doubting it is heading in that direction, but as we sit right now, the bulk of the advertising dollars are still with FTA, and by a big margin. The fact that you, and other soccer fans, are keen to get games on FTA suggests that in terms of exposure, FTA is still king for at least the next three to four years. Right now, if A-League clubs want to increase sponsorship revenue, they need to be on FTA, being on Fetch TV,. you may as well be invisible. The AFL's new $2.5 billion deal starts next year, but the digital component is only $300 mill (make of that what you will, and be assured, the AFL's online presence is as big as any Australian entity can get). The real question is: how will it transition? Will FTA drop off the cliff (as print media did), or will there be a gradual adjustment which might well go on for the next 5+ years? To that specific question - I have no answer.

AR, well it is a bit of a problem if you want to look culturally. Which was proven perfectly in the SBS article I posted. One of their shows had 0.0 people watching. The program in question was on indigenous Australians, by indigenous Australians aimed at Indigenous Australian consumption. So by not representing an area that has above average representation of that particular cultural demographic you have skewed the result. What are the chances that zero people watched that particular show?

AR I did say 2 articles on the first page, I wasn't going to continue searching page after page. Considering my search yielded 391,000 results maybe I should use a simple survey and extrapolate the rest of the results. 2 results on page 1, Page 1 had 10 results 2 over 10 is 20% Can we then assume 78,200 further articles? of course there is an error rate in there of say 50%, still a huge number of articles? See I can be totally dismissive as well AR. The 1% error is a statistical result of extrapolation based on I am assuming a normal distribution. etc, now I would question it but I don't have all the data, what it doesn't take into account and this has been discussed especially in the SBS link is that the survey is not normally distributed, it poorly represents NESB communities and one of the criteria is that you are a 'medium' watcher of TV. A question I don't know is how long do these people have the box for? is it rotated weekly, monthly yearly? I know I have never got one yet I have been called for Jury service about 4 times. I am sorry the error of 1% claimed isn't a reflection of how believable the data is but rather how much error is in the data recorded.

FFS SBS how many times do they start false rumours ... this is up there with Lucas and the team threaten at half time not to play unless the caoch... SBS are doing their status and history no Fing good. Aloisis and Moore say its all BS .... how SBS have changed ...

The "so what" refers to the data collection. The data gathering company is owned by the commercial tv networks and there is no commercial imperative to gather data that doesn't suit the commercial networks. Oztam has a certain number of metering devices. If they have the option to put a metering device in a house that does not watch any commercial tv channels but only watches ABC and SBS, or a house that never watches SBS or ABC but watches only the commercial networks, which house do you think will get the device? There is no harm in this methodology since the data is required by advertisers and advertisers have no interest in ABC viewers and very low interest in SBS viewers. It's possible that the data gathered is a fair reflection of viewing audiences for the three commercial networks. But it beggars belief to think the data gathered by commercial tv notworks will accurately reflect viewing numbers on ABC or SBS.

"as of 2014 there were ZERO oztam boxes in the NT" To put it mildly...so what? As a result of having no boxes in NT, OzTam doesn't report any viewing figures in NT. What can we extrapolate from this? Well... probably anything we like. For example, would the NT figures show that there are more Masterchef viewers, proportionally, than what exists in NSW? If yes, how does this affect the value of 30 seconds of advertising space in between Matt Preston's mouthfuls? My guess is...it doesn't.

Post hoc, couple of things in response... First, you've produced 2 articles - a SMH article from 2011 and a mumbrella article from 2014 in which SBS (predictably, albeit fairly) criticises the system as it stands. I wouldn't call that "plenty of articles" from a Google search. Second, the first of those articles cites a Monash statistics professor who claims the OzTam system has a total margin error of around 1%. That's unbelievably accurate. Where the accuracy dips, he says, is when you try to drill down into demographics (say, females 18-40 in Adel). Then the systems becomes far less meaningful. But for overall numbers, the professor says it is sound. Third, doesn't the fact that OzTam want to expand the sample show that it is interested in collecting more and more accurate data? Isn't this a good thing? I'm not here to defend OzTam, claim that it represents a perfect system, or make any other assertions about it. I'm simply pointing out that it is the only system in place, and is as accurate as it possibly can be (apparently to 1%) within the infrastructure currently available.

Neither do I and we got in the last media deal 40 million for a ten team comp, Super Rugby in Australia got 24 million with 15 teams at the time ... other factors I know but we still received 16 million more with a weekly FTA match.