Abstract
The internet has long been a significant outlet for sports content; Screen
Digest' s first major report on the subject, Sports on the Internet, was
published back in 2000. From sports news to live betting and ticket sales, the
immediacy and real-time interaction offered by online connectivity has
attracted sports content owners and service providers since the early days of
the internet. Since then, the explosion in high-speed consumer connections has
meant that, for the first time, the internet has become a fully- fledged
method of delivering not just sports information and ancillary services, but
direct coverage of sport itself, thus beginning to challenge existing
broadcast distribution channels as a viable means of content distribution.
This report begins by looking at some of the factors in the growth of online
sports video (OSV) in the USA, UK, France and Germany such as the
proliferation of consumer broadband connections and online video. The report
also provides an introduction to sports media rights which is crucial to
understanding the development of the OSV market. The second half of the report
explores the business models being developed, providing usage trends data and
forecasts as well as case studies on leading OSV service providers and rights
holders.
Key findings:
- As online sports service providers and rights holders increasingly seek to
tap into free web video traffic, the lion' s share of revenue from sports video
on the internet is likely to come from advertising.
- OSV will drive the consumption of online TV in major markets in much the
same way premium sports was responsible for driving pay-TV subscriptions.
- Subscription business models will continue to play a significant role in
online sports video. Transactional business models will form a minority of
overall revenues.
- The top 10 list of sports content websites in the US and UK have been
increasingly proliferated by the websites of major sports leagues, although
third party network websites such as ESPN.com and BBC Sports still command
considerable traffic.
- The ‘democracy of distribution' which characterizes the internet is
providing an important outlet for leagues and clubs to exploit their rights
directly.
- With primary sports rights holders able to directly distribute their
content over their own websites, third party sports networks/aggregators and
broadcasters ( the traditional rights buyers) will have to pay ever-rising
prices to secure online and new media rights.
- The importance and value of online rights is changing and in most cases
while internet distribution continues to play second fiddle to more
traditional TV models, internet rights are becoming increasingly valuable.
In the report:
- Forecasts of broadband connections, online TV downloads and streams,
user-generated online video streams, online TV downloads and streams,
User-generated online video streams growth to 2012.
- An introduction to sports media rights including English Premier League
rights An introduction to OSV Technology and Infrastructure.
- The OSV market in numbers including forecasts and analysis on website
traffic and video usage, online sports video market trends and revenues, as
well as the advertising, subscription, pay-per-view (PPV) and Download-to-own
(DTO) models.
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