Plus, DAZN has a big job to do and very little time
VARIOUS ‘SUPER SPORTS’ PACKAGES have quietly been pulled or are being rendered anew by Canadian TV carriers with the announcement last week they will no longer contain NFL Sunday Ticket or NFL Red Zone.
Both Sunday Ticket (every single NFL game, no matter what) and Red Zone (all the games’ action when the team are inside their opponent’s 20-yard line) have been on offer to NFL fanatics from TV carriers for years, since Rogers originally tried to bring it north as an exclusive more than a decade ago.
Since the 2017 NFL season has yet to get under way (training camps are just opening), it’s unlikely that very many of the die hard NFL fans who subscribed to Sunday Ticket are aware they won’t be able to get their wall-to-wall NFL games and highlights from the TV provider to whom they’ve been shelling out around $170/season for access. (The Super Sports packages offered by carriers are more expensive, but year-round, such as Rogers Cable’s, which costs $35.95/month for MLB Extra Innings, NHL Centre Ice, NBA League Pass, OHL Action Pak, Fantasy Sports Network, and U.S. college football and basketball. Each carrier has their own variation on this.)
Until last week, we hadn’t even heard of London-based DAZN, but they now own the rights to all those out of market NFL games and highlights in Canada (for residential customers only since Canadian carriers retained the rights to serve bars, restaurants and other commercial clients) with the launch of their NFL Game Pass. The owner of the service is Perform Group, which is backed by Russian billionaire Leonard Blavatnik. It is buying up sports rights around the world (it owns the rights to the top soccer league in Japan, for example, as well as rights to the NBA and NHL in overseas markets) and already operates in Austria, Switzerland and Germany, too.
Now, for most carriers, Sunday Ticket customers comprise only about 2% of the overall base and a bit of back-of-the-envelope math says that brought Canadian subscription TV companies less than $40 million in revenue annually. So, its loss isn’t that big of a deal, in pure financial terms.
However, if you couch it in the terms the TV industry has been using the past decade or so – that sports is the cornerstone of the North American TV package – that live action will be the main retention tool and that customers will continue to pay high fees for the foreseeable future for the ability to watch their favourite leagues and teams, this is an important crack in that stone.
"The highest bidder for premium sports content this time was, surprisingly, not a traditional TV company, but a newcomer."
The highest bidder for premium sports content this time was, surprisingly, not a traditional TV company, but a newcomer – and a very well financed one at that who is reportedly interested in building “the Netflix for sports.”
Of course, American cable companies and IPTV companies have not suffered too badly with DirecTV’s long exclusive with Sunday Ticket (something the AT&T-owned satco paid US$12 billion for in 2014 for the rights until 2022), so it certainly isn’t the end of the world for Rogers, Shaw, Bell, Telus and the other Canadian carriers.
Plus, Canadian football fans have long had more choice than Americans when it comes to the National Football League simply due to the distant broadcast signals carried by cable, satellite and IPTV companies here – and the complementary-programming in which the Canadian broadcast rightsholder engages. On any given Sunday, thanks to my cable provider, I can watch at least two early games (Bell Media’s CTV and TSN often show different matchups) and often three if a different game is being shown on an out-of-market broadcaster, at least two late games (from the western broadcasters’ feeds) then the Sunday nighter.
One wonders if Sunday Ticket sales would have been higher in Canada if not for the out-of-market channels our carriers offer as a time-shift option. In fact, Rogers estimates it will offer up to 60% of all 2017 NFL games to its customers the traditional way.
DAZN has a ton of work ahead of it here (albeit with a $20/month subscription, it’s far cheaper than the various Super Sports packages, or even what the carriers were selling Sunday Ticket as a stand-alone), not to mention a huge public education task. These games will not be on traditional TV. DAZN won’t be sub-licensing them. Consumers will need a smart TV or a device like a Chromecast, Apple Airplay, or a game console – or just watch it on their laptops.
According to a company spokesperson, DAZN also has no plans at this point to pursue a spot on advanced carrier set top boxes (such as Bell Fibe or Cogeco’s TiVo, each of which have YouTube and Netflix embedded), so it is on its own.
“We have a robust marketing campaign in the works that will demonstrate to Canadians the benefits of DAZN in advance of the season as well as how to get it on your TV,” said the spokesperson in an email to Cartt.ca. The company declined to say what other sports it would offer to Canadians, only that other announcements will be forthcoming.
We asked for comment from Rogers – since they spearheaded Sunday Ticket in Canada. “We know our customers want to experience sports on a big screen in HD or 4K from the comfort of their living rooms, and we’ll continue to offer all the best weekly NFL matchups through customers’ regular cable subscriptions,” said its spokesperson in an email to Cartt.ca. “It will be disappointing for our customers that the new NFL rights holder has decided not to make Redzone or NFL Sunday Ticket available on TV to Canadian sports fans at home.”
Is this the tip of the spear? An important crack in the cornerstone? Let us know your opinion in the box below or drop us a line at editorial@cartt.ca.
