Yutang Sports Note:
Although traditional pay TV is increasingly struggling, and a large number of subscribers are embarking on the path of "cord-cutting", major market players will not have the slightest "sympathy" for them. IP copyright owners focus on the behavior of viewers and fans, not content transmission channels. Of course, as the main contributor to its copyright revenue, the survival of traditional television media still plays a decisive role.
In the current sports content market, digital streaming media is very popular. Taking the United States as an example, in addition to technology giants such as Amazon and Facebook, some emerging intruders have also begun to come in to carve up the market, such as DAZN. Even though the overall volume of digital streaming media has not yet become a reality, the trend it indicates is obvious, and every copyright owner must work hard at this level.
OTT services have gradually become mainstream and have changed the production, distribution and consumption models of video content. Its biggest feature is that it gives users more independent choices. Whether it is live broadcast or on-demand content, its flexibility cannot be given by traditional linear program formats. . In fact, the maturity of OTT has weakened the status of live sports to a certain extent. For those non-die-hard fans, it may be difficult for them to wait in front of a screen for an hour or two, but they will not miss any exciting moment of the game.
Of course, OTT live streaming services are also growing, such as Facebook’s Watch platform and Amazon’s Prime Video. Eleven Sports has successively contributed to the Italian, British, and Irish markets, and its global development speed is shocking. Nowadays, broad online video services have been refined into different forms of OTT live video or on-demand services. Live broadcasts naturally have no room for more changes. As for on-demand, which is our common VOD model, it is relatively rigid compared to linear TV programs. The unified standard obviously meets the taste of the audience and even advertisers.
OTT services also involve user retention issues, such as Netflix, which is the most typical subscription video on demand service (SVOD). This model has the most obvious impact on traditional TV media. Because most SVOD services are subscribed on a monthly basis, the advantages are self-evident compared to the 6 to 12-month subscription period of traditional cable TV operators. Of course, the disadvantage of the SVOD model is that users are highly mobile and have high requirements for platform content and operations.
But in the United States, the number of SVOD subscribers is experiencing explosive growth. According to the latest data from Digital TV Research, a digital TV research company, U.S. SVOD users are expected to grow from 132 million in 2017 to 208 million in 2023. Simon Murray, the company's chief analyst, said that since many households now own more than one TV, SVOD subscription services have a basis for growth. As more platforms and more exclusive content are produced, SVOD's market share will continue to rise.
The North American OTT TV and Video Forecast Report states that by 2023, 73.5% of North American households will subscribe to at least one SVOD service, and it is expected that each household with an SVOD service will subscribe to 2.35 SVOD paid services. Last year, these two figures were 55% and 2.03 respectively. According to another analysis, young audiences have played an important market promotion role in SVOD services.
However, in Murray's view, SVOD is still a supplementary video service and cannot completely replace the traditional cable TV consumption method. Having said that, Netflix and HBO have set good market benchmarks. Amazon, Facebook and even YouTube are preparing to catch up. Apple is also eyeing the market. The development potential of the SVOD subscription service market cannot be underestimated. Compared with traditional cable TV, the
SVOD model already has strong flexibility and room for independent choices, but in the era of fragmented content consumption, it is not perfect. In fact, in the mixed martial arts world, the pay-per-view purchase method is very common. In the broad digital media world, this is a transactional video on demand (TVOD), which complements the SVOD model. The TVOD model only requires users to pay for the content they want to watch, which may be a movie, a sports event or even a short video.
However, the TVOD model in the OTT service system is not common, but the situation is changing now, and TVOD has begun to graft more top IP resources. In addition, the pay-per-view yield is obviously higher, which is definitely a more beneficial way for copyright owners, but from another perspective, users also have higher requirements for content accuracy.
NBA has always been the ultimate pursuer of digital copyright content, and President Xiao Hua is always thinking ahead. League Pass is actually a subscription product portfolio developed based on digital rights. It can seamlessly connect digital content across platforms. Several other major American professional sports leagues have also adopted similar approaches. All-season passes or pay-per-game should be more common subscription models, but the NBA has been thinking about dividing a game into parts to target a more precise user group.
Xiao Hua has mentioned more than once that he hopes to sell the final stage of a game separately, because it is related to the outcome of the game and is the part that all fans pay attention to. For those fans who do not have enough time to pay attention to the entire game , this form is attractive. Recently, the NBA put this idea into action. League Pass launched a separate subscription package for the fourth quarter of a game. Of course, this is still limited to out-of-market games, and the interests of local TV broadcasters still need to be prioritized.
As long as the final whistle of the third quarter sounds, fans can purchase the rights to watch the fourth quarter of the game for only $1.99, while the price of League Pass for a single game is $6.99. Silver said: "This is an important moment, but it is only a small step for the NBA. There are currently limitations to this technology, and we are doing more work so that in the near future, fans can choose to purchase games. "We can imagine a situation where fans are generally having dinner at eight o'clock, and they may only have 30 minutes to watch the game, and they can choose to buy any half-hour game," Silver added. In addition, the NBA has made such changes to a certain extent to cope with the development of sports betting. Gamblers may only care about their own bets.
In essence, adding microtransactions to League Pass is similar to the paid game model on mobile phones, and it is not technically difficult to implement, because currently it is just cutting the original single-game subscription into quarters. This model should attract some new fans, but the NBA also needs to verify whether enough users are willing to pay for it. Silver also said that the league has not ruled out the possibility of dynamic pricing based on the number of games played, just like fans purchase tickets. This new subscription model tried by
NBA is actually a derivative version of TVOD. It is foreseeable that the proportion of TVOD model will continue to rise in future OTT video services. If it can really be conquered by the market, its potential to capture the market will pose a greater threat to traditional pay TV. Digital content can better adapt to the era of fragmented content consumption, which will make the situation of traditional linear video programs increasingly embarrassing.
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