The “new age” of media consumption is always coming… But it’s possible that it’s already here.
Twitter is an official broadcaster of the NFL. More locally, Optus bought the broadcast rights for the English Premier League down here in Australia and has made it difficult for anyone other than an Optus customer to watch their favourite soccer (sorry, football) team in the EPL.
People are increasingly changing their viewing habits and using more unique, well unique for now, methods of watching their favourite TV shows.
Netflix, Stan, Presto, Pandora, Spotify…. You’ve likely heard of them and you’ve likely consumer content through one or even more of them.
We’ve heard people talking about dropping Foxtel yet keeping it purely because the footy is broadcast there. Actually, it’s our director that keeps banging on about it!
In all seriousness, with the next AFL and NRL TV rights to be negotiated it’s likely that a digital broadcaster will pay for the rights to stream premiership season and finals matches live. This could see a wave of pay TV subscribers cancelling their subscriptions and taking up the cheaper option of Netflix.
Will the sport be cheaper than Foxtel? Who knows for now. But you could build a strong case around predicting that it will be and that will change the above from “could” to “will”!
But what does this mean for marketers and brands? Really, it’s providing more opportunities for getting in front of possible consumers. Anything digital allows for greater targeting and, in the short term at least, a more cost-effective ad space than traditional mass-media channels.
Keep an eye on it. It’s changing quickly.
