Quote:
Originally Posted by OLD BOY
The Head of BT Sports is predicting a correction in the price paid for Premiership football rights. For the sake of sports fans, I hope he's right, as prices have been going in one direction for too long now.
https://www.digitaltveurope.com/2020...head-of-sport/
Speaking to The Guardian, Simon Green predicted that the prices of sports rights will not continue to rise as they have for the past 30 years.
He said: “I personally believe that Covid-19 will cause a correction in the markets for television sports rights which will mean the value will not rise as it has done in the past. I think everyone will be more discerning about what they pay given that the country is facing a potential recession which could leave viewers with less money in their pockets.”
Interestingly, the article suggests that there will be increasing interest from the streaming services.
The league’s next rights cycle – to be auctioned in 2021 – is likely to be one of significant change. Amazon will likely look to increase its share of the rights following a successful first season with more than 20 matches. DAZN may also look to pick up domestic rights as it establishes itself in the UK market, while a lower valued league may lead Premier League CEO Richard Masters to push on with a potential ‘Premflix’ D2C product.
(Awaits screams of protest from SVOD deniers...)
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If you didn't leap into your default position of making everything good news for streamers the actual crux of what he has come out with is fundamentally bad news for streamers. That entrenched economic recession that I've opined about elsewhere will leave consumers hit in the pocket making them more selective about what they purchase reducing the space in the marketplace. A lot of these "nice add on" services will find themselves not compelling enough to retain without the key content that drives pay-tv subscriptions.
I'm quite sure if Amazon got offered games on the cheap again they'd jump at it.
The fact that there is a view that the league might have to resort to selling direct to consumers indicates a low confidence level in streamers digging into those 'deep pockets', and if they did during a recession there'd be a much higher risk to such a business model.