It’s out with the old and in with the new for the Football Association, who have undergone an altogether rather cosmopolitan transformation in 2009.
The managerial appointment of Fabio Capello twenty or so months ago marked the start of things to come.
Since then, the FA have appointed a new Chief Executive, Ian Watmore, whose arrival coincides with a number of snazzy new proposals that suggest a specific focus on modernisation.
The launch of the new all-white Umbro kit last spring was supported by the release of a new Three Lions crest, updated to achieve “greater standout in today’s digital environment”. The FA also announced that the location of England’s next ‘home’ friendly will be, not Wembley but, 3,000 miles away in Doha, Qatar – a move that is particularly surprising considering the huge costs expended in building the London venue.
Most recently – and for one night only as of Saturday 10th October – the FA announced that England’s World Cup Qualifying match against Ukraine was to be broadcast online in a strictly pay-per-view capacity.
Say hello to the new FA 2.0.
Except don’t. Because this is not really the FA’s doing at all. In fact, the FA seem rather confused as to where they stand amongst all these developments, taking credit and/or endorsing the proposal where it suits them, and passing the buck where it doesn’t. Consider it an accidental trial, then.
But for anyone wondering how and why it is that such a circumstance came about, the answer ultimately lies with FIFA, and a rather nonsensical ruling which states that the television rights to any match sanctioned by the world governing body should be owned and distributed by the football federation of the home nation in participation (in this case, Ukraine).
Indeed, having originally sold the UK branch of these rights to Setanta Sports, the Ukrainian FA found themselves in the unusual position of having to re-sell in view of the pay-TV firm’s collapse earlier this summer.
However, with England’s qualification for the World Cup secured, the UK value of these rights had significantly dropped and so any bid was unlikely to be anywhere near the amount Setanta had initially agreed to pay (reportedly around £5m).
This ultimately left the Ukrainian FA – or Kentaro, an international agency appointed by the Ukrainian FA, to be exact – scampering to find a bidder willing to pay what they considered to be an acceptable amount for these rights.
The BBC reportedly did make an offer – apparently somewhere between £1m and £2m – but it was deemed unsatisfactory for Kentaro, who were seeking a figure closer to £3m.
Both the BBC and ITV also made offers to buy the rights to the highlights; a proposal that was initially rejected by Kentaro – presumably because this would have greatly undermined the unique value of their product and, subsequently, reduced pay-per-view demand – although the BBC did eventually agree on a highlights package, with part of the deal stipulating the announcement would not be made until the conclusion of the match.
Anyway, with no satisfactory offers made by traditional UK broadcasters for the live broadcast, the Ukrainians – again, via Kentaro – decided to “seek the widest possible online audience”. Or, more likely, decided to accept the highest offer from a company who were presumably willing to pay more for what was ultimately a huge PR exercise for them as part of a wider agenda to promote alternative methods of broadcasting. With this, they appointed digital sport specialist Perform to market and stream the match online on a pay-per-view basis.
Despite ending in a loss for England, the match went out without complication and made history as the first England international to be broadcast exclusively over the internet.
Both Kentaro and Perform declared themselves “happy with the interest” which saw approximately 300,000 subscriptions purchased. The fact that the broadcast ran smoothly will have pleased the allied companies, especially considering the technological concerns that were voiced by some people prior to the game – for example, there was a question as to whether or not the website had the capacity to take the high volumes of site traffic which, if over-subscribed, could have meant the website crashed.
The managerial appointment of Fabio Capello twenty or so months ago marked the start of things to come.
Since then, the FA have appointed a new Chief Executive, Ian Watmore, whose arrival coincides with a number of snazzy new proposals that suggest a specific focus on modernisation.
The launch of the new all-white Umbro kit last spring was supported by the release of a new Three Lions crest, updated to achieve “greater standout in today’s digital environment”. The FA also announced that the location of England’s next ‘home’ friendly will be, not Wembley but, 3,000 miles away in Doha, Qatar – a move that is particularly surprising considering the huge costs expended in building the London venue.
Most recently – and for one night only as of Saturday 10th October – the FA announced that England’s World Cup Qualifying match against Ukraine was to be broadcast online in a strictly pay-per-view capacity.
Say hello to the new FA 2.0.
Except don’t. Because this is not really the FA’s doing at all. In fact, the FA seem rather confused as to where they stand amongst all these developments, taking credit and/or endorsing the proposal where it suits them, and passing the buck where it doesn’t. Consider it an accidental trial, then.
But for anyone wondering how and why it is that such a circumstance came about, the answer ultimately lies with FIFA, and a rather nonsensical ruling which states that the television rights to any match sanctioned by the world governing body should be owned and distributed by the football federation of the home nation in participation (in this case, Ukraine).
Indeed, having originally sold the UK branch of these rights to Setanta Sports, the Ukrainian FA found themselves in the unusual position of having to re-sell in view of the pay-TV firm’s collapse earlier this summer.
However, with England’s qualification for the World Cup secured, the UK value of these rights had significantly dropped and so any bid was unlikely to be anywhere near the amount Setanta had initially agreed to pay (reportedly around £5m).
This ultimately left the Ukrainian FA – or Kentaro, an international agency appointed by the Ukrainian FA, to be exact – scampering to find a bidder willing to pay what they considered to be an acceptable amount for these rights.
The BBC reportedly did make an offer – apparently somewhere between £1m and £2m – but it was deemed unsatisfactory for Kentaro, who were seeking a figure closer to £3m.
Both the BBC and ITV also made offers to buy the rights to the highlights; a proposal that was initially rejected by Kentaro – presumably because this would have greatly undermined the unique value of their product and, subsequently, reduced pay-per-view demand – although the BBC did eventually agree on a highlights package, with part of the deal stipulating the announcement would not be made until the conclusion of the match.
Anyway, with no satisfactory offers made by traditional UK broadcasters for the live broadcast, the Ukrainians – again, via Kentaro – decided to “seek the widest possible online audience”. Or, more likely, decided to accept the highest offer from a company who were presumably willing to pay more for what was ultimately a huge PR exercise for them as part of a wider agenda to promote alternative methods of broadcasting. With this, they appointed digital sport specialist Perform to market and stream the match online on a pay-per-view basis.
Despite ending in a loss for England, the match went out without complication and made history as the first England international to be broadcast exclusively over the internet.
Both Kentaro and Perform declared themselves “happy with the interest” which saw approximately 300,000 subscriptions purchased. The fact that the broadcast ran smoothly will have pleased the allied companies, especially considering the technological concerns that were voiced by some people prior to the game – for example, there was a question as to whether or not the website had the capacity to take the high volumes of site traffic which, if over-subscribed, could have meant the website crashed.
Yet the success of the broadcast remained little more than an – albeit essential – practicality in comparison to the wider political debates that inevitably arose surrounding the match and the circumstances in which it was eventually aired. Many were concerned that a ‘national event’ such as this should certainly have been sold to a traditional terrestrial broadcaster, subsequently leaving the Football Association under pressure to respond to accusations that they should have intervened.
In an attempt to clarify the situation, The FA published a statement on the Monday before the game, categorically stating that “Ukraine, as hosts on Saturday, decide who they sell their broadcast rights to”.
This was accompanied by a statement made by FA Director of Communications, Adrian Bevington, who explained that the FA “has had no authority over the decision to broadcast this match exclusively live on the internet. It is the host nation and their commercial agents who have the authority to sell the rights for away fixtures. In this case, the Ukranian FA and their agents have sold the broadcast rights for Ukraine versus England to the company Perform”.
The view from Perform, however, was unsurprisingly a little more positive, insisting that the project had “strategic long-term value” and that is was “not a one-off shot”.
Maybe so, but whether or not this trial represents the shape of sports broadcasting to come, I’m not so sure.
No doubt, the internet is an increasingly powerful medium these days. But where entire institutions, such as the music industry, have suffered radically from the growth of user-generated content and content-sharing websites, sports broadcasting is unlikely to be under threat in quite the same way.
This is predominately because the nature of live sport – and the social context in which it is consumed – is fundamentally very different from that of music. The reasons for this are twofold:
Firstly, the core value in sport as a product will almost always exist in its live broadcast; that is, the overriding value by which football is enjoyed exists within the context of (1) occasion and/or circumstance and (2) the path of uncertainty that comes from not knowing how a match will evolve. The exact opposite can be said of music, however, where in the most part predictability – or, at least familiarity – provides the satisfaction (which is why a good piece of music can be enjoyed over and over again).
To put it another way, where the demand for content ownership or repeated-access is high at any time in the case of music, there is a much larger scale of value depreciation in sports footage.
With this comes the second thing: that it will almost always be preferable for sport to be enjoyed and/or consumed in the company of others, as opposed to music, which is often consumed in solitude.
In this respect, I would suggest that, if the future of broadcasting does exist in the form of the internet, much depends on how well – in terms of both quality and ease – the internet can be transferred to our televisions. Although one can easily ‘play’ a computer through a TV screen, the internet certainly has a long way to go if it is to compete with the quality of definition that is nowadays available on television, particularly through developments in satellite and digital broadcasting, LCD screens and high-definition (HD) cameras.
Not that I would suggest that football can only be enjoyed in HD. Far from it. But the quality of online broadcasting is currently that much worse that, as a choice of medium, it presently remains little more than a fall-back option to desperate viewers stuck – perhaps abroad, perhaps at an office – to find a better way to watch a game.
Perhaps the future of online broadcasting, then, depends more on how the overall relationship between the internet and television evolves over the next decade or so, not just in terms of sport. It is reasonable to suggest that, if significant developments are made in the quality of online video and the capacity of bandwidths, then the internet could take over from other forms of television – including satellite – as the primary means of broadcasting, meaning households would tend to watch all their television through a wireless internet connection linked to a television, instead of through, say, a Sky box powered by a dish, or through an aerial; in which case the nature of sports broadcasting would, naturally, do the same.
Nevertheless, the biggest issue that exists in relation to football at the minute is not so much that of the internet, as the issue of pay-per-view. As the failed case of Setanta suggests, the concept of pay-per-view has never really taken off. With such obligations as the mandatory purchase of a UK television license and other such taxes – not to mention that the vast majority of households now shell out an increasingly large monthly fee for the privilege of Sky, or some other form of digital television – it is perhaps understandable that members of the public are simply not happy to pay even further.
With this in mind, it is hard to imagine that Perform’s online pay-per-view experiment will take off. More likely, the internet will continue to be used as an after-the-event, highlights medium for viewers to enjoy on-demand through websites such as YouTube and FootyTube. The key challenge over the next few years – as has been within the music industry – will be to establish a sustainable model of monetisation, notably relating to ways in which content, rights and copyrights are sold and/or regulated, as well as looking at where advertisers and sponsors can most effectively be integrated.
As for the FA, my advice to them would be to not look too far into these developments, at least for the time being. They are right to adapt with technological and social progress but they must be careful not to surrender in the face of money. The institutional attachment between football and the BBC, for example, is one of the few good traditions that still exists in sport, and one that should be preserved.
