John Griffiths, chief commercial officer at Spicy Mango, takes a look at the sports broadcasting landscape and why segmented subscriptions are likely to be the future of sports consumption
By Contributor
Published: May 20, 2022 Updated: May 23, 2022
John Griffiths, chief commercial officer at Spicy Mango, takes a look at the sports broadcasting landscape and why segmented subscriptions are likely to be the future of sports consumption
target=_blank title=Share on LinkedIn class=share-linkedin>
Sport as an entertainment genre like film or TV has been emerging for a couple of decades, especially here in Europe. Once Sky started to pay big money for exclusive TV rights for the Premier League the landscape changed. Sports like rugby turned professional for the first time and tried to compete, initially unsuccessfully, with football for a share of the cash and audience.
However, now private equity and other investors have spotted the underperformance in terms of commercial value for some sports, their investments are beginning to show the direction of travel to maximise that untapped value.
The question though, is it all good for the sport and the fans? A recent example of this is in rugby, and specifically the English Premiership. Channel 5 was the home of the weekly highlights show until their contract was not renewed for this current season, meaning that the only way to watch the Premiership was through BT Sport, the sole holder of the live rights and highlights. Then came an announcement in January 2022 that the Premiership Rugby will return to free-to-air with ITV with a new highlights show and they will show four live matches this season as well as the season final in June, live on ITV4.
Premiership Rugby chief executive Simon Massie-Taylor said: Our ambition is to grow the game and make Gallagher Premiership Rugby available to as many people as possible. BT Sport have done an amazing job in building the core Premiership Rugby TV audience and the ITV partnership allows us to expand our reach into the households of millions of other rugby fans. This season our average match audience on BT Sport has risen 30 per cent year on year, which shows the potential.'
We also want to make the Gallagher Premiership Rugby Final 2022 the most-watched in our history and we believe we can achieve that with the match screened on both ITV4 and BT Sport. A phenomenal proposition for English club rugby's showpiece occasion.
Despite the good news that ITV is now bringing regular free-to-air coverage of top-level club rugby to viewers across its platforms, there are other aspects to consider about the future of rugby and sports in general.
What about other sports? We can also consider the English and Wales Cricket Board's (ECB) new competition that rolled out in the summer of 2021, The Hundred. A new format of the game, not dissimilar to Twenty20 that launched in 2003. The aim of this new format was to attract new audiences both attending live and watching on free to air broadcast TV on the BBC.
Why, if the revenue from selling media rights to subscription TV platforms has been so good for so long, do these major sports and their commercially focused investors now feel the need to reach a wider audience on free to air TV?
The answer lies in the fact that whilst selling media rights to pay-TV has brought much needed investment and stability to these major sports the viewing audiences are relatively small. The knock-on effect is that a whole generation of young people have missed out watching these mainstream sports and consequently have not had heroes to admire and imitate in their back gardens and on into local clubs and the development pathways.
It feels as though there has been an awakening that in the not-too-distant future unless a new audience can be engaged there will be no new TV money as subscriptions dry up and media values decrease.
A welcome return to free to air So it is with some optimism that more sports are now being made available on free-to- air platforms. For those fans who become more engaged they will have a choice to pay more if they'd like to watch more of game and matches by taking out that pay-TV subscription.
When a fan is ready to pay more for this exclusive content then broadcasters will need a broader engagement strategy to deliver them what they want, where they want it and when they want it. Choice and flexibility are key to winning that fan's share of wallet when it comes to where they spend their subscription pounds or dollars.
In particular, cricket and rugby, have already acknowledged that audience attention spans are shorter and have developed short format versions of their sports to address this.
This is not just a millennial issue, all of our attention spans have changed to be shorter but across many more entertainment channels. We can so easily be drawn down the rabbit hole of Instagram, TikTok or YouTube watching short videos on our favourite topics for hours.
Broadcasters have to find a new ways to interrupt these random distractions and create a compelling narrative to entice fans in, for the initial short form and then into longer programming. However, it's all about the what, when and where. Content snacking on the move with short 3-5 min highlight reels linking to longer 10-15 mins packages all available online and a 60 min broadcast package for free to air TV.
The live experience can be made premium through subscription. F1 and Sky have done this well by providing a deeper fan engagement experience for subscribers with multiple camera angles, additional data not available to the casual viewer watching a shorter highlights show on free to air broadcast.
Evolution or revolution? Fan engagement is a long-term play for sports and clubs. There has been a shift in fan attitudes towards watching sport on digita
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
20/11/2025
Berklee Presents Holiday Extravaganza: Duke Ellingtons The Nutcracker Suite and ...
19/11/2025
Sphere Sound Kicks Up Its Heels at Radio City Music HallUltra-immersive system from the singular Las Vegas venue is also ready for sportsBy Dan Daley, Audio Edi...
19/11/2025
The Future of Stadium and Arena Video Control Rooms: Tech Leaders Talk 4K, IP, a...
19/11/2025
One Year at Intuit Dome: Walking Through the Stunning Arena's Advanced Video...
19/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: IMG's Francois Westcombe Goes Inside IMG's Annual Digital ...
19/11/2025
Inside Brighton & Hove Albion's fan-first media machine By George Bevir
Tuesday, November 18, 2025 - 10:10
Print This Story
Brighton & Hove Albion'...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 1: Kansas Athletics Brings New Production Power to Rebu...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 2: A Pro's Guide to Kansas Athletics' New Video...
19/11/2025
MLB Media Rights Shakeup: NBC Inks Three-Year Deal for Sunday Night Baseball, Pe...
19/11/2025
Rohan Parashuram Kanawade attends the premiere of Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival at Egyptian Theatre on January 26, 2025, in Pa...
19/11/2025
Awards season is heating up, and the International Documentary Association just ...
19/11/2025
Aerojet Rocketdyne President Ken Bedingfield and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders were joined by state and local officials to celebrate the groundbreaking o...
19/11/2025
L3Harris and PentenAmio formalise their teaming agreement at MilCIS 2025, streng...
19/11/2025
Calrec gives Phoenix Broadcast Solutions its full support in strategic multi-year enterprise partnership New Singapore OB company invests in Calrec technology f...
19/11/2025
October brings a larger audience in front of TV screens. The cooler autumn weather and the continuation of new programming schedules brought increases in both t...
19/11/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...
19/11/2025
Vitec has acquired Datapath, a developer of real-time video processing for large-scale video walls, AVoIP content distribution and KVM control in mission-critic...
19/11/2025
NEVADA CITY, Calif. Telestream has introduced ARGUS Version 2.3, which introduces Live Look, a feature that lets operators inspect live and on-demand streams vi...
19/11/2025
STAMFORD, Conn. and NEW YORK Charter Communications, Inc. has announced a major deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) that establishes AWS as one of Charters stra...
19/11/2025
TOKYO Atomos has announced a major firmware update that brings integrated camera control to the Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX its new CFexpress-based monitor-recor...
19/11/2025
Berklee's Signature Series Reimagines the Musical and Visual Artistry of Col...
19/11/2025
PlayBox Neo departed the NAB Show New York 2025 on a high note. The company's all-new PlayBox Neo Suite made a splash on the show floor, drawing strong inte...
19/11/2025
AAVBR (American Audio Visual Baton Rouge), a leading full-service event production company serving Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region, has enhanced its product...
19/11/2025
In its mission to deliver live event services combining advanced engineering with a creative approach to captivating live sports and entertainment experiences, ...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK Short-form vertical video has exploded across platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, but a new survey commissioned by Media.net, a provider of c...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK YES Network, the regional sports network home of the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Nets, and CAMB.AI have struck a partnership they said will leverage ...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has issued detailed guidance on filings that were disrupted by the government shutdown. While many of those fil...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK The popularity of NFL games is largely responsible for continued seasonal momentum in TV viewership into October (measured Sept. 29-Oct. 26), according...
19/11/2025
DirecTV has announced that its MyFree DirecTV streaming service has added seven new channels. Those include four sports services, NBA FAST, Red Bull TV, DAZN Ri...
19/11/2025
SURREY, U.K. Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) has launched Flair Bridge, a compact device that transforms how operators control the company's motion-contr...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission, which is continuing to rapidly ramp up its operations after the end of the federal government shutdown, has se...
19/11/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...
19/11/2025
Martin Freeman, Jessie Buckley, Wu-Tang Clan's Raekwon, Eddie the Eagle and ...
19/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz collaborates with Broadcom to enable testing and validation of n...
19/11/2025
Back to All News
Innato, starring Imanol Arias and Elena Anaya, arrives on Netf...
19/11/2025
Back to All News
Guillermo del Toro Sits Down With Troll 2 Director Roar Uthaug...
19/11/2025
Some projects feel monumental from the moment the first phone call comes in. When BCE, the host broadcaster appointed to coordinate the national coverage, asked...
19/11/2025
November 19 2025, 08:00 (PST) BAY AREA HOST COMMITTEE AND DOLBY PARTNER TO DELIVER IMMERSIVE FAN EXPERIENCES
During the Week of Football's Biggest Game...
19/11/2025
Michael D. Higgins: Ireland's Ninth President features RT Archives footage and interviews across seven decades
Watch Wednesday 19 November at 9:35pm on RT...
19/11/2025
Scripps Research scientists receive $1.1 million to advance AI modeling for HIV vaccine development New AI system helps scientists rapidly pinpoint the most pro...
18/11/2025
Independent media across Central America are operating under intensifying financial pressure, yet there is a clear appetite for models that can sustain both ind...
18/11/2025
NBA Debuts New Comms Infrastructure and Systems for RefereesTwo-phase rollout is intended to improve game flow, enhance officiating accuracyBy Dan Daley, Audio ...
18/11/2025
Platinum White Paper: How Aggreko Delivers Certainty For Broadcasters On The Wor...
18/11/2025
Kiswe Extends DTC Products With Kiswe Core Cloud-Based Tool for Distributing Con...
18/11/2025
Spanish Basketball Federation partners with ScorePlay to power digital transform...
18/11/2025
HBS selects BBright encoders and decoders to connect ST 2110 live production wor...
18/11/2025
Ashes to Ashes: Inside TNT Sports' hybrid and maverick' production plan...
18/11/2025
SVG All-Stars: Mimi Fotopoulos, Director, Talent and Production Operations, Tenn...
John Griffiths, chief commercial officer at Spicy Mango, takes a look at the sports broadcasting landscape and why segmented subscriptions are likely to be the future of sports consumption
