I've always been quite jealous that in the US, you do seem to get most of
your key sport on free-to-air broadcast channels.
That's not the case for the most part in Europe.
In the UK for example, there is no live Premier League football on
broadcast channels ("free to air" in UK parlance). The live rights are
split between Sky Sports and a new entrant this year - BT Sport. The BBC
only gets to broadcast highlights of football. There is no live cricket on
broadcast television. The BBC does carry some rugby, but most competitions
are split between BT Sport and Sky Sports.
And the difference between the TV ecosystems is that while we don't have "a
la carte" cable as has been talked about a lot in the US, sports channels
are a separate buy. So while ESPN might be a basic cable channel (and in
reality sucking $5 a month from everyone's cable bills whether they watch
sports or not), in the UK, it's an additional purchase. And hence it costs
£22 a month - $35 - to get Sky Sports for example. BT Sport is more on top
of that, although free if you take their broadband service.
That does lead to reality that Sky, and now BT, can almost always outbid
the broadcast channels like the BBC (with its fixed income based around a
licence fee) or the advertiser funded ITV. So we actually have a list of
events that by law are not allowed to be sold to anyone who doesn't make
them widely available as a result - The Olympics, the World Cup, the FA Cup
final, Wimbledon etc. They're considered culturally important enough that
they should be available to all. That means that these do get broadcast on
the BBC, ITV or both.
Because sports TV packages are so pricey, not all satellite/cable
subscribers take channels Sky Sports. Exactly what that proportion is tends
to be confidential, but of something like 25m homes in the UK, it's
estimated that only around 7-8m pay for sports (out of 13m who pay at all
for TV - the rest rely on broadcast only). So if you move your event to
cable/satellite, you get more for your rights, but at the cost of viewers.
Are advertisers and sponsors of those sports happy with their reduced
reach? It's a tough balance for networks, sports rights owners and the
viewing public to get right...
Adam
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