Apple Reportedly Planning Bid for English Premier League Streaming Rights

[onemorechris]

It’d be nice if Apple would take the exclusive rights to cover the Olympics away from NBC, since NBC is so abysmally bad at it. About three olympics’ses ago was the last time I got an “I tried to watch it. …but couldn’t.” out of anyone. Way to go, nbc. The IOC is a corrupt & unethical organization, but then so are FIFA and Twitter, so clearly Apple has no problem supporting orgs like this if there’s money to be made.

agreed. the US coverage of the Olympics compared to other networks, like the BBC for example is very odd and confusing.

 

[onemorechris]

It's really annoying having to pay for 3 separate channels to watch the sport you love, and even then it isn't even every match. Now we could potentially have 4.

I would love there to just be one with all the rights, don't care if that's Apple Sky etc. But I guess the premier league being as greedy as they are will not allow it.

I never quite understood why people paid so much for Sports TV...until i realised how much season/match tickets are for big teams. Being a football fan is not a cheap hobby.

 

[madeirabhoy]

At some point in the next 10 years, I can see the Premier league and bigger teams wanting something more like the NFL's model, where they have more of an ownership over the streaming and get to keep ALL of the revenue. For now, hawking out packages to a few streamers and cable TV companies brings in a lot of revenue, but at some point they're going to want the benefit of having a direct relationship with customers.

I doubt they will EVER have 'watch all of purely your team's games for £x but I can certainly see a 'watch everything' package and various bundles. Just think of that lovely regular direct debit / card transaction money going straight to the premier league. And they can market it globally, directly. All the opportunities to upsell. Charging more for certain games and all that. And all wrapped up in a single Premier League app.

A wise move for apple would be to get in early, and become the partner to achieve this.

this already happens for foreign viewers, certainly for my (scottish) team Celtic. Celtictv is internet based, available everywhere except UK & Eire (where they sell a cheaper package but without live video), about €250 a year for HD streaming of all league games.

I would happily pay a bit more than that for 'all of the SPL'

alas, i think the greed and lack of forward thinking of the clubs and leagues means that IPTV has became the norm. its not just about the price, its about getting all of the games. Especially for EPL, how anyone in OFCOM thought that the way to introduce competition to help consumers was to force the league to sell packages to different tv operators, meaning that a for example, Man utd fan, has to pay for Sky plus BT plus Amazon and cant see all the games.

even worse, in scotland, despite it not being split into packages, a uk based celtic fan, has to pay for Sky (for SPL) plus BT (for europe) plus Premier (cup games) and even then cant watch around 50% of games which arent televised in uk.

 

[kiranmk2]

I'm a bit confused how the EPL footage is gathered. In the early days, I remember hearing that Sky had put a lot of money into making their broadcast polished so I assumed that they had paid for the cameras at the grounds. However, I've realised that the footage on all the platforms (e.g. the live provider, highlights provider and streaming provider) are identical. I can only come up with a few explanations

1. The EPL fillm the matches and make the feed available to their partners to use for their allocated purpose (live TV, streaming, highlights etc) - akin to Formula 1
2. The broadcast partners share the costs and ground/production crews to capture the footage
3. Sky provide the cameras and sell the footage to the non-sky companies that have the various rights (unlikely)

Does anyone know which of these happens? If it is the first, then it would be so easy for the EPL to go it alone as a streaming service and cut out Sky/BT etc

 

[kiranmk2]

Paying for 4 services means you have at least 4 competitors competing for your money. That’s better than having 1.

But it doesn't work like that - the 4 competitors aren't offering the same thing as they haves the rights to different games and therefore don't have to compete. If you subscribe to Sky but want to watch the forthcoming Man City vs Arsenal game you have to subscribe to Amazon as well. I'm fairly sure that the cost of subscribing to all the rights holders costs more than if one of them had all the games.

The best way for competition to work is for the same packages of games to be made available to more than one party. They would then have to compete to get the most subscribers (e.g. less cost for a bare bones channel such as Joe Cole / Andy Townsend punditry or higher cost for more bells and whistles with more replays, analyses, better pundits etc)

 

[BuffaloTF]

Paying for 4 services means you have at least 4 competitors competing for your money. That’s better than having 1.

How do you figure? That means I’m paying 4x the cost for 1 product. That means I’m paying 3 extra times for a price that won’t change in my favor. That’s objectively worse for me - my account balance is negatively impacted, my user experience is negatively impacted, my process for figuring out where to watch something is negatively impacted.

All you’re doing is repeating hyperbole.

 

[The Game 161]

Still awful, even after losing to France. You can’t see it, because you’re English.

Again England remain one of the best 5 teams in the world as it stands. Awful would be being one of the worse ranked teams and losing before the knockout stages but that's besides the point. How good England are as a team has nothing to do with this overall discussion.

Dude, the World Cup is literally the most watched sports event in the world, much bigger than club football. And now you’re telling me it’s irrelevant? What do you think makes football a global sport, if not international championships! In which England always fails

It's irrelevant in this TOPIC. The topic is PL TV rights and the fact it's being discussed people care as it's the most WATCHED league in the world. international football is not more popular than club football due to the fact the world cup only comes around once every 4 years. The world cup is a massive interest but international football overall it's not the main thing people care about year on year. They care about club football and European football like the champions league. You will also find many of the top stars in world football are in the premier league which creates money and massive interest. PL teams often year in year out the past few years have some of the top teams to win the CL. before last year an english team won it 2 out of 3 years and often has at least 3-4 in the knock out stages. This is why it brings in big money.

There's a reason why teams who don't go down get a guaranteed 100 million in the PL

 

[madeirabhoy]

But it doesn't work like that - the 4 competitors aren't offering the same thing as they haves the rights to different games and therefore don't have to compete. If you subscribe to Sky but want to watch the forthcoming Man City vs Arsenal game you have to subscribe to Amazon as well. I'm fairly sure that the cost of subscribing to all the rights holders costs more than if one of them had all the games.

The best way for competition to work is for the same packages of games to be made available to more than one party. They would then have to compete to get the most subscribers (e.g. less cost for a bare bones channel such as Joe Cole / Andy Townsend punditry or higher cost for more bells and whistles with more replays, analyses, better pundits etc)

exactly, its bizarre. it basically works 180 degrees to what most sensible people would assume would be the way competition would be handled. worst for customers, best for tv companies.

 

[farmerabc]

The difference being, bar the Canadian’s, if you said ‘Football’ to the rest of those nationalities, they would assume you’re talking about ‘soccer’.

If it is a foreigner saying it then maybe, but not a local. In the part of Ireland that I grew up "Football" meant Gaelic Football 99% of the time. In most of Australia, "Football" means either Aussie Rules or Rugby League, depending on what part you are in. Not sure about NZ and SA.