In televised sport, live is more important than free
I’m not sure whether I’m speaking as a pundit or a punter on this one, but either way, I’m glad the Government has finally started to look at the anti-siphoning rules for televised sport.
On the face of it, the rules would seem to be all about helping the public – keeping important sporting events freely available for all.
But far too often the result has been something that has benefited the commercial broadcasters rather than the viewers.
Sport is all about watching live. The reality is that for a commercial TV network with a mainstream audience, it’s almost impossible to deliver that – even with the best intentions (not that that is always the case anyway).
And the regulations have meant that commercial TV networks are under no obligation to show the events they have the rights too live, or indeed at all.
Remember Seven’s irritating coverage of the Olympics, where it was (deliberately, one assumes) impossible to tell what was live and what was on delay? The government does. It refers in its discussion paper on the topic to the “significant public criticism“.
Where the market breaks down is that the rules have often prevented pay TV from stepping in to deliver the service instead.
And while I’d rather watch somethign for free, that’s mostly not been on offer. In the face of that, I’d rather pay to watch it covered properly, and live.
Tim Burrowes
Linkedin
Tim,
I agree. In a perfect world [or back in 1985] sport on the telly would be both free and live.
At this stage in the universe, I’ll take live.
I’m an AFL punter and am sick of having games 1/2 hour delayed – sometimes the ridiculous delay of 10 mins as the Seven Network have done on several occasions this year.
It’s appalling treatment of fans and it needs to be fixed and the Govt will probably have to do it. [ AFL honcho Andrew Demitriou has paid lip service to it for the past two rights deals – ultimately taking the money at the expense of giving the punters the live experience ].
http://twitter.com/ScottKilmartin
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Anti-siphoning is at risk of being a nostalgic idea for a bygone era.
The facts are that in a digital age it has become a restrictive practice, actually delivering less consumer satisfaction than originally intended. With the new pay TV channel launches in October, coupled to terrestrial digital services (e.g. ONE), IPTV etc, the opportunity is there to release the siphoned sports and allow access and more choice by fans.
The codes / sports bodies will naturally be wary of losing lucrative existing deals, but in a more competitive age of connected digital consumers who want their sport live, the risk is that the sports lose their fan base first.
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This piece misses some fairly crucial aspects of the regulations, which prevent even the FTA channels stepping in themselves.
If they choose to, FTA channels are legally obliged to simulcast an anti-siphon event on both their primary SD and analogue transmission channels.
At a time when the government is trying to encourage multicast digital programming, this creates quite the forced roadblock in schedules as any channel will also want to have sport in HD where possible.
Channels also have to consider the programming content restrictions on live content across 3 time zones.
An ideal solution would knock out the analogue simulcast mandate, perhaps replacing it with a limited delay allowance. This impacts far fewer viewers and provides another upgrade incentive to analogue users.
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The reality is that online broadcasting should be opening the market for sport coverage (both live and on-demand) like never before. But there are some pretty challenging issues being raised by this.
For example, many new televisions are now being sold with inbuilt internet routers. So if a broadcast is “online” (delivered using IP protocol) and viewed on this television, is it a “broadcast”? Ditto with new IP-based set-top boxes, or even computers with their video output connected to the television.
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Ian,
You highlight the regulation Catch-22 even more…
It is largely a metro luxury to have the technical speed available for IPTV, especially HD, so those who would choose to receive it via IPTV is a small subset of those who could already receive it anyway (in theory).
Since nigh on everyone in Oz can receive broadcast anti-siphon events, there is little incentive for FTA owners to use multimedia rights and “dilute” their valuable broadcast viewing figures and they can’t offer it live over IPTV on either free or paid basis for anti-siphon events anyway, unless simulcast on FTA. The demise of Setanta suggest that it isn’t an easy market for IPTV vendors globally, either.
To push this issue a little further, it’s also largely pointless for delayed sports transmission by IPTV anyway as the current technical and rights encumbrances mean that those users who have the technical nouse to enable it, likely have easy access to the event material faster and free, albeit from questionably legal sources.
Ironically, there is arguably less incentive for Pay-TV to offer IPTV services in parallel, since their signal is almost always delivered by the same medium (cable or sat) as the user’s IP data, so would be effectively competing with itself…
This of course changes with an owner-neutral NBN…
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Agreed. Every time I hear from a Foxtel loser about subscribing I say the same thing. I will sign up and pay when you give the the compele BBC Formula 1 package:
– preview and summary shows LIVE
– every practice session LIVE
– qualifying LIVE
– race, podium presentation and post-race interviews LIVE
– none of the above interrupted by advertising
– none of the above interrupted or devalued by clueless moronic Australian talking heads
I will happily PAY for this service. But no one wants my money. As a last recourse I get most of this content FOR FREE from bittorrent.
Television business = fail.
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If you dont use it, you lose it!
Why should good sports have to go to free, and then they dont run any of it live, and make us wait many hours later after it ends to see it, meanshile the results get posted up all over the web. Channel 10 you do it the worst, especially with Formula 1! Make us wait till 9pm for a race that runs at 3pm in the afternoon. If FOX had it it wouldve been live! Per agreements with F1.
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