Digital disruption drives a new breed of broadcaster By David Fox
Tuesday, March 5, 2019 - 15:37
Print This Story
Sports broadcasting is changing. New entrants are putting pressure on traditional broadcasters, rights holders are bypassing broadcasters to engage fans directly, and public service broadcasters are having to re-think how they attract viewers.
It's challenging, but this transformation also offers opportunities, according to a panel session at last week's BVE conference in London entitled A new breed of broadcaster'.
The whole industry is changing. It is all about disruption, said session chairman Keshav Nagaraja, client partner at Cognizant.
The rights holders want to monetise their assets, but also, increasingly, they want to build direct engagement with their fans, while the traditional broadcasters are having to react to competition from new entrants into the market, such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Netflix, companies that now see sports as a great way to attract and retain their customers, he explained.
He cited research into how people watch the top leagues in England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, which found that only the 50+ age group watches more on TV than online or mobile (with 61% TV compared to 28% other devices), whereas in the 20-34 age group those figures are 14% vs 38%, while the 35-49 demographic was 22% vs 27% respectively.
Panel show: (L/R) Keshav Nagaraja, Russel James, Ben Gallop and Ben Napier speaking at BVE in London last week
Children and teenagers watch hardly any football, with 3% viewing it on TV and only 7% online. This is partly why the PWC Sports Survey 2018 found that the number one threat is the shift in consumer behaviour of younger generations , with 71.8% of sports rights holders worried about it. The rights holders also believe that digital media rights will be the biggest growth area over the next three to five years.
The UK is still relatively traditional in how viewers watch sports, with 48% watching on free-to-air TV, 30% viewing subscription channels, with social media and the official sports websites tied at 12% each. In the US, however, the sports website is now the primary destination, with 23%, followed by 20% on social media, and both the official app and pay TV coming in at 15%.
From a rights holder's perspective, the move away from the TV set could be a good thing. There is an opportunity around how to engage more directly with the fans of the game, and how we build that relationship, said Russel James, the Football Association's digital engagement director.
Sports broadcasting keeps being disrupted, and we keep having to respond to it, added Ben Gallop, head of digital, BBC Sport. The challenges are always there, but as long as broadcasters focus really hard on what the audience wants then he believes there is still a place for public service broadcasting.
The amount of money that's being spent securing premium sports rights is making it very difficult to make a return on that investment in the OTT space, said Ben Napier, strategic partner lead, Broadcast & Sport, Google, which is why he is seeing more and more content providers wanting to combine subscription with its ads. Google now works with both broadcasters and rights holders to help them monetise their content on both their own platforms and on YouTube.
When this involves targeted ads that just adds another layer of complexity, he said. One of the things we are focused on at the moment is ensuring that ad space is as seamless as possible, using its dynamic ad insertion technology, so as not to annoy the fans. However, delivering the same polished experience people are used to on their TV sets can be challenging online.
BBC stumps up for cricket
The disruption caused by digital has helped BBC TV to regain cricket coverage next year after 20 years, including 15 years exclusively on Sky. This follows a deal two years ago with the English and Wales Cricket Board to provide digital clips of test matches, which showed how much demand there was for free coverage and that the BBC could get high audience figures on new platforms.
This has since lead to a deal with the ECB and Sky (as lead broadcaster) and the BBC (offering highlights of every test England plays). The agreement includes ten live matches in a new 100-ball series, an eight-team city-based competition that is particularly aimed at winning younger audiences, something the BBC has demonstrated it can do.
Reaching a younger audience is also a key goal for the FA. For the 2018 World Cup it tried several different things to connect to young fans, including announcing the squad using young influencers on social media. Because it didn't have any match rights, it had to devise a different way of connecting fans in the UK with players in Russia.
We came up with a concept called the Lion's Den, distributed on YouTube as a daily show, said James. It did 31 episodes - more than it expected as England got to the third place playoff, which bust the budget, although it was a big success.
A new business model
If you think about the business models of companies like Amazon and Facebook, they tend to be different as well in terms of why they are buying sports rights, said Napier. Neither need necessarily make a return on the rights themselves, but gain from other business they drive on their platforms. Google, however, sees itself very much as a partner for existing broadcasters and rights holders, whether through use of its cloud platform for production or via broadcasters' access to the younger demographics that prefer to watch on YouTube rather than traditional TV.
He believes that this can be particularly useful for subscription TV, where new audiences wouldn't otherwise see the event, and can then persuade some of those to subscribe. Fo
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
When Canada qualified for the FIFA World Cup 2026, OneSoccer knew this wasn'...
04/07/2026
Celebrates company's 80th anniversary
Rhodes have recently revealed that they will be producing a limited run of electric pianos in celebration of their...
04/07/2026
Blackmagic Design Cameras Empower Youth Broadcasting Program
Brie Clayton July 3, 2026
0 Comments
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro and Blackmagi...
04/07/2026
iZotope Joins Boris FX
Boris Yamnitsky July 3, 2026
0 Comments
iZotope, the team behind RX and Ozone, is joining Boris FX. A letter from founder Boris...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
03/07/2026
New bundle & three Single Packs
Continuing to expand their already sizeable orchestral collection, VSL's latest release introduces three new Single Pack...
03/07/2026
Venue installs new ATC-equipped control room
LSO St Luke's, a unique music venue that also serves as the home of the London Symphony Orchestra, have rec...
03/07/2026
Caden Pearson appointed new Commissioning Editor for NITV
3 July, 2026
Media releases
National Indigenous Television (NITV) has strengthened its commitment...
03/07/2026
1 February 2023
SHARE Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email
Munich, Germany, 1st February 2023: Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software technology for digit...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Death Star
Andy Marken July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Look, I can't get involved. I've got work to do. It's not that I like the Empire; I hate i...
03/07/2026
Berklee's New Visual Identity: Honoring Our History, Building for What's...
03/07/2026
Scripps Research scientists awarded $2M to advance global disease surveillance Two Gates Foundation grants will expand wastewater surveillance and AI-driven dis...
03/07/2026
Joan Pulupa joins Scripps Research faculty to study the organization of DNA in brain cells and its links to neurodegeneration Using smell-sensing neurons and ad...
02/07/2026
Entering her senior year, this hometown girl is paving a career in live sports production gaining experience in replay and audio and as a TD
In the live-sports...
02/07/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...
02/07/2026
BLAST, a competitive entertainment company focused on esports, has announced more than $133 million in revenue for 2025, representing more than 40% year-over-ye...
02/07/2026
Riedel Communications has announced official SKAARHOJ panel support for SimplyLive production workflows, enabled through the SimplyLive 2.1 release. The integra...
02/07/2026
The Fire Rescue Service of the Czech Republic has deployed LiveU video-over-bond...
02/07/2026
Gravity Media USA has announced the appointment of Brittney Boston as Head of Business Development, effective July 1, 2026. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, Bosto...
02/07/2026
TwelveLabs, a video intelligence company, has announced $100 million in Series B funding co-led by NEA and NAVER Ventures, with participation from Amazon, Radic...
02/07/2026
The Pro Padel League (PPL) has announced a broadcast partnership with USA Sports that will air five PPL championship matches on CNBC during the 2026 season, the...
02/07/2026
LiveLike, a digital fan engagement platform, has announced eight confirmed FIFA ...
02/07/2026
Cobalt Digital has received Future's Best of Show Award, presented by AV Technology at InfoComm 2026, for its blueCORE family of standalone signal processor...
02/07/2026
Synamedia has announced the appointment of Dr. Tzvi Gerstl as Chief Executive Officer. Paul Segre, who has served as CEO for the past six years, will transition...
02/07/2026
The Esports Foundation (EF) and Sony Group Corporation have announced an expanded collaboration for the Esports World Cup 2026 (EWC), taking place in Paris, Fra...
02/07/2026
Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. ( Z') has announced exclusive broadcast and digital rights for the Bundesliga in India for five years, beginning with the...
02/07/2026
An effort uniting News, Sports, Local, and Telemundo, the 50+-camera live produc...
02/07/2026
Zoey Deutch, John Slattery, Ken Marino, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, and Ben Wang appe...
02/07/2026
Stammering, stuttering, strangulated tones
The Crow Hill Company's latest creation promises to be the most original sound set they've produced to d...
02/07/2026
A new era in unmixing and spectral editing
The latest version of Steinberg's spectral audio-editing software has just arrived, building on the strength...
02/07/2026
Aims to simplify additive synthesis
Sine Machine is the debut launch from Melatonin, a Vienna-based developer who have spent the past six years creating wha...
02/07/2026
Products to remain fully active & supported
Following the news of Native Instruments joining the inMusic brand line-up, Academy and Emmy Award-winning visua...
02/07/2026
What you missed!
Last weekend, Saturday 27 June 2026, saw the debut of Sound On Sounds new GearExpo UK event, the largest dedicated pro-audio event to take ...
02/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/07/2026
Following the successful launch of its inaugural APAC Mentoring Programme last month, the Rise AV APAC Regional Council will bring the conversation around mento...
02/07/2026
Blackmagic PYXIS 6K Used to Shoot Director Takahisa Zeze's Cry Out
Brie Clayton July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Highly mobile camera supports tense and de...
02/07/2026
Broadcast Solutions acquires BFE, expanding its lead in European broadcast, medi...
02/07/2026
Berklee Alum and Faculty Perform at Boston Public Library's 250th Anniversar...
02/07/2026
Broadcast Solutions GmbH, a leading systems integrator and provider of innovative solutions for the broadcast media industry, is acquiring BFE Studio und Medien...
02/07/2026
Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has extended the ingest facility at leading Brazilian sports company LiveMode, work...
02/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/07/2026
Standalone processors acknowledged for the innovation and value they bring to Pro AV
Cobalt Digital, a leading designer and manufacturer of signal processing ...
02/07/2026
Synamedia announced today the appointment of Dr Tzvi Gerstl as Chief Executive Officer. Paul Segre, who has served as CEO for the past six years, will transitio...
Digital disruption drives a new breed of broadcaster By David Fox 
