‘We’re trying to disrupt the market’: Optus marketing boss defends EPL plans
“EPL offering will be far superior”: White
The head of marketing for Optus has said it is not backing away from a controversial decision to limit access to English Premier League content to people who have a contract with them.
Yesterday’s announcement from the telco it had pushed back pre-registration for the EPL for at least a fortnight for fans had led to speculation that it might be looking at ways to offer a wider deal to non-Optus customers to maximise the property.
But in an interview with the Australian Financial Review today, Ben White, acting managing director of marketing said while other telcos had their positioning based on things like network speed, Optus was building its position around exclusive content.
He added: “Clearly EPL fans are very passionate, we totally understand that, but we are trying to do something here to disrupt the market and we knew and expected that there will always be people that don’t like change.”
He also defended the way the company will deliver the matches over the internet, saying: “There are lots of different types of content delivery models … we think ours is another very valid model to put into the market as well alongside pay TV, free-to-air and on-demand, like Netflix.
“We are very confident that our EPL offering is going to be far superior to what has been seen in Australia to-date, with not just live games, but much better pre-game, half-time and post-game shows and a host of other programs.”
The telco will also have the rights to the 2018 World Cup in Russia, with White saying the market would have a “better understanding” of the telco’s offering by then.
But he hinted the company could look to open up access to its content more widely, saying: “We will also have a road map of the way that we are going to offer content over time, so we could be in a very different world by the time we get to the next World Cup in 2018.”
Tackling the complete lack of (worthwhile) analysis is a step in the right direction. I never understood why Foxtel didn’t show the Sky Sports UK coverage before, during and after games.
However, trying to force people into signing up as mobile or broadband customers is a serious mistake. I’m definitely the target market for this but there’s no way I’m going to switch.
Optus says it’s trying to disrupt the market but blackmail is not a good new business strategy. Admit the mistake, offer a season pass for (no more than) $200 and let’s move on.
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Seeking to disrupt the market is fine. However I would suggests that it is not the consumer who should feel the disruption, it is your competitors. Consumers are rarely seeking to feel market disruption, they just want to feel that they are important and served in the best way possible.
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Their move on the EPL is actually one that I applauded when it was first announced I have to say, but I did find it curious that they made it only for subscribers to their other services as it seems to have pushed public sentiment BACK toward favouring Foxtel when before they’d announced their plans all the positive sentiment was FOR Optus.
With Foxtel now having bought rights to telecast the big EPL club’s games and added a lot of the other large European competitions (which frankly are of a higher standard than the EPL anyway) to their basic sports package, I’m wondering if Optus will do as well out of this as they’d hoped.
In a way it reminds me a little of Foxtel buying exclusive GoT rights – it got them a mini jump in subscriptions, but by and large it just angered a lot of non-subscribers and made them against their brand when before they were neutral and possibly potential customers in other areas.
To be frank, I think if Optus had made the content available to non-optus customers, but added some sort of sweetener to those that were, then they’d likely have seen a larger churn that they’ll end up getting because it wouldn’t have looked like they were blackmailing the market and thus hurt their brand.
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I’m in the target market for Optus: watch at least 2 games live each week as well as the highlights. This feels exactly like blackmail and has left a very salty taste in my mouth. Disruption is one thing, extortion something very different.
Have never explored live streams of games on the Internet, but it’s probably what Optus will drive me to.
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I think Optus missed a serious chance to genuinely disrupt the market by offering premium content at a fair market price. No sports nut really loves Foxtel (expensive, oodles of ads and endless promos and a failed IQ3 launch that they have quietly shelved), and so Optus could have really made differentiated themselves and then marketed bundles to those fans. To say otherwise is just missing the point *sigh*
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I never really found what Foxtel had going on to be an issue. It ran well, they had good coverage and the commentary was solid (except in some moments, like most penalty discussions).
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Great comment, Mr Corbett.
By all means offer extra incentives for Optus customers but what you’ve actually done here Optus is disrupted your opportunity to capitalise on the EPL deal. This seems like a very short sighted strategy and would suggest to me that you’re involvement with EPL will be short lived.
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Foxtel tries to blackmail the australian public to sign up to see game of thrones. How’s that going?
Netflix has been trying to stop the Australian public from viewing the US version, thats not working either. Using a vpn, EPL will be available via other means, and theres little Optus can do about that. When will these people learn?
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The strategy is so flawed it’s a struggle to think how it could have got through any type of internal challenge. Like others have said, I’m the typical ‘target’ and have no locked in contracts, however I can’t in all good consciousness switch to Optus under this business model. Win me with service, product and customer service not with arrognace and a wall.
Horrendous marketing and strategy.
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Is “disruption” still a thing? ‘sounds very 2015. Now used to camouflage a lack of proper strategy, one suspects.
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This notion of “disruption” is entirely disingenuous – unless Ben White is referring to consumers being disrupted as noted above.
None of this offering is disruptive – perhaps Ben should read some more of Clay Christensen’s thinking to really make something interesting for Telstra – http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/.....isruption/.
This move is something else – if anything sustaining innovation and not particularly good for the market or Telstra. The sad thing is they may stick to their guns too long to turn this opportunity into something truely valuable as opposed to this old-school-walled-garden-because-we’ve-got-scale-approach.
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Sad that most people will be crowding around a 5-inch screen to watch football matches at an ungodly hour in the morning. Fair play to Foxtel though because if I was a customer, I would have just kept my subscription and watched other more entertaining football leagues (thats rights, Champions League). Unlucky to those who don’t have either and were hoping for a cheaper option to Foxtel. Maybe 2019.
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Love your comment – it’s not your customers who should feel the disruption! Classic big corporate behaviour
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I pay $70/month for my phone & plan with vodafone so if i can get a new phone & only end up paying $15/month extra for EPL, it’s a win to move to Optus for me…just hope they will help and pay out the last 3 months of my contract with vodafone, they are going to have to expect to do this if they want new customers
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I’m thinking Mr White has not read disruption theory (innovator’s dilemma) nor understands the basic tenets to building a business in the digital era.
The whole point of disruption is to provide a superior customer experience to disrupt incumbents – not buy the rights and deliver an equally rigid offerring to build subs for another part of the business (eg broadband etc); which, sounds awfully familiar to what Foxtel was doing with the sports package on top of the base package.
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…and now they are making shit up.
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He’ll disrupt the market alright — if you call turning off 2/3 of the customers ‘disrupting’ !?!?!
I don’t mind change, but I don’t negotiate with blackmailers. I’m out.
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I am a soccer fan. I am an Optus cable broadband customer.
With a plan over $85 p.m., I *should* get EPL for free – though Optus are still being extremely opaque about this.
At first I thought “Free EPL, that’s nice”. A slightly positive sentiment.
BUT: I barely get 3 to 5 mbps most of the time.
Optus blame this on “congestion”. Congestion?! If too many people are using Optus’ network, Optus shouldn’t have signed them up. “Congestion” seems like an admission of fault, to me.
Optus also say they have no plans to upgrade infrastructure in my area. So 3 mbps indefinitely?
AND surely having more people streaming things like EPL will cause more “congestion” and lower speeds. Perhaps 1 mbps?
I doubt EPL will be watchable.
So I’ll be looking for other options (e.g. NBN when it’s installed in my area). The EPL won’t keep me with Optus, but it may well drive me away. Is this the disruption to the market Mr White is referring to?
I just can’t see this working for Optus – why make a few people (EPL fans with reliable Optus broadband) slightly happier while (a) frustrating Foxtel subscribers, (b) creating negative feeling towards the Optus brand (I see “blackmail” popping up a lot in forums) and (c) promoting discussions about alternative methods of watching the EPL?
Alienating current and potential customers is a great strategy – one that would get you fired from most marketing roles. Well done Optus marketing.
This move is, of course, a big shame for many avid EPL supporters who already signed up to Foxtel. At least with Foxtel you got lots of other sport (golf, tennis, cricket etc) for your money. $15 per month (probably on top of a new contract) seems ludicrously expensive for one league of one sport. Hence the inevitable (and increasing) discussions about watching EPL without Optus. Well done again, Optus marketing team.
And now that I hear Foxtel is going to be showing several other European leagues. Personally I couldn’t see any value in joining Optus for the EPL. I’m more and more looking forward to leaving Optus (for cheaper and more reliable NBN) and getting a Foxtel package. Good work Optus marketing.
EPL fans – maybe find a friend who gets access to EPL with their broadband and ask them if they will register a device for you (they get 4 devices, apparently).
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Damn right and well said.
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You are 100% correct. Ben White clearly has got this completely wrong. Market disrutpion should only increase viewers options for content avaibility and pricing. This is not some revolutionary market offering, its simply old fashioned telco monopolistic mentality. Mr Whites statement on Optus focusing on media content over network speed is exactly why I will not switch over. I am 2.4km from the CBD in Sydney and Optus are only able to offer ADSL. Why would I downgrade from Telstra cable that is comprehensively faster to ADSL in order to stream live content.
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Nice one Optus. I get a crappy 2mb where I live on a good day. Imagine the lightning fast speeds I’ll be getting when the congestion starts from all the new customers clamouring to watch the EPL. How can this be good for any market, let alone your own tenuous place in that market by highlighting ridiculously slow internet speeds to a whole bunch of new customers before your product is at a level to provide what you say you can outside of the City? ( it can’t) By City, I mean I live 70k’s outside of Sydney, Australia’s largest City and I can’t watch Youtube without buffering never mind HD content. This is laughable in this day and age.
Perhaps some investment in the ridiculously slow Internet speeds before attempting to provide a streaming service would’ve been prudent.
The only thing you’ll manage to ‘disrupt’ is the quality of the picture when I’m buffering along with everyone else as there’ll be congestion as far as the eye can see.
Clowns!
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Tried watching 3 games on Bein sport end of season 4G, on iPad , useless,not worth watching,maybe just my connection.?
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It is the beginning of some massive changes to broadcasting. Murdoch’s Fox / BskyB has dominated for a long time. Web speeds and access are getting far better and although Murdoch has worked hard with the LNP to sabotage the NBN (morons), we will get there eventually. Google, Amazon and Apple, potentially in conjunction with a telco will dominate delivery of news, sports. Movies they are already doing so. What do you think?
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