“Sport is a birth right and a passion. All the highs and the lows, the agony and the ecstasy… it all matters. We believe the time has come for sport to be unleashed and set free.” So states the first promotional messaging for eir Sport, the new player in the sports rights and broadcast arenas formed by the takeover of Setanta Sport by eir.
Free is always subject to caveats. Free to air is that for those who buy a TV license. Free in the context of eir Sport will be so for those who either already are or are willing to switch to becoming customers of eir broadband.
This follows the same model as BT Sport in the UK and the clincher for eir in the early stages of this adventure will be the inclusion of the four BT Sport packages in the eir Sport bundle. That’s all the UEFA Champions’ League, a major chunk of the Premier League, European Champions Cup in Rugby, Conor McGregor and UFC, NBA Basketball and much more.
But that is only the start. eir Sport chose yesterday to reveal they had succeeded in winning the rights to the Womens Rugby World Cup to be held in Ireland next year and the next Men’s edition to be he’d in Japan in 2019.
They will broadcast all 48 game sin that tournament live though there will, for now, need to be a ‘free-to-air’ broadcast partner for the Ireland matches and those in the final stages.
TV3 won the exclusive rights to the 2015 version and will be unhappy at having their seemingly strong march paused though they will have the exclusive rights to the 6 Nations from the season after next.
The model of giving away great content in exchange for broadband custom is one that has consistently worked for BT. In the first full year after the launch of the channel revenues for the company and its share price rose markedly.
It is also evolving. BT Sports 4K offering on the Champions’ League was only available to the high speed customers and access now is dependent on an additional €5 a month for those who don’t buy a set top box.
But it is still a major discount on what customers pay for Sky, the main rival in sports rights and with broadband seen now as a utility rather than a luxury, the bundling model with sports content is one whose time has undoubtedly come, as was forecast on Sport for Business the last time eir was on the market.
With the covers off the offering now and a major statement of intent laid down who knows if eir, already a long term partner of the GAA through sponsorship of the All Ireland Football Championship, may yet be a bidder for the next round of GAA rights from next season.
It’s an obvious play given the geographic nature of both broadcaster and rights.
And by the time the next round comes around in three years time, who knows where ‘free to air’ will have gone. It could be that a legal challenge to define ‘free’ might be in train either here or in a later market, or it could be that eir will follow another BT move by creating ‘free to air’ broadcasts itself through partnerships with You Tube or other players in the distributed TV marketplace.
Going back to the promotion, eir states that sport is a birth right and a passion. It’s what makes consumers tick in a live environment. The four biggest audiences for RTÉ so far this year have all ben live sport. That’s not changing anytime soon, but the value of what sport means in a business context is absolutely changing.
We live in interesting times.
Discover the latest developments and what will happen next at our major gathering of Global Sports and Tech Leaders in Dublin in October…
