Discovery enters streaming race with discovery+ and Olympics offering

Blog post by Alistair Taylor

9 Dec 2020

discovery

Eurosport

discovery+

Last week , Discovery announced it will launch discovery+, ‘the definitive non-fiction’ subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD), on January 4th, 2021. Consumers in the US can expect the largest-ever content...

Read more …

German Bundesliga faces 20% decline in value for its international rights

Blog post by Alistair Taylor

1 Oct 2020

Bundesliga

premier league

EPL

German business publisher Sponsors has announced the German Football League (DFL) is facing a 20% decline in the total value of its overseas’ broadcast rights for the 2020/21 campaign. This is down from...

Read more …

Fortnite’s Party Royale provides sports untapped avenue for reaching digital natives

Blog post by Alistair Taylor

19 Aug 2020

Universal platform

Fortnite

Epic Games

Burgeoning universal platform Fortnite’s ‘ Party Royale ’ is slowly becoming the gateway for rights holders to reach digitally native audiences. Party Royale, Fortnite’s ‘ experimenta l’ game...

Read more …

DAZN’s belated UK launch: Can it avoid Eleven Sports’ 'mistake’?

Blog post by Alistair Taylor

24 Jul 2020

Video

Sports

Media & Marketing

DAZN, the anointed ‘Netflix of Sport’, has announced plans to resume launching its services globally via a beta service covering boxing bouts In July and August, for users who have registered their...

Read more …

NBCUniversal hopes to draw level with Premier League move

Blog post by Alistair Taylor

15 Jul 2020

Video

Sports

Covid-19

With Comcast’s NBCUniversal-owned Peacock launching today (July 15th), sports fans will be excited ahead of NBCU’s repositioning of its English Premier League (EPL) rights, giving paying subscribers...

Read more …

FuboTV adds key sporting rights to portfolio following Disney deal

Blog post by Alistair Taylor

2 Jul 2020

Fubo

FuboTV

Sporting rights

FuboTV, the US over-the-top (OTT) internet-delivered TV service launched back in January 2015 as a soccer-centric proposition. In that time it has established itself as a niche distributor of live streams...

Read more …

Move Over Mickey, The NBA is Set to Become Disney World’s Star Attraction

Blog post by Alistair Taylor

27 May 2020

AFL

Australian Rules Football

basketball

COVID-19 forced sports leagues to think outside the box for restarting live sports. The UFC wanted to rent a private island , the NRL to ferry players to and from games, and the WWE performed to empty...

Read more …

The Last Dance – ESPN Raining Threes

Blog post by Alistair Taylor

18 May 2020

Adam Silver

bundle

Chicago Bulls

With the pandemic-enforced postponement of live sports creating an entertainment void for sports fans, US broadcaster ESPN played its trump card to capitalise on the thirst for stimulating content during...

Read more …

Disney’s Results for Calendar Q1 Underlines The Importance Of its D2C Pivot

Blog post by Tim Mulligan

7 May 2020

d2c

disney

ESPN+

There was no dressing it up. Disney had a bad start to the year from a financial perspective. In its Q2 2020 (calendar Q1 2020) report the company announced an 85% decline in income from its continuing...

Read more …

Forget Virtual – UFC and NRL going Remote

Blog post by Alistair Taylor

10 Apr 2020

AP

Associated Press

broadcaster

With fans currently starved of sports entertainment during lockdown, rights holders are jumping out of the gate to be the first to put on live sports to serve any form of quick fix to see a jump in engagement....

Read more …

Self-Isolation: DAZN Concedes to COVID-19

Blog post by Alistair Taylor

6 Apr 2020

additive services

all-encompassing offering

asset class

Sports streaming insurgent DAZN has announced last week it plans to inform rights holders of its intent to defer its payments of rights fees for any content not yet delivered (i.e. postponed / cancelled...

Read more …

Tale of the Tape: UFC or Bundle Driving ESPN+ Adoption?

Blog post by Alistair Taylor

11 Feb 2020

adoption

binge viewing

bundle

Walt Disney’s pureplay sports streaming service ESPN+, which launched back in April 2018, has surpassed 7.6 million paid subscribers, Disney’s chief executive Bog Iger reported during last week’s...

Read more …

Take Five (the big five stories and data you need to know) November 25th 2019

Blog post by Mark Mulligan

25 Nov 2019

Colin Kaepernick

disney

Epic Games

Disney tidies its streaming stats:  Disney is tidying up its streaming subscriber numbers in preparation for reporting the performance so far of Disney+.  In the shake-up, ESPN falls from 3.4...

Read more …

Disney+ Recovers From Initial Blunder to Surpass 10 Million Sign Ups on Debut!

Blog post by Alistair Taylor

14 Nov 2019

21st century fox

all-encompassing offering

AppleTV+. Market saturation

Disney claims unexpected traffic on its newly-launched service was at fault for the buffering and technical issues of Disney+’s launch Tuesday . The issues highlight just how difficult it is transitioning...

Read more …

Could a Recession Change the Tide for Sports Rights Allocation?

Blog post by Alistair Taylor

24 Sep 2019

additive services

all-encompassing offering

AppleTV+

Revenue remains rights holder’s priority qualifier for allocating rights. However, with an impending recession, we are likely nearing an inflection point whereby rights holders may start to look towards...

Read more …

The Mouse That Roared; Disney Calls Time on Traditional Pay-TV and Netflix in the US

Blog post by Tim Mulligan

7 Aug 2019

disney

ESPN+

hulu

As  predicted , Disney has decided to flip the switch and unleash a pay-TV (and Netflix) killer by announcing a Q4 bundle of its streaming services in one joint aggressively-priced offer. On November...

Read more …

Is YouTube MLB’s Answer to Tap into Younger Audience?

Blog post by Alistair Taylor

29 Jul 2019

baseball

cable consumption

Channel 4

On July 18 th , Google-owned YouTube livestreamed the first of its exclusive Major League Baseball (MLB) matches, acquired through a partnership announced with the MLB at the end of April 2019 . YouTube’s...

Read more …

Sports and the Tech Majors: A Competitive Partnership

Blog post by Hanna Kahlert

8 Jul 2019

Amazon Prime Instant Video

amazon video

d-day for sporting rights

We’re pleased to announce the launch of our Sports research practice. The Sports vertical provides comprehensive global analysis of the key players unleashing disruption in the business of sport broadcasting,...

Read more …

Why the UFC Wants to Replicate the Yao Ming effect

Blog post by Alistair Taylor

25 Jun 2019

athlete

audience culture

brand leverage

The NBA is the third highest grossing league globally, generating $7.4 billion in 2017, behind domestic rivals MLB and NFL. Whereas the MLB and NFL have largely struggled to entice a truly global following,...

Read more …

Heavyweight Battle for Premium Sporting Rights Dependent on Three Factors

Blog post by Alistair Taylor

3 Jun 2019

BAMTech

broadcast rights

BT

The sports rights landscape has changed fundamentally with the emergence of streaming subscription video on demand (SVOD) services. Digital and broadcast rights used to be separate deals entirely, but...

Read more …