Any move by the Premier League to go direct-to-consumer (D2C) will present significant challenges, reveals exec director William Bush
Premier League executive director William Bush has revealed some of the barriers to entry to launching its own global D2C service. It follows the Premier League announcing plans to make its first moves into OTT, with a D2C platform potentially in the offering for overseas markets.
Questioned by an audience member at the Westminster Media Forum Sports Broadcasting event yesterday (Tuesday 11 February) about why the Premier League isn’t planning a larger, global D2C launch, Bush said: “We’ve done a fair bit of D2C testing and would move in a flash if we thought that would be what consumers [wanted].”
He added that, compared to the likes of BT Sport and Sky Sports, who use their Premier League rights to bring in consumers and sell them other products, this model wouldn’t work in the same way for the Premier League. “Rights holders are more willing to take a risk,” said Bush. “They use AV for the sport but sell things like broadband or mobile handsets, driving customer databases, but we’re not doing any of that.”
Joining the discussion, PGA European Tour and Ryder Cup chief content officer Rufus Hack said the move from a B2B to B2C provider is far from straightforward. “If you go B2C you have to build a huge amount of in-house ability to serve the consumer and take all that on board yourself.” As a result, he added: “I’m not sure how many sports have made money going D2C.
Bush added: “All sports will want to keep their options open”. However, he also raised concerns about ensuring the quality of coverage doesn’t suffer with any D2C move, saying: “Don’t underestimate the old models – there are fantastic standards of production – what broadcasters do right now in terms of the images and sound is fantastic.”
Picture caption: Photo by Peter Powell, Shutterstock