The other huge difference between the US and UK is the additional
complexity of individual team rights (with the exception of the NFL regular
season). In Detroit, for example, all games not picked up nationally
(either OTA or cable) air on Fox Sports Detroit. This means unless you have
cable, your only chance to see the Tigers, Pistons, or Red Wings is if Fox,
ABC, or NBC/CBC carries the game respectively. That extends to the Internet
packages, which black out local market and national games (don't get me
started on the Fox Saturday rules).
This, oddly, is the one place the NCAA gets to do something right: since
they control the rights to their tournaments (as opposed to the individual
conferences), they've offered all 67 games of the men's
basketball tournament on the Internet, even if you don't have cable (you
pay $5 if you can't or don't validate your subscription). Sadly, this is
the only tournament they do it with, as ESPN holds all the other rights and
will let Olbermann and Kilborn host SportsCenter again in Bristol before
they allow stand-alone Internet streaming.
On Friday, October 18, 2013, Adam Bowie wrote:
> I've always been quite jealous that in the US, you do seem to get most of
> your key sport on free-to-air broadcast channels.
>
> That's not the case for the most part in Europe.
>
> In the UK for example, there is no live Premier League football on
> broadcast channels ("free to air" in UK parlance). The live rights are
> split between Sky Sports and a new entrant this year - BT Sport. The BBC
> only gets to broadcast highlights of football. There is no live cricket on
> broadcast television. The BBC does carry some rugby, but most competitions
> are split between BT Sport and Sky Sports.
>
> And the difference between the TV ecosystems is that while we don't have
> "a la carte" cable as has been talked about a lot in the US, sports
> channels are a separate buy. So while ESPN might be a basic cable channel
> (and in reality sucking $5 a month from everyone's cable bills whether they
> watch sports or not), in the UK, it's an additional purchase. And hence it
> costs £22 a month - $35 - to get Sky Sports for example. BT Sport is more
> on top of that, although free if you take their broadband service.
>
> That does lead to reality that Sky, and now BT, can almost always outbid
> the broadcast channels like the BBC (with its fixed income based around a
> licence fee) or the advertiser funded ITV. So we actually have a list of
> events that by law are not allowed to be sold to anyone who doesn't make
> them widely available as a result - The Olympics, the World Cup, the FA Cup
> final, Wimbledon etc. They're considered culturally important enough that
> they should be available to all. That means that these do get broadcast on
> the BBC, ITV or both.
>
> Because sports TV packages are so pricey, not all satellite/cable
> subscribers take channels Sky Sports. Exactly what that proportion is tends
> to be confidential, but of something like 25m homes in the UK, it's
> estimated that only around 7-8m pay for sports (out of 13m who pay at all
> for TV - the rest rely on broadcast only). So if you move your event to
> cable/satellite, you get more for your rights, but at the cost of viewers.
>
> Are advertisers and sponsors of those sports happy with their reduced
> reach? It's a tough balance for networks, sports rights owners and the
> viewing public to get right...
>
>
> Adam
>
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