England-Ukraine qualifier only available online, on pay-per-view
England play Ukraine in a World Cup Qualifier (they’re not going to stop just because England have qualified, you know) on October 10 (10/10).
The reason this is news for other than footballing reasons is because the match will not be shown live on TV – instead, it will be shown online as an exclusive Internet-only offering.
Why is this not on the telly, you ask?
The media rights to the game were sold to Kentaro (a sports rights company) by the Ukrainian FA. Kentaro in turn sold on the rights to Setanta, but after their collapse the rights reverted back to Kentaro. Instead of trying to sell the rights again to a TV channel, Kentaro decided to trial an online-only format for this game, and have partnered with Perform (who already have experience in selling premium video content online) to execute this idea.
Kentaro has had no offers from UK free to air or pay-TV broadcasters and has decided to seek the widest possible online audience.
Will it work? Kentaro believe that it will, and Perform have put their significant weight behind the idea of charging for streaming live matches online (as well as highlight packages) through their Omnisport.tv portal for quite some time.
As reported in the Guardian earlier this month, Kentaro and Perform approached a handful of online newspaper websites to strike a deal where the publishers would be able to stream the live coverage free of charge and would receive a share of the revenue generated from the event. Perform (Omnisport) generates revenues through pre- and post- ad rolls in their video content, and this model in simple terms is their standard affiliate agreement that they have in place at Omnisport.tv. This would also mean that newspaper websites would be charging their viewers to see the game on their websites.
According to Simon Denyer, chief executive of Perform, the biggest UK newspaper websites have a combined audience of around 24 million users. To give you an idea of how those numbers stack up, the Football Media network has a combined audience of about 5 million users.
“The strategy is to have around 10 big publishers with [sites] which have between 2 and 5 million unique users in the UK,” Denyer said.
According to Perform, the Ukraine-England game will be a one-off event and not be channeled through Omnisport. The game gets its own website – www.ukrainevengland.com – and the marketing push for the event will go live starting 5th October, with the initial (early-bird) pricing pegged at only £4.99.
£4.99 for a no-consequence qualifier? There’s a significant debate here around whether rights holders in football should be turning to the Internet to offer legitimate premium content (discussed in detail elsewhere on this site), but for me the initial sticking point will be the price. You can buy an year-long subscription to ‘illegal’ streams for £9.99. For as many games as you want to watch, from around the world.
Compared to that, charging £4.99 for a game doesn’t make it a great deal for fans to ‘switch’ over. But then again, they’re not targeting the hardcore fan – they’re after those fans making the transition from TV to Internet.
And in that scenario, £4.99 is nothing.
Football on the internet only was always going to happen and as England have already qualified this was going to be the first as TV was unlikely to pay the asking price for a potentially low audience. ?I don’t agree with it but check out on my blog (http://purplefrog.co.uk/?p=844) to see my full opinion and where it is all heading.
This should not have happened until the technology was ready for large numbers of people to view together. A pox on those who are screening it on the net. I wont be suscribing. I’ll listen to it on the radio.
I think i will be there tomorrow night
who is guna pay to watch a game which is pointless. england have already qualified and also you are gunna have to have a decent broadband speed to watch it without pausing it all the time and lots of people dont have that! its a stupid idea and it should be televised like evry other qualifying game!
Pointless exercise in my opinion, most of the people prepared to stream football on their computers are people that know how to do it for free already. Plus most people like to go to pubs and sports bars for pay per view games yet it is unlikely that the entertainment systems at those places can handle a live stream.
However I do believe that the internet is the future for a lot of sports deals. Provided UK broadband improves soon!
What’s the deal with highlights? Are they being shown on TV?
Ordered Ukraine v England game on 5/10/09 and I am still awaiting my password in order to watch the game.