Football must find new revenue streams in more ways than one

Spot on. Not sure why Foxtel gets so much hate, it is literally the only thing stopping the A league from folding.

yes, its back to the drawing board -- err cow paddocks that is

What some of you have missed is that ratings are terrible on FTA for A-League. A-League producing their own content won't help them. Foxtel is not the problem. Simply, no-one wants to watch the A-League. Even when it's free no-one wants to watch. It's in huge trouble and all but dead in the water. Really, the A-League doesn't have 4 years to sort this out. Once it becomes evident that Foxtel isn't interested in renewing, players won't commit, sponsors will pull out, the few fans left will stop being invested in results

Dazn is an online sports streaming service that I guess is similar to Kayo (only not owned by a cable/satelite broadcaster), or more closely, someone like BeIN Sports. They buy content and rights but AFAIK don't create their own broadcasts. I think the J Leauge deal would be similar to a potential working model put forward earlier in this thread, where the league creates its own content and then licenses that to DAZN - which would almost certainly be more profitable than selling rights to a production company such as Fox Sports.

Kangas Seven consistently wins Friday nights. Many reasons contribute to that, but their sport offering is one of those reasons, and that's why they pay big dollars for sport. They'll pay less in the future, for sure, but they will pay something. Last Friday, Seven won Friday evening/night with 38.1% of all viewers (that's a big number by the way). Here are the top five shows last Friday (National 5 City metro): 1. SEVEN NEWS, Channel 7 - 933,000 2. SEVEN NEWS / TODAY TONIGHT, Channel 7 - 829,000 3. NINE NEWS, Channel 9 - 772,000 4. NINE NEWS 6:30, Channel 9 - 763,000 5. SEVEN’S AFL: FRIDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL, Channel 7 - 602,000 Add regional and fox ratings to Seven's sport offering, and that game got about one million viewers. By the way, that's one million viewers averaged over three hours. We're not talking about 20,000 people streaming something for 10 minutes. Be assured, advertisers and sponsors are still very interested in those average one million viewers spread across three hours. When you wonder why a particular sport is attracting billions in broadcast revenue, well, the ability to regularly hold an audience of one million viewers for a three hour block is part of the reason. Add to that, a chunk of those viewers are tuning in for the evening news, might even tune in the previous night for team selections. Ah, it starts to make sense, that's why they pay the big bucks!

As someone else pointed out, Foxtel’s potential cricket customers were probably already subscribers. They might have made extra dollars if cricket was an add-on channel. Strangely, it’s conceivable they could lose more subscribers by dropping the A-League rather than cricket. Cricket fans might well stick around for AFL/NRL/Rugby even if the cricket disappeared.

Well ultimately football, rugby and the other so-called "non-marquee" sports are paying the price for Foxtel's cricket folly. Sure, Aussies love their cricket but do they love it that much to pay to watch it? The ratings suggest otherwise. The uptake in subscribers has not been sufficient to justify Foxtel's cricket outlay and many of the new subscribers driven by the cricket went to the low-cost Kayo rather than traditional cable Foxtel. Ultimately, Cricket Australia will be laughing all the way to the bank while other sports miss out. Then again, this was probably bound to happen even without the cricket deal. I would not be surprised if Optus eventually get the A-League and pitch themselves as a "one stop shop" for all football fans in Australia but there are the obvious issues over production and it's not likely that Optus will offer nearly as much money as Foxtel has.

Far too much is attributed to Footballs TV ratings. TV ratings are falling across the board, due largely to the mismanagement and cost cutting. Why does football allow Television to run the sport when the evidence is clear they can't successfully run their own businesses. Television used to be a cash cow, now TV companies are growing broke mainly due to the dropping standard of the garbage they serve up to the viewing public. Football needs to take control of the game back, TV wants football for what it is, don't let them change it!!!

“The future is here, but no doubt some sports will cling on to FTA Tv.” This is genuinely hilarious. First, the FFA is not only clinging to Foxtel (literally it’s one true sugar daddy), but publicly announcing the need for more FTA presence. Work that one out. Second, of all major professional sports in Australia right now, soccer and rugby are equal dead last when it comes to being ready for the future landscape of broadcasting. The FFA’s desperate reliance on Foxtel is on life support as we speak. Competitors such as the AFL, have billion dollar FTA and Pay deals, massive digital deals, multiple radio, Kayo, live streaming for every game, stadium ownership, and its own media company with about 150 employees. But yes...Fuss says it’s all the other sports which are not ready for the future. Blimey. When it comes to the crazies, it’s gone from Smell. The. Fear. to Hold. My. Beer.

It's not about clinging on, if FTA wish to throw tens of millions of dollars at your sport to show a couple of games, well, it's money for jam, isn't it? Doesn't exclude you from taking money from one or two or three other broadcasters, whatever their poison. The other lesson from above is that consumers are wanting to pay less and less (or nothing) for their streaming. In a fragmented market, with zero barriers to entry, well that zero revenue spread out across many providers means minor sports shouldn't be expecting to earn too much.

I'm glad you're finally understanding the problem with the tradition sports broadcast model. It is on life-support. With Foxtel, it's literally on life-support with News Corp having to provide $300,000,000 cash to keep the Foxtel doors open & minority shareholder Telstra saying "we've had enough, no more cash for you". In addition to the Telcos & ISPs, expect cashed up platforms like: YouTube, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter. Some of these have the same revenue model as FTA TV and rely on targeted advertising revenue; some similar to PayTV, which rely on subscription revenue. The additional advantage of the free online platforms - for global sports, you reach a global audience. Only a few days ago, Raheem Sterling was mentioning how the A-League & MLS is always being broadcast at the Man City Training Facility because the Time Zone fits with morning training. The future is here, but no doubt some sports will cling on to FTA Tv.

Sam Thanks for your reply I was just commenting that mr football said that 7 won the ratings with better homes and gardens and a movie , which is fantastic, but this is a soccer blog . Extrapolate from that what you will , but gardening shows are not the narrative of the blog . As for your mentioning rugby , both the codes of rugby are huge in nsw , it makes no difference to me whether they are on free to air as I don’t watch free to air , my kids never watch free to air either . The only generation of people I know who watch free to air are retirees , hence why the gardening shows are winning the ratings .

AFR dedicated its back page Chanticleer column to the current Foxtel situation. Some interesting points from this piece (worth a read of the full version I might add): - Several of these non-marquee sports are bound to suffer cash-flow problems as Delany uses the expiry of broadcast agreements to wield the hatchet on Foxtel’s annual cost base of about $2.6 billion. - in golden years... the pay-TV operator had average revenue per user of $107 a month. Today its ARPU is $78.56 - the most successful American tech company of all those to emerge in the past decade is Netflix...Netflix’s sharemarket value is 100 times last year’s earnings - News trades at less than one times next year’s revenue. - Nine subsidiary Stan. It has built a subscriber base of 1.7 million. But ... only makes serious money of about $40 million a year when it has 2.5 million subscribers. - Streaming services which don’t manufacture their own content are increasingly vulnerable to the growth in rivals such as DisneyNOW, - News Corp has the financial resources to pay for the transformation of Foxtel. But if progress is too slow the Murdoch family is sure to ask if it should throw good money after bad.

Mr F It is very difficult for some to understand what you are trying to say. If it doesn't fit with their narrative, they attempt to baffle with BS! Fact Both FFA and Rugby would kill to have a visible FTA presence - take that to the bank everyone.

Well, the key question is: does FTA offer the major sports anything? (and conversely do the major sports offer FTA anything?) For the time being, the answer remains yes. There is a reason why TEN has been trailing the other commercial FTAs this past decade. This might also explain why soccer fans still hold out hope that more than one game might be broadcast on FTA. They must still see some value in it. On the Rugby board, many mention the need to get on FTA. So we have this strange dichotomy, where on the one hand you have some people saying it's entirely irrelevant, and on the other, you have diverse sports fans clamouring to get onto it.

Mr f Re Your comment that channel 7 won the ratings last night .. interesting comment on mikes A league soccer blog , but I guess that fta tv still has something to offer many people. I looked up the guide for this Friday and it’s betters homes and gardens and an x men movie on channel 7 . Do you think 7 will win the ratings again ?

Depends what you mean by 'slow burn'. Are you saying "slow burn" in sales for an industry that is 60 years old is a 40% decline over 6 years, across the most valuable consumer demographic for that industry? Then, yes; its a slow burn. But, you'll find it might take a while for a fire to do damage, but once it gets going, the building will collapse quickly.

You are confirming everything I just wrote.

For the age demographic 16-39, the Top 5 Shows on these dates shows a 42% decline in TV ratings. Scary to imagine the drop in advertising dollars with such a destruction of viewing numbers. PS: The viewing numbers in Melb for AFL on Fri over the 6 years dropped 25%.. whilst the money paid for the content by the broadcaster has more than doubled. The numbers in Sydney for NRL shows a 40% drop in viewing on FTA TV on this night. Yup. FTA Tv is still going strong!

"Last night 7 won the ratings, as did 7Mate on the multi-channels.." Let's review Fri night's ratings. The Top 20 shows on FTA TV on Fri, 24 May 2019 attracted a total of 10.2 million viewers. That's a 25% fall on the number of viewers who tuned in to the Top 20 FTA TV shows on Fri, 24 May 2013. 25% decline in 6 years. Netflix only entered the Australian market in 2015. You only have to look at the FTA TV Guide to realise the platform is dead. There is absolutely nothing being broadcast on FTA Tv that is compelling viewing. It's just mind-numbing reality TV, tabloid current affairs shows & news that any intelligent person has already watched hours before it is broadcast on FTA TV. But, no doubt, there will be a group of Aussies who will still cling on desperately to their FTA remotes, whilst they have their knitting on their lap and the Herald Sun on the coffee table.