Gareth Capon is CEO of Grabyo, the leading provider of social video production and publishing tools for premium rights holders, brands and publishers and a partner of both Facebook and Twitter.
For many years rights owners have anticipated that the next generation of buyers for their rights will be technology platforms such such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. While Yahoo broadcast the NFL live in October 2015, and YouTube has bought exclusive rights for formats such as the Indian Premier League cricket (IPL), no other major social network has taken on the opportunity to publish the live stream of a sporting event. This all changed last week when Twitter bought the rights to NFL Thursday night football.
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Traditional broadcast media outlets such as CBS and NBC spend upwards of $400m to own the TV rights for Thursday night NFL games. Live sporting rights do not come cheap: within the UK, Premier League rights were sold to Sky and BT Sport for over £5bn and the most recent NBA deal with Turner set new records at $23bn over ten years. This why social platforms taking an interest in them is so interesting.
While the power of platforms such as Netflix are seeing consumers watch content whenever, wherever they want – few sectors are maintaining a strong, aggregated live-TV viewing audience. Live sports bucks this trend. When major sporting events take place, you can guarantee that millions will tune-in to watch the action. Take the 2016 Super Bowl, 111 million people watched the live broadcast around the world – though that’s just 7% of Facebook’s user base.
As the live action unfolds, the conversation takes place on social media platforms. For real-time engagement and information, Twitter is the first place that people turn for updates. Sport accounts for approximately 50% of the conversations that take place on Twitter, which is a clear indicator of why the NFL decided to sell their Thursday-night game rights to Twitter for a figure rumoured to be around $10 million – despite rumours of higher offers from competitors including Verizon, Yahoo and Amazon.
Before this deal took place, social platforms were described as destinations for a fantastic ‘second-screen’ experience for consumers watching video. Fans of all sports could engage with others watching the same games and create a loyal, engaged fan-community. Now, there is just one screen. Consumption and engagement takes place in a single platform on one device – mobile.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat are primary platforms for media discovery. With a total user audience of billions rights holders and publishers need to consider social media platforms as key destinations for their content. Rights holders want to develop a global fan base which means content needs to be accessible to fans; the best way to do this is to provide access to content where fans already spend their time.
Arguably, having won the rights to live stream the NFL, the challenge starts here for Twitter. How the live games are presented within their existing platform will be of interest to all those in the sports industry, and particularly other broadcasters and rights holders. Offering the best possible fan experience will determine the value of enhanced advertising and revenue opportunities for sponsors of the NFL. Currently, the prospect of having the additional reach of Twitter’s 300 million user base (plus another 500m “logged out” visitors), on top of the NFL’s owned and operated platforms and the television broadcast, will be attractive to those brands associated with the NFL.
American sports have a history of expanding beyond North America. From playing regular league games in Europe and Asia to doing trophy tours in-market, the NBA and NFL have made conscious efforts in recent years to globalise their respective sports. Through social video and live streaming of match content to social platforms, rights holders present themselves to both new and existing fans on mobile devices in platforms which drive content discovery and sharing
The value of live broadcast rights for television still far outweigh that of digital platforms and the audiences for live-TV viewing remain much higher than digital and OTT propositions. However, this deal is consistent with a broader trend of increased social video and connected-device viewing, driven by mobile. If other platforms follow suit this could lead to significant changes in the OTT video landscape with social platforms becoming mainstream destinations for live video and TV.
Over 100 million hours of video are watched on Facebook every day and the company claims that users comment ten times more on a live video stream than a recorded version of the event once it’s over – this is consistent with viewing patterns on linear TV. Increased engagement for live video content is important to Facebook and to content creators: it’s more attractive to advertisers as it guarantees audience and has higher potential reach and viral distribution ‘snowballs’ as users share the stream when the event is live. Advertising is the major revenue stream for all social media platforms and the opportunity to engage users and monetise video content is what will ultimately entice brands, rights holders and publishers to invest in social video – both live and on-demand.
TV is not dead, far from it, but the trend in overall viewing has moved from a time-specific, static, single-screen long form experience (such as watching linear TV on the sofa) to shorter, unscheduled, often serendipitous viewing experiences on a multitude of screens throughout the day – dominated by mobile video. Expect to see a lot more live sports streaming on Facebook and Twitter soon…