TV Money in the Championship and is there a better way?

[Monty13]

Does anyone know how much each Championship club receives each season as its part of the Football League TV deal? The amount surely cannot be much?

I find it interesting that Norwich do not want to take up the broadcast back option, or at least not yet. This looks like a good potential source of extra revenue, and there would appear, at least at face value, to be demand.

The lack of TV coverage Championship games receive astounds me, in our modern age of Digital media and the sort of interest clubs like Norwich generate, whether in the premiership or not, not being able to watch those matches without a ticket seems archaic. Is there also any evidence that TV coverage dramatically hurts gate receipts? It might drop it slightly but Norwich as a benchmark seemed very well represented last season, even when games were being shown live.

The advent of streams seems to have taken Football by surprise, they seem unaware that those of us unable to make the game physically would still like to see it! I find it bizarre that rather than embrace this market and look to monetize it all the broadcasters and FAs do is try to stamp it out.

We have seen it time and time again with Music, Film, Games. When pirates offer something people want you can't beat them, you have to join them. Services like iTunes, Netflix, Steam have grown huge success from the path trail blazed by pirates.

Now we are back in the Championship I find it even more confusing that there is no one I can give my money to watch the game, especially when theres cameras already there! Theres a huge untapped market there, and on face value to clubs like ours it could be far more valuable to us than our tiny share of the current broadcast rights.

 

[Canaryboy]

The lack of TV coverage Championship games receive astounds me

This. Does me also, there is the UEFA rule about broadcasting games at 3pm, but there are a lot of midweek games in the Championship. The best known streaming site has just one Championship game listed for tonight, and that's the one on Sky. 

I can also remember there being a lot of streams in our League One season, even if it involved somebody hacking a US Bet365 stream, or with arabic commentary, seems you can only find a stream these days if it is broadcast on Sky - anybody else noticed that?

 

[Dandy Mountfarto]

A system like they have in US sports where there's only a broadcast blackout if the match doesn't sell out seems a good solution. No chance of it affecting ticket sales in that case.

I really don't think you want to open the door to letting clubs decide their own broadcasting rights individually though, La Liga style financial imbalance lies that way.

 

[Canaryboy]

A system like they have in US sports where there's only a broadcast blackout if the match doesn't sell out seems a good solution. No chance of it affecting ticket sales in that case.

I really don't think you want to open the door to letting clubs decide their own broadcasting rights individually though, La Liga style financial imbalance lies that way.

Would still mean pretty much no games on TV then, noticed the Wensum corner was empty against Watford! 

 

[lyb]

A system like they have in US sports where there's only a broadcast blackout if the match doesn't sell out seems a good solution. No chance of it affecting ticket sales in that case.

I really don't think you want to open the door to letting clubs decide their own broadcasting rights individually though, La Liga style financial imbalance lies that way.

Excellent idea. What's ridiculous about these worries is that you can get a stream of any Premier League game illegally without any problems, yet no Premier League club has a problem with attendance. Also, the Premier League big boys get more money because they get broadcast more, so there's already imbalance. I agree with the point that you don't want too much imbalance, but then again you already get imbalance as different teams get different gate receipts anyway. Basic share for the service to all teams with a bonus for number of views for their games seems reasonable.

Simple fact is there's demand out there for it and it's foolish not to make the most of it.

 

[Canaryboy]

I wonder whether PPV could work for the Championship?

I have no idea how much it costs to hire a crew / production team to shoot and broadcast a game to a decent standard - and I suppose then the risk is that somebody would hack the broadcast and stream it on first row, so nobody would pay. 

 

[lyb]

I wonder whether PPV could work for the Championship?

I have no idea how much it costs to hire a crew / production team to shoot and broadcast a game to a decent standard - and I suppose then the risk is that somebody would hack the broadcast and stream it on first row, so nobody would pay. 

You could actually do it reasonably with a single central elevated camera from the main podium as ultimately that's what people use for the vast majority of a game anyway. The other cameras tend to be bells and whistles for replays. Immediately gets more complicated with multiple cameras as you need vision mixers, a director, communications systems and so on. Having said that, the likely revenue would probably pay for all of that if was felt necessary. Some companies have even released wireless cameras that compress to H.264 and stream directly which are only a few grand. JVC do one that the BBC has bought a large quantity of.

 

[The Ghost of Michael Theo]

I can also remember there being a lot of streams in our League One season, even if it involved somebody hacking a US Bet365 stream, or with arabic commentary, seems you can only find a stream these days if it is broadcast on Sky - anybody else noticed that?

Of course. Because in order for there to be a stream, there needs to be a source broadcast for the pirate to rip the coverage from to stream. Betting websites and appear to be getting less rights to the Football League.

If a Championship game (or any game for that matter) is broadcast on public TV live somewhere in the world, there will be a pirate stream. If it's not, then there physically can not be. Streaming pirates aren't rich enough to set up their own production companies with cameras, sound and commentators - and then smuggle them into the ground - for the purpose of illegal streaming. At least yet anyway.

In regards to the setting up of better coverage of the championship - I think the cost of setting it up may be prohibitive. At the moment, apart from 'featured' games on the football league show, every game will only have one camera, parked on the halfway line in the media gantry to capture the highlights used by all media outlets. To do it properly, they would need multiple cameras, production teams, commentators etc. to capture every championship game, like BBC does for MOTD. I'm not sure they'd recoup the outlay, but I might be wrong.

I don't think it's a matter of technology, and 'this day and age'. I think it's more to do with the commercial viability.

 

[Canaryboy]

Of course. Because in order for there to be a stream, there needs to be a source broadcast for the pirate to rip the coverage from to stream. Betting websites and appear to be getting less rights to the Football League.

If a Championship game (or any game for that matter) is broadcast on public TV live somewhere in the world, there will be a pirate stream. If it's not, then there physically can not be. Streaming pirates aren't rich enough to set up their own production companies with cameras, sound and commentators - and then smuggle them into the ground - for the purpose of illegal streaming. At least yet anyway.

In regards to the setting up of better coverage of the championship - I think the cost of setting it up may be prohibitive. At the moment, apart from 'featured' games on the football league show, every game will only have one camera, parked on the halfway line in the media gantry to capture the highlights used by all media outlets. To do it properly, they would need multiple cameras, production teams, commentators etc. to capture every championship game, like BBC does for MOTD. I'm not sure they'd recoup the outlay, but I might be wrong.

I don't think it's a matter of technology, and 'this day and age'. I think it's more to do with the commercial viability.

Well yes I know there has to be a source, but does this mean that more League One games in 2009/10 were being broadcast globally than there are Championship games now in 2014, or are less of these global TV sources being streamed online for one reason or another? Could it be that efforts to fight these streams have been stepped up, or just fewer streaming sites / fewer people willing to take the risk of prosecution? 

With Bet365 for example, they show live streams with the proviso being that UK based customers couldn't watch UK games, but because some yanks were getting it there were streams appearing, and as far as I'm aware they still stream plenty of Championship games to global customers. 

Surely some of these games are getting shown on TV in Yemen or Malaysia or somewhere? I seem to remember watching loads of streams in League One and the Championship in the Lambert years, usually with American commentators or from some Middle Eastern / Arabic states. 

As for having one central camera, I've seen the full match replays which Fulham get - which I presume is footage obtained from the BBC football league show camera, and to be honest those would be perfectly sufficient quality to get me to pay to watch games that I couldn't attend, a vast improvement on the Radio Norfolk commentary I'm paying almost a fiver a month for! 

 

[Bethnal Yellow and Green]

Of course. Because in order for there to be a stream, there needs to be a source broadcast for the pirate to rip the coverage from to stream. Betting websites and appear to be getting less rights to the Football League.

If a Championship game (or any game for that matter) is broadcast on public TV live somewhere in the world, there will be a pirate stream. If it's not, then there physically can not be. Streaming pirates aren't rich enough to set up their own production companies with cameras, sound and commentators - and then smuggle them into the ground - for the purpose of illegal streaming. At least yet anyway.

In regards to the setting up of better coverage of the championship - I think the cost of setting it up may be prohibitive. At the moment, apart from 'featured' games on the football league show, every game will only have one camera, parked on the halfway line in the media gantry to capture the highlights used by all media outlets. To do it properly, they would need multiple cameras, production teams, commentators etc. to capture every championship game, like BBC does for MOTD. I'm not sure they'd recoup the outlay, but I might be wrong.

I don't think it's a matter of technology, and 'this day and age'. I think it's more to do with the commercial viability.

The 'feature' game on the FLS will also be available to stream. You could watch Rotherham v Wolves on the internet on Saturday.

 

[The Ghost of Michael Theo]

Well yes I know there has to be a source, but does this mean that more League One games in 2009/10 were being broadcast globally than there are Championship games now in 2014, or are less of these global TV sources being streamed online for one reason or another?

Yes, that's exactly what it means.

If there is live coverage somewhere int he world, there will be a pirate stream. You can guarantee this, because pirates make money out of it.

 

[Canaryboy]

Yes, that's exactly what it means.

If there is live coverage somewhere int he world, there will be a pirate stream. You can guarantee this, because pirates make money out of it.

Fair enough, that sucks then. 

I wonder whether the football league and its members looked at what they were getting for these licenses and figured it weren't worth it due to the streaming. Should imagine that they would get a pittance to broadcast games in say Oman or somewhere, where nobody even goes to a pub and they are probably just shown on state TV in the early hours of the morning. 

 

[Monty13]

One central camera is better than no coverage. As for the rest of the production values being mentioned, multiple cameras, directors etc, would it be needed? The club already sell commentry via Canary Player, just add the already produced TV footage.

It wouldn't have main TV production values, but arguably would it need to? Keep costs down, it will undoubtedly still sell as AN option is better than none.

 

[lyb]

Dunno if anyone remembers, but on our USA tour last pre-season, they had a stream of one of the complete games on the San José earthquakes website, which was a single camera and perfectly good to watch (it's possible somebody may have managed to download the stream...).

Actually, we know they already have somebody running a single central camera every game at Carrow Road: That's where the highlights on Canary Player come from. Streaming is merely a question of a little extra technology. 

The piracy element is a non-issue in my opinion. Any sports stream anywhwere gets pirated. That said, pirated streams are usually highly unreliable, but also supporters don't tend to mind shelling out to follow their team, especially if it means the quality of the stream will be superior.