In the second of a three-part series on how to know and grow your audience in the sports industry, we explain the trends of future sports viewership and their impact on your audience development strategy.
The goal of this article series is to offer sports rights holders and media distributors a practical roadmap for knowing and growing audiences. This theme is central to the work our team does with clients on digital transformation, data strategies and commercialization.
In the previous article, we covered the importance of digital & data to develop audiences, by having a central know-your-fan database that acts as a single source of truth for the business. We are sharing these insights and analysis based on ongoing client work as well as a recent panel we moderated at the Global Sports Week Paris 2021, with leaders from Bundesliga, Amazon, UEFA and IMG.
THE FUTURE OF SPORTS VIEWERSHIP
COVID-19 has challenged paradigms for all sports leaders. The attendance of fans has been missing from almost a year of sports events. When they do come back, where should the focus of sports leaders be in terms of their next innovations and investments?
Sports leaders looking for signs of the future of viewership need to understand the tendencies and characteristics of the modern consumer. They are spending more time on new platforms, engaging with their favorite brands, celebrities and communities. They are popping up and self-assembling, and at an accelerated pace, on Clubhouse, TikTok, Discord, Twitch, Instagram, SnapChat. This trend will not stop.
Their fans will not stop wanting to visit their events live, at the stadiums, arenas and fields of play, where their favorite athletes will perform. Many travel and entertainment experts have forecasted that 2021 and 2022 will see pent-up demand from the pandemic seek experiences such as sports events, music festivals and travel.
At the Global Sports Week 2021, we heard about the role that the big screen will continue to have in the future and while Guy-Laurent Epstein highlighted that the big screen will remain important for sports organizations, Robert Klein added that ¨Looking at the Gen-Z and how they consume content, their focus is very much on tablet and phone usage as a second window of insight. The mix of big screen and second screen is ever-present. Fans of the future are looking to interact, looking for more stats, looking for more video opportunities, and therefore, it is on us at Bundesliga International and our partners to build in that direction.¨
The evolution of media rights, consumption habits, and screen experiences will have to adapt to an omnichannel approach. Ensuring that sports are where fans are. This year’s Super Bowl game highlighted this in clear figures. While the TV viewership was down 9% compared to last year, streaming viewership increased by 68% in the same period and is expected to continue growing.
Due to a change in the viewing experience and based on how content is being consumed, we are seeing how the future of broadcasting rights is also changing. Pete Bellamy from Endeavor Streaming highlighted how there will be a disruption in broadcasting rights in the coming years due to an accelerated innovation phenomenon and macro factors around bundling and unbundling of rights. We are already seeing some changes such as the creation of new partnership models that are based on regions.
¨At Endeavor, we deploy multiple implementations for a single client to meet that market need¨, highlighted Pete Bellamy. ¨With some of our clients, we have a global implementation but then based on the need of each market, there is a specific and tailor-made implementation.¨
One of the leading sports media properties in the last decade has been the UFC. To maximize its reach in the Middle East region, it partnered with Endeavor Streaming, Abu Dhabi Media and other operating businesses in the region. The partnership built a regionalized streaming service branded UFC Arabia, which offered right-to-left Arabic navigation, local payment methods and localized content. The power of viewership and content selection has been democratized, and fans need to have ultimate control over how and when they access it, but also how to share it and interact with it.
¨Having content hubs where you can just have an incredibly rich and engaging experience far beyond that of a multi sport, multi-entertainment application ecosystem. So a handoff between broadcast partners, and dedicated genre specific experiences deliver great added value for the fans optimally.¨ – Pete Bellamy
The future of sports viewership is not too different from its past. The fans are the focus. What has changed is that they are now in the driver’s seat. The viewership landscape is changing, and sports rights holders would benefit from understanding these trends early on, and integrate them into their media, commercial and digital rights negotiations and distribution plans. While sports rights may have plateaued in the traditional sense, the unbundling and disintermediation of sports media will pay higher dividends to those that innovate. In fact, according to a PWC survey in 2020, over 70% of sports leaders believe media rights packaging and distribution innovation will be the biggest revenue opportunity in the next five years.
If you haven’t read yet the first part of our 3-part series, you can read it here. Stay tuned for our third and final part of the series.
Get in touch with us if your organization is exploring new ways to grow its audience.