Football Is a Beautiful Business: The Worldwide Leader

Pick Up Your Remotes

This past weekend was of course the start of another English Premier League season, meaning that we are finally in the middle of nine-odd months of football bliss.

Off the pitch, one of the more interesting storylines of late has been the jockeying for television rights both here in the United States and in the United Kingdom.

By now you probably know the intricacies of Prem broadcast rights saga, but here’s the quick version. With the demise of Setanta Sports, the two main players in Europe are now powerhouse Sky and newcomer ESPN. Sky has solidified its status because, starting in 2010, it owns all but one of the broadcast packages (23 games) in England.

Here in the United States, Premiership football is being broadcast by Fox Soccer Channel, Setanta U.S., and now ESPN2. Indeed, Setanta U.S. survives for now as a despite its parent company’s collapse, but has sub-licensed games to ESPN2. Meanwhile, Fox Soccer Channel continues to establish itself as the dominate force in the United States, including its recent poaching of Champions League rights. Oh, and Fox Soccer Channel and Sky share ownership in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

This being the inaugural weekend of the Prem, it’s a perfect time to look at the current landscape of broadcasts. More discussion after the hop….

To start, the Guardian weighed in on the opening weekend of ESPN broadcasting, and was less than enthusiastic. The irony being that here in the United States, we would kill to have broadcasts that simply ape Sky as opposed to, say, the dribble that comes out Max Bretos’ yap. But whatever kinks were exposed during ESPN’s first weekend of footy broadcast in England, such as the commentator pronouncing Fellaini as “Fellini,” will surely go away with time. Hiring Andy Gray, who apparently does not have the same reputation in the U.K. as here, at least showed that ESPN is serious about producing quality programming. (Gray has indeed certainly established himself here in the U.S., and was mentioned by FSC’s execs as someone they were interested in hiring for Champions League games.)

Meanwhile, the Guardian also reported that ESPN picked up 480,000 viewers for the Arsenal v. Everton match, which is decent considering that ESPN costs £9 a month in subscriptions. In comparison, Sky Sports 1′s broadcast of Chelsea v. Hull picked up a peak of 1.2 million viewers, and both channels were eclipsed by the non-subscription BBC’s match of the day with 4 million viewers.

The point being that Sky doubled the number of ESPN viewers, and that ESPN did nothing special in terms of its own broadcasting. For the short term, none of this looks to put a big dent in Sky’s dominance, not that anyone expected anything otherwise. In fact, thanks to BSkyB carries ESPN as part of its programming, Sky will actually make an additional £80 million from their share of ESPN subscriptions. Talk about a win-win.

While it is easy to get bogged down with all of the dizzying details of all television rights (and yes I’m apparently guilty of this), the better view may be to see what these deals mean for the future of football.

In essence, as long as one believes that competition breeds better quality, the emergence of two strong players fighting for broadcast rights can only be a good thing for English football.

Sky is still the big player in England, while ESPN is the upstart, albeit with a highly established track record for broadcasting American sports. The one complaint I hear about Sky in the U.K. is that its in-studio show is terribly stale.  The competition from ESPN, with a track record of well-produced programming, can only help. And from an American standpoint, producing broadcasts to meet English viewers’ high expectations will hopefully pay secondary dividends in terms of broadcasts here.

At the same time, it’s readily apparent that ESPN’s strategy is to use football to expand into the European market. On that count, be sure to read this excellent article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. The takeaway from the article is that ESPN has reached total saturation point in the United States, and that any long-term increase in revenues must come from abroad. Again, it’s all about long-term positioning and strategy, which appears to be hinged upon English football.

Down the road, the next big hurdle will be when the 2013-2017 rights packages come due.  In the meantime, it’s an exciting time to be a viewer of the beautiful game because, for once, we’re considered a precious commodity rather than an afterthought.  So, both here in the U.S. and abroad, this is a perfect time to have our voices heard and to make clear what exactly we expect from our football broadcasts.  Let’s just say that the two media giants may actually be listening.