What if the Premier League has its own streaming service : "Premflix"

[Number32]

Bad idea, How about the tax? It would benefit UK obviously, but other nations would against this.
Google and Netflix have the tax problem around the world and they are playing hide and seek with the authorities because of its complexity.

Most of tv already has their own streaming service anyway, you can download everything about premiere league on their apps. They buy the rights and let them pay their own tax.

 

[ivaldo]

I don't think it's that simple and obvious. Right now all the Premier League has to do is negotiate with TV companies. That's it. They do the rest of it.

With their own streaming service, they would need their own sales and marketing departments, they'd have to do the advertising, possibly find sponsors. Maintain all the physical infrastructure for broadcasting.

Netflix's 2019 revenue was 20 billion, almost solely from their subscription fees. But to get that sort of money, the Premier League would need similar amount of subscribers: Netflix has around 160m across the globe. Are THAT many people interested in the Premier League?

- According to the Premier League stats, the cumulative global audience for all Premier League games in 2018/19 was 3.2 billion. But that is just adding together the viewer numbers of all the separate games - which means that a person who watches 2 games every weekend is represented 76 times in that 3.2 billion figure.

- If we calculate based on everyone watching one (1) game per weekend then it's 84 million people watching the Premier League every weekend - that is the ridiculously optimistic figure for potential subscribers. At that level, at Netflix prices, the PL would net around 10b (if those subscribers keep up the subscription for 12 months - don't forget that there are no games in June or July). But 1) that is a very optimistic figure, 2) doesn't take into account ANY operating costs.

So while I'm sure it'd be possible for the PL to make more money from a streaming service than it does from broadcasting, it's probably not that simple.

I didn't say that it would be a simple transition, but it's certainly achievable. Most businesses that sell through third parties do so because either their product can't stand on its own, or they aren't able to generate enough interest without an established platform. The PL has neither of those issues. In fact, they already have a network to show games overseas. They already market themselves. They have a plethora of broadcasting and analytical talent at their disposal.

You're right in one sense; they only have to deal with broadcasters who will do the rest. Which brings me back to the point I made originally. The reason they don't want to do it is because they simply can't be bothered. It's become stagnant. There is absolutely nothing standing in their way to becoming substantially more profitable, being capable of injecting more money into the game, and lowering the costs for consumers.

The marketplace is rapidly changing, and the PL needs to change with it.

 

[diarm]

If it was all EPL games...I’d be happy paying more than £20.

im not fussed for the cricket, tennis, or whatever and only typically watch EPL so even £40 a month would be considered reasonable for me.

problem being we all have different wants and needs so truly flexible pricing is neccessary

seems ridiculous but 40 a month COULD get you how many minutes of EPL Football. They could effectively charge you across all sports for minutes watched. £40 for 4000 minutes.

If you took EPL off Sky, the cricket, tennis, rugby and whatever else would cost customers about

I don't disagree that the viewership is there. But paying literally anything will reduce the number compared to it being on FTA channels like the events you mention.

The balancing act would be pitching it at a price that can get enough money in to be more than they get guaranteed at the moment.

They'd have to get 10m subs at £150 a year to match current UK income. Maybe achievable but unlikely. Sky only have under 11.5m tv subs and despite everything else they offer. And I doubt half that number currently pay for sport.

Again. People would still need sky sport, by sport etc for the cl and other tournaments too.

On a subscription service will they get a lot more subs if Sheffield United come 4th?not really. Could they lose loads worldwide if United keep being shit? Absolutely. They don't have that risk at the moment. They sit back and enjoy the income with basically no effort.

Mandalorian was pirated like feck in the US depsite Disney plus being reasonably priced. Netflix shows are also heavily pirated. Music has done well to get rid of it as much as it has.

Don't get me wrong. I think they should do it. But it won't happen for 5 years. 2 because of the current deal anyway and the one after that because I just get the feeling they are happy banking 3b a year guaranteed.

The UK licence fee works out at £13 a month, so not entirely FTA. A similar charge isn't going to deter many, provided the quality and coverage is good.

And the 10m subs at £150 a year revenue, is without factoring in the additional sponsorship revenue that comes with greater viewership, and the advertising revenue that they could bank via their own platform. Obviously they would incur the costs of filming, encoding and broadcasting the matches but as you've said, they are already doing that to a smaller extent.

Wasn't the Mandalorian pirated so much because it was made available only in the US? I read that the lions share of the piracy was from us over here and elsewhere who wanted to get a look. It's where the Netflix model breaks down as well, when they don't make all of their content available everywhere at the same time.

I agree with you on the Sheffield United/Manchester United point. Personally, I would make it an annual subscription like the TV licence and have people renew in August when we're all feeling bullish about the season ahead.

 

[diarm]

Bad idea, How about the tax? It would benefit UK obviously, but other nations would against this.
Google and Netflix have the tax problem around the world and they are playing hide and seek with the authorities because of its complexity.

Most of tv already has their own streaming service anyway, you can download everything about premiere league on their apps. They buy the rights and let them pay their own tax.

The EPL a UK export. If other countries want to tax it at their border so be it, but it's different from Google and Netflix where they are hosting content from the individual nations in question. This is a UK product these countries are importing because there is demand there for it.

 

[DBT85]

If you took EPL off Sky, the cricket, tennis, rugby and whatever else would cost customers about



The UK licence fee works out at £13 a month, so not entirely FTA. A similar charge isn't going to deter many, provided the quality and coverage is good.

And the 10m subs at £150 a year revenue, is without factoring in the additional sponsorship revenue that comes with greater viewership, and the advertising revenue that they could bank via their own platform. Obviously they would incur the costs of filming, encoding and broadcasting the matches but as you've said, they are already doing that to a smaller extent.

Wasn't the Mandalorian pirated so much because it was made available only in the US? I read that the lions share of the piracy was from us over here and elsewhere who wanted to get a look. It's where the Netflix model breaks down as well, when they don't make all of their content available everywhere at the same time.

I agree with you on the Sheffield United/Manchester United point. Personally, I would make it an annual subscription like the TV licence and have people renew in August when we're all feeling bullish about the season ahead.

The TV licence many feel is basically mandatory. They think they have no choice but to pay it or go to prison. That charge won't go away either.

Mando was pirated heavily worldwide, but also a lot in the US despite it being cheap. Disney don't really mind. They make their money on merch anyway.

Regarding sponsorship, I don't know how much higher it would go. You think Adidas are going to pay more just because we're now streamable worldwide? Or Cheveolet? I can't see it going up much.

 

[Siorac]

I didn't say that it would be a simple transition, but it's certainly achievable. Most businesses that sell through third parties do so because either their product can't stand on its own, or they aren't able to generate enough interest without an established platform. The PL has neither of those issues. In fact, they already have a network to show games overseas. They already market themselves. They have a plethora of broadcasting and analytical talent at their disposal.

You're right in one sense; they only have to deal with broadcasters who will do the rest. Which brings me back to the point I made originally. The reason they don't want to do it is because they simply can't be bothered. It's become stagnant. There is absolutely nothing standing in their way to becoming substantially more profitable, being capable of injecting more money into the game, and lowering the costs for consumers.

The marketplace is rapidly changing, and the PL needs to change with it.

It's worth noting that it would lower the costs for you, as a British or Irish (I assume) fan.

Here, in Hungary, a cable package that contains all channels that broadcast Premier League games cost between €10 and €15. And for that money we also get La Liga, Serie A, Champions League, and of course all sorts of other channels that have nothing to do with sport. For a lot of people here, a streaming service that costs between €10 and €15 solely for Premier League games would be a cost increase.

Now, I would love it because I do not subscribe to cable and use unreliable streams instead at the moment. But many people might say that it's not worth it for them. Because if you think about it, you'd get very little from "Premflix", compared to the other streaming services. It's no coincidence that Netflix's business model is about aggressively gathering and creating content, to make sure that their audience is as wide as possible. Premflix on the other hand would show you 10 games per weekend and that's it. To actually sustain interest, they might need to start creating content of their own: show and analyse classic matches, talkshows, whatever. But again, that's an additional cost.

I think, for all these reasons and because of the numbers I posted above, it's unfair to simply attribute the lack of a streaming service to "laziness". It's more likely that there's an apprehension that the numbers would not work out in the end; the executives are reluctant to change a working, profitable model to one they perceive to be uncertain.

Again, I WANT IT. I'd love to have it. But I can sort of understand if the PL is reluctant to take the risk.

 

[ivaldo]

Mandalorian was pirated like feck in the US depsite Disney plus being reasonably priced. Netflix shows are also heavily pirated. Music has done well to get rid of it as much as it has.

The Madalorian was an 8 part series on a brand new streaming service competing with a dozen other streaming services. The Premier League has 380 games and a customer base with an unsurpassed level of loyalty. The likes of Sky and BT know this, which is why their entire operating model is based around football. Remove football and the whole thing collapses.

 

[diarm]

The TV licence many feel is basically mandatory. They think they have no choice but to pay it or go to prison. That charge won't go away either.

Mando was pirated heavily worldwide, but also a lot in the US despite it being cheap. Disney don't really mind. They make their money on merch anyway.

Regarding sponsorship, I don't know how much higher it would go. You think Adidas are going to pay more just because we're now streamable worldwide? Or Cheveolet? I can't see it going up much.

I meant more as in when the league itself are sitting down to negotiate with their key sponsors. It's difficult to say "we have 1 million viewers per match, probably with another 3 million watching illegally" as opposed to saying "we have 4 million people watching each match via our streaming platform". Works for the clubs too though I suppose - having cast iron figures to hand is always going to strengthen your hand when negotiating with sponsors.

 

[MikeUpNorth]

I don't think the maths stacks up... yet. Sky are basically taking the UK broadcast rights as a loss leader to drive inflated subscription prices.

I think it will change though, primarily as online piracy will presumably continue to grow and they'll have to respond.

 

[golden_blunder]

I currently have sky sports and BT Sports subscriptions and still can't watch all the United games on tv, so for me its not about saving money its having reliable access to watching all United's games live. As you say though the big issue would be that the subs would fluctuate and even more so than netflix as most people would opt out for the summer.

Re summer issue
Bang on some lads dressed as muppets bringing all the transfer gossip, showing clips of the players playing and even making their own rumours up - you’d have all the streamers you can handle

 

[meamth]

10 quid for Netflix + 15 quid for PL. If Netflix got this kind of deal.

You can only watch PL that way, that's crazy big potential if you think about it.

 

[GBBQ]

Re summer issue
Bang on some lads dressed as muppets bringing all the transfer gossip, showing clips of the players playing and even making their own rumours up - you’d have all the streamers you can handle

Thats just crazy enough to work.

 

[youngrell]

The FA wouldn't have to do anything as it would be a PL venture and as I've already said, the PL already has every game being directed, produced and broadcast worldwide. Yes, investment would be needed to bring in all the kit to encode things for a streaming service (consider that for amazon alone, we encode every game in 4khdr, 4k, 1080hdr and 1080. A main and a backup of each. AND it is all done exactly the same at another site. Effectively every game is encoded 16 times! to be sure there is a backup of the backup of the backup just in case)

The facility that much of this is done at (the same place as VAR is done fwiw), would just need to allocate the appropriate rack space and have the PL open the cheque book for a miniscule sum by PL standards. IIRC the Amazon kit installed in our building were it paid for outright was something like £15m, since its all AWs stuff Amazon probably gave themselves a discount.

That same kit has actually been encoding every game all season just to make sure it works properly. Yes there would be other expenses in setting up an appropriate network to handle the huge volumes of traffic if it were available worldwide and so on, but its by no means insurmountable. Its not even 1% of the reason it's not happened yet.



If it were to happen I wouldn't expect it to be less than £300 for a year. Hell they might even not allow you to unsub like Netflix and stuff do.


The note here (as I've also directed L1 and L2 games for ifollow) is that its £10 PER GAME to watch. For L1 and L2 football. Yet somehow they get enough people to pay it to make it worthwhile. Why the feck would the PL look at than and go "ahh yeah lets do it for a tenner lads". They know the value of their product. If Newport County can get people paying £10 for one game the PL will want at least double.

The prices of live sport cannot be compared at all to things like Netflix and Amazon or Disney+. Its a whole other ball game (no pun intended)


It could absolutely be a great service, all those old games are available (we play them reguarly) as well as loads of other stuff. Literally the entire channel is PL only. News, Fantasy Football, Soccerbox, review show etc. As I said, most of you watching a stream or just on tv elsewhere in the world are watching the signal leaving my desk.

But that service will come at a cost that I think people are being naive with.

I can't ever see the PL teams breaking up and having individual packages though, they could have done it multiple times over the last 20 years and always refused. You either get a game for X, maybe a month for Y or the whole year for Z. Still need to pay for CL and FA cup and Europa League and stuff though.

The idea that suddenly the PL does a Premflix and everyones woes of multiple subs dies out is a dream.


Even with their own service illegal streams and iptv will still be huge. Why pay £300 a year if you can pay £40 for a main and backup IPTV that has basically everything from everywhere. People still pirate netflix shows, amazon shows, etc etc.

Whatever happens, you'd still need 2 or 3 subs to see every game anyway as less and less will be on the free to air channels.


Isn't the NFL on Fox, NBC, CBS and some others too?

Oh yeah I didn’t mean the clubs would separate the revenue, just that you could sub to just your club for a reduced fee compared to the full package. I am all for keeping the equal income for clubs throughout the league.

Make it happen mate

 

[Number32]

The EPL a UK export. If other countries want to tax it at their border so be it, but it's different from Google and Netflix where they are hosting content from the individual nations in question. This is a UK product these countries are importing because there is demand there for it.

So what is the different of this "premflix" idea with a legit existing sport streaming service then? You are right, Netflix is a success story by manipulating the content to avoid FAT problem.

FA can't enter the game of broadcasting with their own content because it would ruin the sportivity. Football clubs have been complaining their hectic schedule due to broadcasters demand. I can't imagine the chaos if premiere league is becoming one of the business oriented broadcaster who directly sell the content to the customers.

 

[diarm]

So what is the different of this "premflix" idea with a legit existing sport streaming service then? You are right, Netflix is a success story by manipulating the content to avoid FAT problem.

FA can't enter the game of broadcasting with their own content because it would ruin the sportivity. Football clubs have been complaining their hectic schedule due to broadcasters demand. I can't imagine the chaos if premiere league is becoming one of the business oriented broadcaster who directly sell the content to the customers.

You've lost me a bit here bud.

There is no legitimate existing sport streaming service. The closest we have is what Amazon have done for a couple of weekends per season.

The FA have nothing to do with it. The Premier League would control their own broadcasting, so the clubs would have much more say when it comes to schedules and timings.

 

[Number32]

You've lost me a bit here bud.

There is no legitimate existing sport streaming service. The closest we have is what Amazon have done for a couple of weekends per season.

The FA have nothing to do with it. The Premier League would control their own broadcasting, so the clubs would have much more say when it comes to schedules and timings.

What? I have been watching premire legue in a legit bein sports streaming service apps since 2017-2019 and change to Mola this season.

You have no idea the broadcasting world if you think the clubs would have much more say when it comes to schedule and timing when you have a business oriented authority to manage them.

I'll give you NBA league pass for example, it is managed by Turner Sport and they can do whatever they want to complete 82 games for 30 franchise including christmas game or playing overaseas in regular season or playing everyday. But they have any another competition like a league cup or champions league in football. This how the broadcasting content works.

 

[diarm]

What? I have been watching premire legue in a legit bein sports streaming service apps since 2017-2019 and change to Mola this season.

You have no idea the broadcasting world if you think the clubs would have much more say when it comes to schedule and timing when you have a business oriented authority to manage them.

I'll give you NBA league pass for example, it is managed by Turner Sport and they can do whatever they want to complete 82 games for 30 franchise including christmas game or playing overaseas in regular season or playing everyday. But they have any another competition like a league cup or champions league in football. This how the broadcasting content works.

I am arguing that they manage it themselves. Take control of the broadcasting rather than dancing to the tune of any "business oriented authorities".

Does the Bein Sports Streaming service show every Premier League match? Is it available worldwide?

 

[FootballHQ]

Seems the premier league now banned the betting sites from showing games around 3pm.

Strikes me as ridiculous. Thousands of fans aren't going to stop going to local lower league/non league games just so they can watch Berlin-Mainz at half 2. You can watch the games on your phone aswell of course.