TV Deal from 2020

[Eednud]

SPFL games and  a weekly highlights show are broadcast by BeIn Sports through Foxtel pay TV in Australia. So far nothing listed for broadcast, not even highlights this season. Seems it might have something to do with MP & Silva not making payments to other parties. Anything about this in Scottish media?

[FairWeatherFan]

4 minutes ago, Eednud said:

SPFL games and  a weekly highlights show are broadcast by BeIn Sports through Foxtel pay TV in Australia. So far nothing listed for broadcast, not even highlights this season. Seems it might have something to do with MP & Silva not making payments to other parties. Anything about this in Scottish media?

I've seen it mentioned. Apparently the rights holder is likely to go bust and due to the dispute not much is being shown, if anything at all. Long run it might be a good thing. The deal was done for 10 years and still had to run until 2023. Because it was at the height of ARMAGEDDON, the SPFL should hopefully be able to get a better deal if they can get the rights back.

[bendan]

On 05/08/2018 at 11:14, FairWeatherFan said:

I've seen it mentioned. Apparently the rights holder is likely to go bust and due to the dispute not much is being shown, if anything at all. Long run it might be a good thing. The deal was done for 10 years and still had to run until 2023. Because it was at the height of ARMAGEDDON, the SPFL should hopefully be able to get a better deal if they can get the rights back.

The overseas rights deal is notable mainly for the fact that, incredibly, it was even more ridiculously poorly negotiated than the domestic rights. If MP Silva were offering big money you could understand why they might sign up to a ten year deal, but they only get 2 million a year. If they set up their own online service for expats they'd be really hard pushed to do worse than that. I spent years abroad, flush with cash, and not being able to watch Scottish football on any legal service (except some club channels). I met loads of other Scots in the same position.

[Guest]

In some respects we are now in the strongest position that we've been in for years. Looking at Sky and BT,  it appears that their decision to concentrate on England only could start costing them dear.

The loss of La Liga from Sky and Serie A from BT have left huge gaps at a time when they're both attempting to justify price increases and quite frankly they've pissed off an awful lot of people.

 Of course, Scottish fare may not be top of everyones "to watch" list, however if they fail to offer decent money and lose that as well, then surely it's just a matter of time until people (especially in Scotland) call time on their pay tv offerings ??

[Eednud]

11 hours ago, bendan said:

The overseas rights deal is notable mainly for the fact that, incredibly, it was even more ridiculously poorly negotiated than the domestic rights. If MP Silva were offering big money you could understand why they might sign up to a ten year deal, but they only get 2 million a year. If they set up their own online service for expats they'd be really hard pushed to do worse than that. I spent years abroad, flush with cash, and not being able to watch Scottish football on any legal service (except some club channels). I met loads of other Scots in the same position.

Can't even listen to radio broadcasts of Scottish games due to rights issues when nobody has ever broadcast Scottish games on radio here. Yet you can listen to Irish League and as many non-league games through the BBC Regionals as you want.

[djchapsticks]

On 06/08/2018 at 16:29, WATTOO said:

In some respects we are now in the strongest position that we've been in for years. Looking at Sky and BT,  it appears that their decision to concentrate on England only could start costing them dear.

The loss of La Liga from Sky and Serie A from BT have left huge gaps at a time when they're both attempting to justify price increases and quite frankly they've pissed off an awful lot of people.

 Of course, Scottish fare may not be top of everyones "to watch" list, however if they fail to offer decent money and lose that as well, then surely it's just a matter of time until people (especially in Scotland) call time on their pay tv offerings ??

I have left Sky in the past month for this very reason. Over reliance of the Premier League and the fact that general Sky subscriptions are being massively increased year on year partly (mostly) to subsidise how much Sky shell out for the EPL rights has pissed me right off.

Meanwhile, Scottish football is treated like an afterthought because those who run our game allow it to be treated as such instead of daring to fully back the game in this country as a major asset to any network lucky enough to have it.

So why not say 'f**k it' and try something different?! Be it a dedicated streaming service, be it a deal with an already established streaming service or something completely untried. The alternative is to go back into a deal where cockwomble and his cronies are all happy that we've eked another poxy £2m a year out of Sky or BT and tied down for the best part of another decade, by which point the EPL will be well over the TEN FUCKING BILLION pound mark.

Nah, it's time that those who run our sport stop selling ourselves and our game short. Scottish football is magnificently mental. It really fucking is...when you take a step back and think of all the madcap, tinpot, outlandish things that happen in our game up here...you see it for what it's worth. I like to compare it to boxing, the fights with the richest purses very rarely produce the best levels of entertainment....they just have really good PR teams behind them. I'd much rather watch two journeyman jakeys slugfesting it. Instead of being embarrassed, uptight and ashamed about that and getting wound up when those south of the border to point and laugh at us for it, let's embrace it fully and take the chance.

[Firhill_Basin]

This IMO should be the biggest deal ever for Scottish Football financially. Its not just Sky and BT now,  Eleven are a new player and you have loads of other big names who are beginning to enter the sports rights market like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Netflix etc.  A solid businessman would ensure a record breaking deal here. Doncaster has done nothing to deserve any faith in that regard.

I'd quite happily see Scottish Football on a totally separate platform to English Football. Personall fed up of indirectly subsidising their overhyped product.

[bendan]

I think anybody can get a record breaking deal, as it's not much of a record to break. It's more a question of how much and what is given away in return. I'd like to see fewer lunchtime kick offs, for example, and a move back to mostly Sunday afternoon games.

I agree it would be good to be on a different platform to English football, but I'll be satisfied if exclusive rights go to BT. For longer term success, we'd need to then see lots of people ditch Sky to show how much Scottish football was actually worth. Unfortunately, the last time Sky lost Scottish football, subscriber numbers in Scotland were not noticeably affected, which has informed their strategy ever since.

[The Master]

13 hours ago, djchapsticks said:

I have left Sky in the past month for this very reason. Over reliance of the Premier League and the fact that general Sky subscriptions are being massively increased year on year partly (mostly) to subsidise how much Sky shell out for the EPL rights has pissed me right off.

Meanwhile, Scottish football is treated like an afterthought because those who run our game allow it to be treated as such instead of daring to fully back the game in this country as a major asset to any network lucky enough to have it.

So why not say 'f**k it' and try something different?! Be it a dedicated streaming service, be it a deal with an already established streaming service or something completely untried.

Absolute pie in the sky. 

People keep going back to the idea of "SPFL TV", or even "an established streaming service" as if Scottish football needs to be different for the sake of being different. 

Moving all live Scottish matches to a streaming-only service would be an absolute disaster - cue accusations of negativity, running the game into the ground etc. etc.  But just look at the reaction to Eleven, and that's "only" La Liga/Serie A.  

Yes online services are the way to go in the future. But until there's better integration with conventional TV, it's a non-starter. And by that I don't mean access via an app or an external stick; I mean full integration with programme guides so that you can be watching a game on one provider, but quickly and seamlessly switch over to another to check the score in a different game. Or switch over to the news at half time and not have to jump through hoops to get the stream back for the second half. 

The current implementation is too clunky. Open this app, find the right stream, close this app, open the new app, find the right stream there, close that app, go back to the first app...

[bendan]

3 hours ago, The Master said:

Absolute pie in the sky. 

People keep going back to the idea of "SPFL TV", or even "an established streaming service" as if Scottish football needs to be different for the sake of being different. 

Moving all live Scottish matches to a streaming-only service would be an absolute disaster - cue accusations of negativity, running the game into the ground etc. etc.  But just look at the reaction to Eleven, and that's "only" La Liga/Serie A.  

Yes online services are the way to go in the future. But until there's better integration with conventional TV, it's a non-starter. And by that I don't mean access via an app or an external stick; I mean full integration with programme guides so that you can be watching a game on one provider, but quickly and seamlessly switch over to another to check the score in a different game. Or switch over to the news at half time and not have to jump through hoops to get the stream back for the second half. 

The current implementation is too clunky. Open this app, find the right stream, close this app, open the new app, find the right stream there, close that app, go back to the first app...

How exactly do BT broadband subscribers currently get BT Sport?

[The Master]

39 minutes ago, bendan said:

How exactly do BT broadband subscribers currently get BT Sport?

In one of three ways: on Sky, on BT TV, or via the app/online.

The first two use conventional, linear channels. In the case of BT TV, it comes via the broadband but still behaves like an ordinary channel that you access via an EPG on a set-top box. 

[bendan]

26 minutes ago, The Master said:

In one of three ways: on Sky, on BT TV, or via the app/online.

The first two use conventional, linear channels. In the case of BT TV, it comes via the broadband but still behaves like an ordinary channel that you access via an EPG on a set-top box. 

Yes, I know. It basically does what you say currently doesn't happen. And that's now, not the period of 2020-2025 which the next SPFL TV deal will probably cover. I haven't seen anyone suggest that an online service must not include a linear channel.

 

[The Master]

18 minutes ago, bendan said:

Yes, I know. It basically does what you say currently doesn't happen.

No it doesn't.

The BT Sport suite of channels are actual channels, that happen to be delivered (to certain customers) via their broadband connection. But the delivery method is a far cry from the way streaming services operate. It's closer to being a cable-style distribution, a la Virgin Media.

18 minutes ago, bendan said:

 

And that's now, not the period of 2020-2025 which the next SPFL TV deal will probably cover. I haven't seen anyone suggest that an online service must not include a linear channel.

 

In other words, it's not about going with a streaming provider it's about going with a different provider (i.e. not Sky or BT). That doesn't seem to be the "something different" @djchapsticks was advocating.  Because as soon as the streaming provider launches an ordinary linear channel, where's the radical departure from the norm?

What I was advocating was a new open platform where existing streaming services are available as channels - type three numbers on your remote control and it goes of and grabs the stream direct from Amazon or Netflix or Eleven or...  No need to actually launch a channel; just make the existing services more accessible by integrating them with "normal" TV.

[bendan]

11 minutes ago, The Master said:

The BT Sport suite of channels are actual channels, that happen to be delivered (to certain customers) via their broadband connection. But the delivery method is a far cry from the way streaming services operate. It's closer to being a cable-style distribution, a la Virgin Media.

 

So you mean a *possible* future streaming service of Scottish football could not - it's simply inconceivable! - include linear channels and be delivered via a broadband connection to a set top box (which is what happens with BT Sport to most customers) because that's not the way people currently access TV shows and movies (i.e. not linear channels) on Amazon and Netflix 

I suspect a 'radical departure from the norm' for most people would be not going with BT/Sky/Terrestrial TV.

[Guest]

I don't know what anyone else thinks, but to me this is a backward step in technology when the only way you can access sport is on a small screen. Meanwhile your super duper large screen TV is sitting up on the wall totally redundant.

All very strange.........

[The Master]

10 minutes ago, bendan said:

So you mean a *possible* future streaming service of Scottish football could not - it's simply inconceivable! - include linear channels and be delivered via a broadband connection to a set top box (which is what happens with BT Sport to most customers) because that's not the way people currently access TV shows and movies (i.e. not linear channels) on Amazon and Netflix 

That would rely on whoever bought the rights launching their own set-top box, which effectively means launching an entire TV service.

Where is this company with the many millions required to do that hiding?

You've also completely misunderstood the point I was making. It's not that we need linear channels; it's that we need better integration between streaming services and ordinary broadcast television.

If Amazon bought the SPFL rights, I wouldn't expect them to launch "Amazon Sports" that's on 24/7. But what would make such a deal more appealing is if you can seamlessly jump between the currently-showing SPFL game, and BBC1, or Channel 4, or... - as you can do now with minimal fuss.

Quote

I suspect a 'radical departure from the norm' for most people would be not going with BT/Sky/Terrestrial TV.

And how did that work out the last time we tried it?

[bendan]

3 minutes ago, The Master said:

That would rely on whoever bought the rights launching their own set-top box, which effectively means launching an entire TV service.

Where is this company with the many millions required to do that hiding?

You've also completely misunderstood the point I was making. It's not that we need linear channels; it's that we need better integration between streaming services and ordinary broadcast television.

If Amazon bought the SPFL rights, I wouldn't expect them to launch "Amazon Sports" that's on 24/7. But what would make such a deal more appealing is if you can seamlessly jump between the currently-showing SPFL game, and BBC1, or Channel 4, or... - as you can do now with minimal fuss.

And how did that work out the last time we tried it?

BT are positioning themselves as an integrator of content and already carry many channels delivered over IP. I'm unaware of them saying they would not carry a IP-based Scottish football service.

I haven't misunderstood your point, it's just that you keep changing it. You said streamed channels aren't currently integrated, then when an example of integration is given, you say it doesn't count because it behaves just like a normal channel (which is, of course, because it's integrated). You've unilaterally decided that other people want solely non-linear services and these can't be integrated.

Setanta was very successful until it expanded to cover English matches. Why do you think the investors in Setanta (which included major investment firms) put up the huge money for the EPL bids? Because they'd done so badly with the SPFL rights?

The last time Scottish football really went for something different as far as broadcasters was concerned was when in went onto satellite back in the early 1990s with BSB, a time when a subscription to satellite TV was far rarer than subscription to an online streaming service is now.

Personally, I think they should be dipping their toes in the IP-based broadcasting market while retaining a more traditional contract for a package of main games. That would allow them to see what demand is out there and iron out any problems before they became reliant on the platform. It would also help them reach overseas fans much more easily.

[The Master]

16 minutes ago, bendan said:

BT are positioning themselves as an integrator of content and already carry many channels delivered over IP. I'm unaware of them saying they would not carry a IP-based Scottish football service.

I haven't misunderstood your point, it's just that you keep changing it. You said streamed channels aren't currently integrated, then when an example of integration is given, you say it doesn't count because it behaves just like a normal channel (which is, of course, because it's integrated). You've unilaterally decided that other people want solely non-linear services and these can't be integrated.

I've not changed my point at all. I never mentioned streaming channels in my original post. You're the one who introduced that.

BT Sport is completely different to what I've been saying, and what @djchapsticks was advocating. The only reason you're calling it "streaming" is because BT TV customers happen to receive the channels via their broadband. But that's no more streaming than Sky's channels being "streamed" via satellite, or Virgin's channels being "streamed" via cable (which, technically, they are but they aren't "streaming services" under the accepted definition). 

[effeffsee_the2nd]

1 hour ago, WATTOO said:

I don't know what anyone else thinks, but to me this is a backward step in technology when the only way you can access sport is on a small screen. Meanwhile your super duper large screen TV is sitting up on the wall totally redundant.

All very strange.........

not if you have a smart tv or a fire stick type device. i watch youtube & Netflix on the big telly

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, effeffsee_the2nd said:

not if you have a smart tv or a fire stick type device. i watch youtube & Netflix on the big telly

I'm referring to Eleven Sports though and even so it's surely an additional hassle, rather than just pressing a channel number or arrowing up or down on your remote.

Remember, change is not always for the best and quite often takes us back the way rather than improving things for the better.