Yutang Sports Note:
Eleven Sports, a sports digital media platform, has been changing the entire sports broadcasting industry, and the consumer-centered content delivery concept has become a rising mainstream in the industry. Its slogan is simple, "For the fans." Eleven Sports has become a new kind of sports content aggregator by adopting a digital-first, platform-agnostic distribution model that includes linear cable channels, OTT and direct-to-consumer streaming platforms.
"We are a customer-driven business," said Marc Watson, executive chairman and CEO of Eleven Sports. "It's not about the flexibility of the platform, it's about giving customers more choice, rather than directing those customers where and how to watch our services."
This summer, Eleven Sports will launch in the UK, Ireland, , Portugal and Myanmar ’s new moves further consolidate its diversified and rapidly maturing global business. Prior to this, the company had covered markets such as Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, Poland, Singapore, and the United States.
airborne in the UK
"In all markets, we try to learn from other markets and innovate coverage," Watson said. “In fact, in some markets we are seeing relatively stable content production coverage and fairly low standards. There is an opportunity to both improve quality and reach and attract new younger demographics as well as traditional sports fans. "
As early as May this year, Eleven Sports announced its entry into the UK and Ireland markets, and used the local La Liga copyright as a major weapon, which caused quite a stir. You must know that this right has long been controlled by Sky, the dominant player in the UK pay TV market. sports hands. Immediately afterwards, Eleven Sports successively harvested the exclusive copyrights of Serie A , Eredivisie, Chinese Super League and Swedish Super League in the British market. BT Sports also failed to withstand the fierce attack of this intruder.
Watson bluntly said: "In the UK, we now have more live football broadcasts than any other platform." This is just the beginning. Eleven Sports also won the exclusive copyright of PGA Championship in the UK. According to reports, after Sky Sports and the BBC withdrew from the bidding, Eleven Sports quickly stepped in and finally broadcast the golf Grand Slam event for free on its own platform and Facebook .
However, market development is also accompanied by some hidden worries. This is a problem that is almost unavoidable in the digital media industry, that is, the service experience is compromised due to technical loopholes. Eleven Sports experienced video stream buffering issues during its live broadcast of the PGA Championship, prompting some users to vent their displeasure on social media.
Watson explained: "When you are in the live sports business, whether you are a TV company or an Internet company, from time to time you will encounter technical problems." "You have to accept that and then learn from it and look at the basics The quality of the facility and the whole process, trying our best to avoid something like this happening again. "At the same time, we're really enjoying building the direct-to-consumer customer base and it's going really well and I think we're creating a lot for the industry." Value, this needs to be inherited and developed.”
Expand content distribution channels
Eleven Sports’ business in the UK has received strategic support from IMG, and IMG has also acquired a minority stake in Eleven Sports 1 and 2. The former mainly focuses on football content, while the latter provides live broadcasts of fighting, extreme sports and other content. In order to avoid live broadcast time conflicts, Eleven Sports has also established four flexible live broadcast channels, and a dedicated LaLigaTV is responsible for broadcasting La Liga-related content around the clock.
In order to expand distribution channels in the UK and Ireland, Eleven Sports will also broadcast UFC games starting next year, and will also facilitate content transmission with Sky, BT and Virgin Media, the three leading pay TV providers in the market. protocol.The specific transaction has not yet been fully finalized, but we can clearly feel the business guiding ideology of Eleven Sports.
Watson explained this: "Our philosophy in all markets is not to tell consumers where they should watch our services, but to work hard to ensure that the services are available wherever they want to watch." That is Said that this is also a situation that Eleven Sports needs to accept if they want to watch the game through the set-top box. "We will always work with local platforms on how to achieve this goal."
In addition to traditional pay TV channels, social media channel distribution is also one of the key ways Eleven Sports strives to reach its target audience. In the UK, at least one La Liga and Serie A match is broadcast for free on Facebook every week. This method can not only promote one's own brand, but also attract more consumers and increase additional advertising revenue. Some new users will also be guided to Eleven Sports' paid OTT channels.
Watson said: "I think it reflects the change in the market. Today you don't have to bombard a country with marketing to increase awareness, you can do it more cost-effectively. We are very focused on the cost of acquiring each customer , this is one of the very important indicators."
has brought about tremendous changes in the Portuguese sports broadcast market.
Pedro Pinto joined Eleven Sports in July this year. The former managing director of public relations of UEFA was appointed. He is a non-executive director of the company in the Portuguese market, which is also his home country. In addition to overseeing Eleven Sports' Champions League coverage, Pinto will also be responsible for maintaining relationships with media, commercial partners and rights holders, and assisting with program production.
Eleven Sports wants to change the way sports is covered in Portugal, and Pinto himself can provide a lot of guidance in this area, he knows what the Portuguese market needs. As Eleven Sports' business in Portugal matures, Pinto will also take on more consulting work, and his responsibilities will focus on consulting in key areas of business, such as copyright acquisition and programming guidance. Day-to-day operations are overseen by Jorge Pavão de Sousa, the company’s managing director in Portugal.
Eleven Sports has unified standards for its operating strategies in each market, and its core concept is "small but refined". "We have a lot of people from the broadcast system on the team because that's more the look and feel we want for the channel, rather than the traditional Portuguese TV commentators who are too technical and take themselves too seriously," Pinto said. We will not invest a lot of money to build a core team of dozens of people, it must be responsible organic growth, rather than blind expansion.”
The Portuguese market is obviously different from the UK and Ireland, as digital streaming begins. Invading the territories of Sky Sports and BT Sports, competition for sports rights has become more intense. For the past 20 years, Portugal's four largest media companies have had equal shares in Sport TV, which controls all major sports rights in Portugal.
Eleven Sports looks ambitious and occupies an important market share in Portugal. Its two magic weapons are the Champions League and La Liga. This mode of operation will not surprise anyone, but from the current point of view, the environmental resistance encountered by Eleven Sports is still obvious, which is of course not surprising.
Pinto said: "From a broadcaster's point of view, Portugal is a country with a lot of tradition. Culturally, this market does not change very drastically from day to day. Eleven Sports is trying to stabilize itself by buying important rights "This impact will not only come from the business market, but also from cultural traditions."
“I’m not saying these shockwaves are all negative, it’s just that the market itself is adapting to them. As you can imagine, monopolized channels have been setting challenges over the past few years with their personal and professional networks while we try to expand our own coverage and guaranteed distribution to all operators."
" I didn't feel anyone was aggressive towards us, we just felt a lot of curiosity and surprise, a lot of adjustments from the market to our entry. But the exciting thing is that we tried to overcome these challenges and succeeded because we felt there was enough room in the market for two sports channels.
Brings new content and new approach
Danny Menken, managing director of Eleven Sports, believes this hostility is to be expected. “We see this in Poland as well. "Since its launch in 2015, Eleven Sports has quickly amassed around 2 million users on its platform and 4 channels. "When we entered the Polish market, everyone ignored us, they thought we would be there in a few months. leave. Of course, we didn't. It took us almost a year to achieve good distribution results in Poland.
Mencken described Portugal's "special market dynamics" as "a bit of a strange situation" but he still believes there is a "huge opportunity" there, especially as Eleven Sports has gained "a lot of traction among consumers" In the case of "power". The Dutch said: "Having a monopoly in the market for such a long time means that no one is happy. "The fans are unhappy because they are not getting the quality and price they want.
He added: “What we are seeing is that the market is really ready for us and consumers are showing great enthusiasm. So far, we have launched our own OTT service. Nowo is the smallest of the four operators and we have an agreement with them and they also hold discussions with other operators on our behalf. I believe that within a short period of time, we will be fully distributed in the market. "
Mencken believes that Eleven Sports' content portfolio advantages will allow it to succeed in Portugal. In addition to a series of top football events, Eleven Sports' copyright package in Portugal also includes the tennis Laver Cup, Spanish Basketball League, NFL and MMA. F1 will join from next year. Of course, the rights to the Champions League are decisive. It attracts football fans in almost the entire country, because the two big clubs, Porto and Benfica, can appear in the Champions League. In my opinion, no operator can afford not to offer our channels to its subscribers because it would be suicide.
Pinto said Eleven Sports' programming will bring a completely new approach to the way sports coverage is produced. He noted that rather than having hosts sit in remote TV studios, live broadcasts are meant to bring viewers closer to the scene. . “We want to bring fun, entertainment value and a more dynamic approach to sports coverage in Portugal. “We feel that too much energy is spent talking about the negative aspects of football and the negative aspects of sport and not enough time praising the players and protagonists. "
" My personal opinion is that historically, fans have not been the center of attention, and the level of interaction with fans, or even the growth of social media, is not what I want. We wanted to celebrate the sport that we play with our fans in a very natural and informal way, because in Portugal it is very serious, very conservative, very traditional, very formal. I'm not saying that Portugal doesn't have good sports professionals, it's just that culturally it's outdated. We want to bring entertainment value to this market.
Local thinking meets global perspective
Eleven Sports has expanded rapidly over the past three years, which means its ambitious global growth strategy has been in play from the start. With the launch of each new market, The scale of its operations will inevitably increase accordingly, Menken said: “We are growing very fast, which means you have to be vigilant at all times, especially since we have operations all over the world. ”
In addition to championing accessibility and affordability, the secret to Eleven Sports’ success has been combining local thinking with a global perspective.The network’s internal process for identifying potential content acquisitions and negotiating with rights holders is led by experienced managing directors in each local market as well as the company’s global head of business development and rights acquisitions Menken, Watson and Guillaume Cola Co-supervised by Guillaume Collard.
“We have a large team at our headquarters in London who are always busy looking for new opportunities,” explains Mencken. "We'll ask them to look at the market, look at the demographics, look at everything. "Sometimes the market suddenly becomes very interesting. Portugal is a very good country that we have always been interested in, but when you want to enter a market you need to have a real trump card.
Of course, each market is not isolated. Especially in copyright negotiations, the accumulation of capital is very important. Watson believes that Eleven Sports was able to purchase the Bundesliga rights in Portugal, "not because we have to pay more, but because we are customers of the Bundesliga in many markets. With these connections, the company can be more competitive than many digital competitors." Scale up quickly, ensuring broad distribution in the process."
Over the past three years, Eleven Sports has evolved from a blank slate into a fully fledged global business, and it's only in the early stages of development. Watson said: "Relatively speaking, we are still a small, very nimble company with relatively few decision-makers." "We can make decisions very quickly, and once we make a decision, we will Launch corresponding services very quickly. I think this is Eleven Sports’ competitive advantage in the global sports market.”
Reality and the future
Watson also pointed out that since leading BT into the media market in 2013, the sports broadcast industry has experienced a lot of changes. Major changes. Changing consumption habits and increasing connectivity have led to a consequent rise in interest in digital content and, subsequently, a surge in OTT services. Of course, Eleven Sports itself is riding the wave, but traditional broadcasters, new digital streamers and rights holders are also riding the wave. In this increasingly crowded market, everyone faces challenges and opportunities.
Eleven Sports has achieved profitability in major markets, but the company still has no upper limit on its market expansion goals. When asked whether the company would maintain its current expansion rate, Mencken seemed very optimistic, "Hopefully, maybe more." He also said that Eleven Sports is already a well-oiled machine, and when we enter a market When the time comes, you must know what to do. "We have relationships with copyright holders, service providers, etc. Now, every additional market is actually getting easier and easier."
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