SportsMarketing
As online video continues
to grow in popularity, Matt McKiernan of StreamAMG explores how clubs can make
the most of the commercial opportunities it affords.
Football club video
channels have been a staple of the digital fan experience for well over a
decade now, with services ranging from Goliaths such as Liverpool FCs “LFCTVGO”
to the more niche (but well loved) products such as FC Halifax Town’s
“Shaymen’s Player”. Both have similarities with the same core aim to engage
with the clubs’ fiercely loyal fan-base that proudly turn out as the digital 12th
man week in week out, as well as those who cannot attend matches as frequently.
In this increasingly
commercial world of sport, engagement alone is not always enough to justify the
outlay on man-power and technology solutions to keep the proverbial lights on.
Having a cohesive and well formed monetisation strategy for content (some more
overt than others), allows the club to maintain a fine balance between keeping
the fan engaged and making sure the club has a healthy balance sheet.
There are numerous ways to
monetise content effectively, here are my (personal!) two cents on the matter.
Subscription
Video On Demand (SVOD)
The ever present reliable
grandfather of content monetisation, offering a tried and tested method of
generating income for football TV services. With a large enough fan base and a
strong pricing strategy, SVOD can return a healthy yield. But with the ample
competition, not all of which is just within SVOD space, content needs to be
strong and somewhat unique. Just look at Liverpool’s FCs recent Crown Green
Bowling feature with Jürgen Klopp as a powerful example of unique engaging
(paid for) content for one. Not all clubs however have the resource to produce
this kind of content week in week out.
The most obvious downside
of SVOD services is fan base alienation, without a hybridised approach to
content exposure on TV services. When only the upper echelons of the fan base
are engaging with the majority of club content, it can create a somewhat us and
them feel. In a world where fan togetherness is a key selling point of the
experience, this could be detrimental to the long term commercial goals of the
club.
With that said, it’s still
a proven revenue generation tool.
Ad
Funded Models
Advertising now plays a
key part of our modern day lives. It seems we can’t go 5 minutes without seeing
a tailored advert online and football video services are no different. For now
at least, football is a heavily male dominated sport, advertisers know they can
target specific campaigns at football sites and hit exactly the market they
want. In this increasingly VAST (Video Ad Serving Template) based programmatic
world, these adverts are even tailored to the specific users likes and dislikes
offering a somewhat tailored viewing experience (this doesn’t mean fans won’t
just skip ads however), leading some of the market’s highest CPM (cost per 1000
adverts delivered) values.
It all sounds great right;
engaged viewers seeing exactly what the advertiser wants them to, high returns
on CPM, and it’s available to all fans.
Well yes and no… all
content is completely free, there are more eyeballs on the content and more
revenue generated without alienating the fan base, with modern programmatic
algorithms to automate the selling process.
On the flip side, the two
key metrics that define revenue from advertising revenue are fill rates (ad
spots delivered) and volume of views delivered. Football clubs have many
partners and sponsors, meaning exclusion policies are deep and complex - i.e.
you can’t run a Nike advert if you are an Adidas club, Bet365 if you are tied
in with Ladbrokes, and so on. This means it can be hard to fill the inventory
offered to an advertiser and thus you either end up with minimal returns/fill
rates, or much worse, the same un-skippable advert on repeat driving fans
completely mad.
Bet
Funded
We all know gambling is
big business and this is no more true than in the world of football. The
prevalence of in-play betting and cash out services have excelled in game
betting to cover a huge percentage of football bets within the sector. Football
TV services can benefit from the boom by utilising affiliate betting programmes,
either during video on demand, or with live match services via relatively
unobtrusive calls to action to bet on the next or current event, with the club
receiving a portion of the bet itself.
This method is simple and
effective, however, very event specific and time based, so revenue potential
can be limited.
Sponsorship
Funded
The holy grail of sports
monetisation. Rather than relying on SVOD subscriptions or pre-roll VAST based
advertising, a club can instead package up the full TV service inventory under
one sponsorship package banner. The full win-win (-win) scenario. Fans receive
all content for free, clubs retain a guaranteed sponsorship income each annum
and sponsors engage directly with their target market.
So what does the sponsor
get in return for this investment? At the very least, key touch points that
include:
Logo within control bars,
allowing for a strong brand experience
Branding takeover of
player elements
Overlay advertisements
Watermarking of branded
content
Bumper content - Append
each video with a short 2/3 second sting
Sponsored content – TV
content made to grant exposure to the sponsor
The key concept behind
this is model - the sponsor’s impact should be as unobtrusive as possible
within the viewing experience. By keeping the sponsorship level to a branded
player it allows a fan blanket access to all content, without being pestered
with 20-second-long adverts before each video. This engages the sponsor and the
fan in a positive manner.
Content can be segmented
into different content groups for sponsors to purchase support for. For example
match highlights brought to you by Sponsor X, Live audio commentary brought to
you by Sponsor Y. In this way the club partnerships and commercial teams can
begin to package video inventory in the same manner as more traditional
advertising board or shirt sponsorship sales are arranged. The only challenge
being quantifying the value to a sponsor, with the likely scenario being
looping this inventory into an existing deal as opposed to bringing on board a
new partner.
Sponsors are key partners
of any football club and video is the most engaging piece of digital content on
offer, these two should simply go hand in hand.
Free
The age old battle of
media officer vs commercial director… “Why not just deliver video for free?”.
As monetisation goes this isn’t a completely farfetched concept. If free video
aligns with the core business goals and serves to benefit the business as a
whole, for example, if content is utilised to up-sell shirts, season tickets,
hospitality packages in an unobtrusive fashion, then why not? Video still has a
tangible return for the club whilst also serving some of the more important
business goals -bums on seats, hospitality and merchandising to name a subset.
The only downside to this
model is quantifying said value. How can you be sure the content is engaging
with the fans in the correct way and leading to up-sell within other business
sectors? It’s within the same vein of placing a monetary value on a Twitter or
Facebook follower. Not easy.
Conclusion
There is no blanket answer
to successfully monetising content. There are numerous crucial factors in play
such as; is the content unique enough? Is enough content being produced to
justify the product? There is solid quantifiable data that football webTV
revenue can be generated from subscription revenue and ad revenue, but not much
else. The tried and true work, but without granting the more innovative models,
wings, how can we be sure they can’t fly?
Hybridisation of
monetisation methods is a good starting point. Offer a range of models. For
example; perhaps live content is Pay Per View (PPV), a key sponsor takes on the
mantle of support for highlights packages, and all other content if
supplemental by internal up-sell advertising.
In short, there are
numerous ways to generate revenue from live and video-on-demand content, but
there is no one size fits all model. In some eyes, fan engagement is key, in
others revenue comes first. In reality, the two should co-exist and feed each
other’s goals. Let the ongoing battle between the creative and the commercial
continue.
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