All broken down: Will the fragmentation of live sports coverage harm betting turnover?

Not so long ago, following sports as an armchair fan in the UK was a fairly straightforward and painless experience. Subscription satellite service Sky Sports had the lion’s share of sport, with terrestrial channels picking up bits and pieces, including the so-called ‘crown jewels’ such as the World Cup and the Olympics. Then, in 2012, BT Sport won the rights to screen 38 Premier League matches, before going on to pinch the Champions League from Sky Sports and ITV, as well as broadcast rugby union, motorcycle racing, MMA, NBA and more. Suddenly, ardent sports viewers required a BT Sport subscription, or trudge to the pub.

Lately, though, coverage is becoming even more fractured with new players of different shapes and sizes muscling in on the action. For starters, Amazon now has the rights to most of men’s tennis on the ATP World Tour – apart from the grand slams – although the online retailing and technology behemoth recently outbid Sky Sports for coverage of the US Open in a five-year deal worth $40m. More importantly, Amazon has also laid down a marker by striking a deal to exclusively stream 20 Premier League fixtures from 2019 onwards. These matches will be available to all subscribers of its Prime service, which costs £79 a year.

Meanwhile, golf’s US PGA Championship in August was aired exclusively by online-only broadcaster Eleven Sports via its website, app and Facebook. Sky Sports has the rights to much of the PGA golf shown in the UK, so Eleven Sports landing one of the sport’s four majors was quite a coup. Yet the transition of the event to this relative newcomer meant William Hill saw a pronounced slump in business. “The move away from traditional broadcast media is clearly not a good thing and turnover was significantly down on last year,” Hill’s Rupert Adams tells EGR Marketing.

“Terrestrial TV is best, followed by Sky and BT, and followed up by something like Eleven Sports, so it was a little disappointing, it has to be said, but it wasn’t entirely a surprise.” A total of £12.8m was matched on the PGA Championship outright market at Betfair Exchange, which Betfair says was down on last year, but “only marginally”, while in-play volumes were “very similar to previous years”. Betfair Sportsbook experienced a small decline in volume. Meanwhile, BetVictor’s head of PR, Charlie McCann, says: “[Betting] volumes were down significantly across the industry compared to the other majors and the lack of television coverage was a major factor.”

Making an entrance

Founded in 2015 and based in London, Eleven Sports is owned by Italian businessman Andrea Radrizzani, who is also the majority owner of Championship side Leeds United. The company has launched its services in 11 countries and embarked on a spending spree worth some €300m to land sports broadcasting rights. UK subscribers pay £5.99 a month. However, viewers who have grown accustomed to the razzamatazz and CGI-wizardry from Sky Sports were probably left underwhelmed by Eleven Sports’ no-frills PGA Championship coverage. Furthermore, some users complained on social media about log-in and streaming problems, while certain viewers said the feed went down when Brooks Koepka sunk the winning putt. Awkward.

Despite these setbacks, Eleven Sports, which has 17 million paying customers worldwide, ruffled a few more feathers by recently securing the rights to screen Spanish football’s top flight, La Liga, and Italian football’s Serie A in the UK. Previously, Sky Sports and BT Sport had the rights to Spanish and Italian football respectively. This further fragmentation of football means lost opportunities for operators to advertise their brands and live odds during Spanish and Italian football matches. Moreover, for bet365, the online bookmaker previously sponsored Sky Sports’ La Liga programmes.

Bookmakers also lose out on business from casual viewers who may stumble across a sporting event when flicking through channels and then spontaneously decide to place a bet. Some recreational punters won’t even have heard of Eleven Sports or notice that some European leagues have disappeared from their set-top boxes. So, if they don’t encounter matches on Sky Sports or BT Sport, and is no live stream on a bookmaker’s app, it stands to reason that betting, and especially in-running turnover, will take a hit. “The simple fact remains that because in-running is so important in our betting, we need it to be available to the general public as whole,” Adams stresses.

While terrestrial TV is typically a couple of seconds behind live, Sky Sports pictures are usually delayed by five to eight seconds before reaching audiences. Eleven Sports subscribers have reported coverage being around one minute behind live. Lags of this magnitude will deter some from betting in play, where every second counts and odds constantly fluctuate. Indeed, professional betting exchange trader Mark Iverson has voiced his concern on social media lately regarding the impact of the rise of sports streaming. “[It] inevitably means the more sports coverage the likes of Amazon, Facebook and other online services get the worse it’ll be for sports traders,” he wrote. Therefore, punters and bookmakers will want these delays drastically reduced.

“There’s no doubt that availability of live pictures can have some kind of effect on betting activity,” says Betway’s Alan Alger. “In an ideal world everything would be free to air on the BBC in the UK, but that’s never going to be the case. We have a fragmented provider environment now which consumers may not be best pleased about but are more than used to. Ultimately, if people want to watch an event in the modern digitally connected world people will find a way.” He adds: “It should be remembered that the biggest turnover event of last year was pay-per-view – McGregor v Mayweather – so restricted access does not automatically mean reduced turnover.”

Money talks  

Eleven Sports may have taken the incumbent broadcasters by surprise, yet Sky Sports and BT Sport have most to fear from the US tech giants. Amazon, which has 100 million Prime subscribers worldwide, looks to be just dipping its toe in the water with the Premier League deal and certainly has deep enough pockets to outbid rivals when the current contracts come up for renewal. Across the pond, the likes of Amazon, Facebook, Google and Twitter have made the foray into live sports streaming, while Facebook recently inked deals to broadcast La Liga matches across the Indian subcontinent and Champions League games in Latin America.

Seeing as younger audiences are transfixed to social media apps, delivering sport directly to them on their phones makes sense. Plus, evidence suggests audiences are increasingly migrating away from the main lounge TV and consuming live sport by way of streaming apps on their mobile devices. “It’s a transition period for broadcasters and a watching brief for now,” suggests Betfair spokesman Barry Orr, “but as we are born of the internet, our customers are well versed in online activity and many are early adopters.”

Meanwhile, McCann says: “The bookmaking industry is an interested observer in this time of increasing fragmentation of sports coverage and how it will be played out going forward.” He adds: “Some media and industry insiders perceive ‘over the top’ internet services such as Eleven Sports to be the future of sports broadcasting. In the short term, however, events covered on an internet-only service will have a negative effect on turnover.”

Yet Eleven Sports is thought to be in negotiations with Sky, BT and Virgin to screen La Liga and Serie A on their platforms, which would boost viewership it that happens. “It seems almost inconceivable that as things stand we will not be able to watch El Clasico [Barcelona versus Real Madrid] on our TVs next season,” McCann notes. The bottom line, though, is that dedicated sports fans will have to cough up more to watch live sport. As one Twitter user put it: “US PGA on Eleven Sports, US Open tennis on Prime… soon we’re gonna have to subscribe to 100 different channels to watch sport.” Okay, it’s a slight exaggeration, but you get the point and the sense of frustration.