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- [00:00]
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Adam Leventhal
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- [01:33]
Podcast Host
Welcome to the Athletic FC podcast. I'm Adam Leventhal. Now, a week ago we released a documentary about illegal streaming and it's fair to say that you've had a lot to say about it. So today we're going to answer your questions and look to the future of watching football. Well, with us today we have Adam crafton in the U.S. matt Slater is here with me in the U.K. matt and I have both worked for broadcasters over the years. Matt with the BBC. I've worked for Sky Sports in the past and there's been a lot of reaction to the streaming documentary and almost all of it boils down to cost and accusations of greed. In the UK, for example, you need sky and TNT to watch the Premier League. It's BBC for the highlights, which is in the region of £80 up for all of that. Adam, just give us a little snapshot of what it's like in the States.
- [02:27]
Adam Leventhal
It is hard to sort of give a catch all just because there's always different offers based on whatever wi fi provider you're with or phone network you're with. But I think, you know, as a general rule, if you want to watch every Premier League game Then you need to have both Peacock, which is kind of NBC's spin off streaming service, which is probably. What is it now? Maybe around $10 a month. But on top of that, in order to have access to the NBC games and the USA Network games, which will tend to be, maybe it differs per weekend. Some weekends it could be like 3 out of 10 games, but it will always tend to be the game you want to watch will be on the platform that you don't quite have. That's generally the way that sports broadcasting works now. So I think like all in. Once you've got the cable side of it as well, or the, or the kind of the TV stuff that you need for USA Network, you're probably looking in the range of kind of 60 to $90 a month if you want to be watching every Premier League game legally.
- [03:27]
Podcast Host
So, Matt, it's cost, it's complexity. Is it as simple as that in terms of the cost? Is it too expensive? And why is it so expensive?
- [03:35]
Matt Slater
Well, look, I mean, there's a few things there, so why is it so expensive? It's because people want to watch it. Sport is one of the last things, possibly the last, that we have to kind of watch in the moment that we watch live. You know, it's that classic Likely Lads episode of trying to avoid the FA cup final results. Right. It's impossible, you know, and it was, it wasn't possible then. It's. It's even less possible now. Right. We've all got phones, our watches are sending us notifications. How'd you, how did you avoid that? And also, you know, if you're a fan, you know, you do want to watch. You want to have that kind of communal moment, whether you're there or not. You want to sort of, you want it to be live. That's the whole point. Pretty much everything else. Films, great drama, I mean, news is probably the only other one you can kind of timeshift, you can box set. So sport has this value. You can see that really, really clearly in the States with the top 100 shows every year, it's NFL games. 98, 97 of the top 100 will be NFL games. It's got valuable as well because, or got very expensive as well because over the last 25, 30 years, we've been through a few kind of like battles for our wallets, if you like. So the telcos have been fighting with the pay TV companies around your streaming, you know, who you use for your wi Fi. So we had BT versus Sky for a while. We've had new entrants to the market who are trying to sort of seize a, you know, a section of the market, be it because they want you to use their mobile phone service or their pay tv. So that has created tension in the market, which obviously the rights holders of the Premier League love the players. The clubs have done incredibly well out of this. There's tension in the market. So you have these live auctions and underpinning all of that is us. If we stopped watching all the markets, all the tension in the marketplace, all those live auctions would. Would get less live and prices would soon come down. So we keep watching. We love sports. Sports got very good at kind of monetizing our craving for sports products got better. You know, how they serve it to us has got better. So it's a, you know, a whole confluence of things that have created this upward trend of we want this, the broadcasters want this, we want more of it. So prices go right, supply and demand. It's basic economics.
- [06:04]
Podcast Host
And that obviously then bleeds into piracy because, yes, as the costs have gone up on the whole, that has got too much for some people. Obviously we have a cost of living crisis as well at the moment, which also bleeds into it. And I think it's important to bring in the results of the survey that we put out over the course of last week. And now we have the results of that survey on people's streaming consumption habits. And I wanted to get your both of your reactions to this. What came of the survey, which was an anonymous survey which we ran on the Athletic, 47% of people that came back, and that was over 5,000 people, said that they consumed their football via illegal streams. That's significantly higher than the YouGov research that we featured in the documentary itself, which was a representative sample of 2000 people from a UK audience and that said that 9% had consumed illegal streams over the course of the previous six months. Another 9% on top of that said that they weren't sure or preferred not to say cost. The 3pm kickoff blackout, which we'll talk about, and convenience were the main reasons. Websites, fire sticks and a combination of other usage were spoken about in the survey results as well as the top three. Adam, from your point of view, does that level of consumption of illegal streams surprise you?
- [07:32]
Adam Leventhal
Did they say that that was the exclusive way that they consume sport or just our way that they consume sport?
- [07:40]
Podcast Host
It wasn't the sole way in which they consume sport.
- [07:43]
Adam Leventhal
In which case I'm surprised it's as low as that. If I'm being honest because I think if you are a Premier League football fan, there are going to be weeks in the Premier League season where there are games where your team is playing and talking here about the UK market where you can't watch your team, you might not even be able to hear it on the radio. I mean, it's like completely absurd as a situation to be in when the league is selling itself so regularly as this kind of 247 products that is so invasive in people's lives to then say to the home market you can't actually watch your own team's games. And you know you can. Everyone can have their own opinion, their own debate on the reasons behind the blackout, the good intentions behind it in the first place, but I think that is a, that is a contradiction. You know, you can't be this 360, 247 all in immersive experience that eats into your news, your insight, your, your streaming content, all of this stuff, and then not be able to actually see the product. So I'm surprised it's as low as that. And then, yeah, clearly, I think the cost thing, I'd also be interested to see it generationally because I'm 31. The amount of people I know aged 35 or under who still use their parents Sky Go, I think is another issue for the big broadcasters that they are sleepwalking into. How many people, I don't know, who have been kind of university age in the past 10, 15 years actually have their own sky and TNT platforms. They may come back and say that number is really high anecdotally, you know, much like we see in society generally now, like people of that age group because of whether we say cost of living or housing is unaffordable or rent costs are going so high, people just can't afford it of that age group. And that, that I think is where we then maybe move in as this podcast goes on, into how the models are going to change. Because I don't think it's sustainable in its current way for many consumers.
- [09:49]
Podcast Host
Matt, what's your take on those results?
- [09:51]
Matt Slater
Adam makes a very Good point. Around 3pm I feel like we really need to tackle 3pm properly because it is, I think, a good idea from another age.
- [10:03]
Podcast Host
Well, let's deal with it now because it is a key point and obviously, you know, we mentioned it in the, in the documentary that it basically emanates from back in the 60s brought in and actually used since the mid-80s, but it is now becoming the feeling of it feeling outdated is becoming more and more. And the fact that at the start of the Premier League era, there were 66% of games at Saturday 3pm, and that's dropped last season down to 33% is quite something. And from the survey, 64% of respondents said that they want it scrapped. Matt and Adam, you can both have different views because it's, it's, you know, Adam, speaking from a U.S. audience, it's, it's sort of less obviously applicable over to the. In the. In the States. It's not an irrelevant thing in the States. I should say, not speaking from an American audience, but from your point of view, Matt, what's your view? I'm not. I don't want to put you in the sort of the old school. We need to protect the lower league crowds. But what's your feeling on it?
- [11:04]
Matt Slater
Well, look, for a long time I've had real sympathy with the 3pm blackout for, for people that have no idea what we're talking about. Between 2:45 and is it 5:15? Yep. On Saturday afternoons in England, Scotland and Montenegro, I think, are the only three countries in Europe that still do this. It is a UEFA rule. I think it's article 48. You cannot show live domestic football in your own market. Now, most European countries have totally, you know, gone away from this, forgotten this. You know, you look at Spain, every game has a sort of its own kickoff time. I think that's pretty common now. We, however, and I think it really is just. I'm not across what's going on in Montenegro at the moment, but England and Scotland have continued to apply this and this has come up. It's come up time and time again and. And the view from the football industry, particularly from, if you like, the EFL further down the pyramid, is don't change this. We are terrified that if the Premier League starts putting all its games on domestically and it's raining and it's November, it's December, it's January, they're not going to rock up to pick on your League 2 League 1 team, right, because they've got a nice big TV at home, it's warm. They've got their own beers in the fridge. They can have a cigarette if they want a cigarette at home. There's all sorts of things they can do at home. They're just not going to get in the car. They're not going to walk and come watch and come stand or whatever it is and watch my game. And then there was always, I think, another fear back in the day that it would also Hit participation. So that was again, a sort of FA objection to the idea that it would, you know, if. If everyone was staying at home and watching, they might not even go play the game. I think that one. I don't hear that one so much. So really the one is about sort of cannibalizing live attendance. So here I know Adam's desperate to say something. I'll just wrap it up. I have changed my mind. I used to be very sympathetic to that, but as I've got older and I. And I have the sort of like my. My own sample size, my kids live events matter. People still like the next generation. I know they're different to us, but they still like going to games. I can assure you they love it. They want to go to games. It's like going to concerts. It's like going to the cinema. These experiences still matter. I just don't believe that putting stuff on TV is going to switch, is going to. That's it. We're not going to games anymore. Maybe one really dreadful day perhaps, but across the season. No, not at all. Not at all.
- [13:37]
Adam Leventhal
I agree, Matt. There's kind of three things that I'd say. The first is, you know, just in the States, I mean, we have this absurd situation where I'm thousands of miles away from the home market of the Premier League and I can watch games every game the Saturday morning. Here is the most remarkable thing from a Premier League fan's point of view. You can just watch games from 7:00am through till, well, now that there's an 8:00pm game in the evening, almost through till 3:00pm if you wanted to, and you can watch whichever game you want and completely freely. So I think that's unfair on the home market and I know there's an argument it's protecting different parts of a home market, but I just don't really buy it anymore. The other bit which I don't buy is the FL has had iFollow where you've been able to watch EFL games. Surely if anything is going to disincentivise EFL fans from going to those games, it's by putting those games on a platform. You can't not have the Premier League but have the efl I follow service at the same time. And I think the final point is just agreeing with you, Matt, on the. I think the live sport, the amount of disruptor leagues who approach us at the athletic keen for coverage come to our event, whether it's a freestyle chess tournament or Padel or Sail gp, all of these different kind of in the States now there's like big volleyball leagues, lacrosse leagues. Bull riding is apparently a massive kind of thing here in a way that I never thought it could possibly be professional bull rider. So I do think. But this live sports idea is still so big. You know, like my nephews live around the corner from Salford City. If they have a quiet Saturday, they go to Salford City. It's not because they're Salford City fans, it's just because they like going to a game. Because if you are participating in playing football as a kid, you therefore like to see the real thing. That's never changed. And I think where it has changed maybe is I don't know if you want to necessarily sit with with a single screen and watch 90 minutes of it without any other distractions. But I do think kids still really want to go to the thing and see, you know, even if it's League two, it's still really high quality in real life to see that level of football. And I don't think that's changed.
- [15:56]
Matt Slater
Even if it's National League, even if it's National League north and south, the gates are going up. You know, in my lifetime, the gates of non league football are going up.
- [16:05]
Adam Leventhal
There was a piece in the in the the Times of London by a former colleague, Joey Durso, actually talking about how attendances in English football have never been better, never been higher across the leagues.
- [16:18]
Podcast Host
Okay, next we're going to be talking about if the Premier League were to redesign how they offer football to its fans.
- [16:27]
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- [18:49]
Podcast Host
So an option for the Premier League could could be having its own direct consumer platform. It's often referred to as as Premflix, and it's become quite a big debating point. And before we get stuck into it with with Adam and Matt in the documentary that we put together, the Underground World of illegal streaming, I actually went to speak to fans about how much they would be prepared to pay if Premflix arrived.
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Adam Leventhal
Personally, I'd say about £20. £20amonth to watch Arsenal content all the games, never miss a match. That'd be fantastic.
- [19:26]
Matt Slater
I don't think it stopped me coming.
- [19:27]
Adam Leventhal
To games either, because it's still quite a reasonable price, no more than 20 pound. Every streaming service is so expensive now you can see why people do stream it illegally, but obviously the easiest option is your pub. But then you're spending more and more money on drinks, food, etc. I mean, it'd be an absolute brilliant idea. That's what I think it needs. I'd pay 15 pounds a month.
- [19:45]
Podcast Host
I'd say, yeah, for every game.
- [19:47]
Adam Leventhal
Yeah, happily, I'd pay £15amonth.
- [19:48]
Matt Slater
Yeah.
- [19:49]
Podcast Host
I don't think there is a price on it. I think people would pay whatever it was if it was available. I think people would pay it. I think anything in the region of between sort of 1999-29 pounds 99 pence a month to watch, not just as Arsenal fans, but just Premier League fans. Like, we're Arsenal fans. We're also football fans as well. So you're naturally going to pay to watch that level of football. If you. You could.
- [20:10]
Adam Leventhal
£50.
- [20:11]
Podcast Host
You pay £50?
- [20:12]
Adam Leventhal
Yeah.
- [20:13]
Podcast Host
If you get out the three o' clock games.
- [20:14]
Podcast Advertiser
Because what everybody wants to see is.
- [20:16]
Adam Leventhal
A 3 o' clock games.
- [20:17]
Podcast Host
If there was just a Netflix of Premier League Netflix, I think that is.
- [20:20]
Matt Slater
Personally the way forward.
- [20:21]
Podcast Host
I think everybody would pay for that. I really do. So, as you can hear a huge range of opinions in terms of the price, everyone was on board with it. They all found that it would be a good answer to the problem. But obviously, as you heard there, you know, 20 pounds, 80 pounds, one guy saying, you can't put a price on it. Adam, let's start with you. Does this feel like the way to go, giving that sort of optionality to fans to be able to get what they want when they want it?
- [20:51]
Adam Leventhal
And the Premier League, you're saying, would own this platform, you would buy it directly from them? Would it be with a broadcaster? How would they do it?
- [20:59]
Podcast Host
How it would actually be structured on the back end is still up for debate. However, it would be the Premier League's platform. Yes. And it would have that ability to be more competitive in price. These are all sort of hypotheticals. You would presume that it would have 3pm kickoffs, you know, factored into it. It might even have that option to just consume your team's games. So you've got various different options. I'm speaking for a platform that isn't made yet, but I'm just sort of speaking in terms of what fans ultimately would like to see. So if you got all that, does that feel like the way to go?
- [21:37]
Adam Leventhal
I can see why it would work for some fans. I mean, I'd be cautious about the idea that the price point would be as generous as some of the numbers that have just been suggested. I think I'd also be cautious about will it cost the same to watch Burnley games as it will cost to watch Manchester United games? I don't know. Will there be dynamic pricing around the biggest games around? I don't know. Manchester United against Arsenal or City against Liverpool or whatever. I'd be very cautious about this kind of unknown, rosy, greener grass where you're relying on the goodwill of Premier League owners who, when they talk about where their investments are going and where their asset may multiply or grow in value, they always talk about media rights. So this isn't going to get cheaper. I don't think might be wrong. There may be more options which may in turn lead to more prices. I mean, I guess what's interesting is actually very few major sports have chosen to go down the single platform route. Really the only league that's done it is MLS with Apple. And I guess now F1 are doing it with Apple as well. And Apple do like these. This is why they've kind of struggled with sport a bit, because Apple like to own stuff globally. They like to be the single port of call and that's what they got with mls. But it didn't work with MLS because it was like a double platform almost. You needed an Apple subscription and then you also needed the MLS subscription on top of that. And also MLS massively overestimated its own growth and reach by thinking people were that desperate to go and find it and pay for it. You know, almost entirely. Almost entirely away from linear. The Premier League is very different. Right. It has the established global audience. People have that fervent need to find the product. So it would work. What I'm cautious of is that it would be necessarily be better from a pricing point of view for the consumer and it wouldn't be subject to pretty unfair abuses by the people behind it.
- [23:51]
Podcast Host
Yeah, Matt, I mean, what's your take on it? Because, you know, it's very much an unknown, but it is almost discussed as the next step. But I suppose, you know, if you were to skip on and say, yes, it is going to happen in some way, shape or form, it doesn't necessarily solve the piracy issue anyway because you're just then catering to Premier League fans. And a lot of the issue is people get fed up because, oh, I want to watch the Premier League, I want to watch, you know, the Conference League, I want to watch Champions League and then I'll still need another platform and I may as well just go and get an IPTV service that will provide that all in one place anyway. So what's your. What's your take on it and how it would potentially be funded? Because it's an uncertain environment, isn't it? If you're going from, you know, traditional broadcast revenue to subscription revenue, it's a fluctuating market. And clubs don't like risk, do they?
- [24:43]
Matt Slater
Absolutely. Well, I think your question has brought up all the key issues, really. So I think we've done what's attractive about the idea. However, as you've just referenced, the real attraction for the big rights holders, like the Premier League, the Olympics, NFL, by going with these traditional broadcast deals is they're outsourcing risk. They're also outsourcing a lot of headache and pain as well. I'll do that in a bit. But outsourcing risk is the key thing. So all these clubs, these players, these agents, the whole industry needs money and they want to know what they've got to spend. They want certainty. So when you go to a Sky for a three year deal, or we're moving to longer deals, whatever it is, longer deals in the States, when you go to NBC, you're basically saying, here you go, you've got three, four years worth of rights. Do what you like with it. We trust you. You're really good at that. You, you can do all the back office stuff. You can deal with angry customers if they're, if their wifi's down. We don't want to hire people to do that. Oh God. You do that, you market it. You go up on people's roofs and put satellite dishes, you dig hole, you do all of that. We are, you know, that's not us, that's your job. Give us a great big check upfront check and maybe you'll maybe, hopefully even. Because we want to be partners, you'll make a load of money and we're quite happy for you to make a load of money because we'll ask you for more next time. Right. This is basic capitalism. But if, if you're cutting out the intermediary, if your now relationship is, you know, we're talking directly to our customers and we're going to subscription model and they're going to pay us in monthly goes, season goes. They're not going to give us three, four, five years worth of money up front. No. I think you'd almost need to go to a third party like a great big private equity fund to replace the great big check that you used to get from the large multinational broadcaster to give your clubs that certainty of revenue that they had before. So you're creating another intermediary with another person taking 10, 15, 20% off the top. So I think that big check problem is going to be a problem for a long time now. We know the Premier League has been looking at this idea, everyone's been looking at it, you know, WWE, F1TV. But they have been quite clever. They've complemented those little deals and other little small sports have done it. It tends to be something that you have to do if you have no choice, if no one's like biting your hand off for Your rights. Then you get innovative and go, okay, I'll go direct to the consumer then. Hence league earn in France. But you wouldn't do it if you didn't have to, because the old model is still best for that certainty and for the taking all the hassle off you now the Premier League has thought about doing it in smaller markets. So they've been, they've been talking about this for five years that maybe they would do it somewhere like Singapore. Right size, they can kind of control. It's like an almost an experiment. The Scandinavia perhaps, but they haven't done it yet because even in those places, the old way of doing it is still better than the possibility of the new way. And I've seen people scratching, you know, write things down on bits of paper and say, well, you know, why, why are we taken 100 million from telephone company X in Asian country Y when we know we've got millions of fans over there, so we'll just charge them five pound a game. We're going to make five, six times as much. Yeah, maybe you are, but that is fluctuating. It's not upfront. And maybe you're then going to have to have a massive call center somewhere that is handling thousands of phone calls because the game is buffering. That's where no one's done it yet.
- [28:17]
Podcast Host
And Adam, from your point of view, Matt, going through the reasoning behind all of it, it's all focused going back to what we were saying right at the beginning on, yes, the natural business practices of CEOs wanting to make as much money for their organizations, their shareholders and things like that, kicking the can down the road a little bit, which prioritizes the big institutions, the greedy, inadverted commas institutions, the clubs, the leagues, and it doesn't prioritize the fans. So sort of coming back to the original premise of the discussion, you can understand why the disillusioned fans continue to just sort of go, well, this is never going to change. And that's why I will be nimble online perhaps and go and find other sources.
- [29:07]
Adam Leventhal
It is an interesting thing, isn't it? Kind of the. I think we as sports fans think we are entitled to this content because we are told a story by the sporting institutions that we are like a family and part of it. But at the same time, you know, it does remain, it is a product. And you know, I don't feel entitled to the Cadbury's Dairy Milk and the newsagent to the point where I would go online and find a free one that's the kind of counterargument, right? Like it is at the end of the day, like you are still stealing something that is worth money. Now there are all these conditions around it which leave people feeling that they have no choice but to do that. But that is still the reality of it. Right? You know, so I get why people in power are frustrated by it. I also understand why the people on the other side behave the way they do. It's also really hard to get Cadbury's Dairy Milk in the States. So if anyone does know an online piracy platform to get my Cadbury's dairy milk, then please let me know.
- [30:12]
Matt Slater
Can we do a pod on how bad American chocolate is?
- [30:14]
Adam Leventhal
We can do it. TikTok. We can do streaming. We can do it all. Yeah, completely.
- [30:20]
Podcast Host
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- [31:06]
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- [31:56]
You're listening to the Athletic FC podcast with Adam Leventhal.
- [32:01]
Podcast Host
So we've spoken about the premflix idea and the uncertainty that brings, and I think it's also important to discuss Matt, the image that has always been sort of on the horizon. That a big platform, a big tech platform will come and just sort of swallow up the rights and just recreate it just with a lot more money. And it was raised within the documentary by a guy called Roger Mitchell, who's worked in the, in the football industry, previously worked in the music industry. He's written a book about it, basically saying that they have come into the market, but they've shown what they want out of it. And that's just big stuff and big moments and building it around, you know, consumer moments like Black Friday, et cetera, et cetera, you know, holidays or whatever it is. And that's why it hasn't, you know, the status quo hasn't sort of just been given an injection in the arm to just some super next level. They've just come in and they will cherry pick what they want. So it's not necessarily going to come that this era of sky and TNT is just going to be replaced and the Premier League are going to be able to advance their revenues. So there needs to be a little bit of a recalibration, doesn't there?
- [33:12]
Matt Slater
Well, look, in the parlance, we're talking about the bundle, right? So the bundle is your kind of offering to your customers and you have to think about who's doing the offering. So I think you've already referenced the shopping thing. So Amazon got interested in sport, they're still interested in sport. Loads of Champions League, they've got rights packages dotted around Europe. But you're right, they are interested in E commerce. They were basically GIF wrapped a very specific package of strategic moments early in December, Boxing Day, where people are going to be shopping. And Amazon said, yeah, we'll have that. Great. Because what we're really interested in is selling people's stuff. And if we can get everybody onto our platform, get everyone onto our service, we don't really even care if they drop us in February or March. If we can absolutely nail December, Ka ching, maybe we'll retain enough. They've retained my wife from about three or four years ago. We're still Amazon prime customers and that was off the back of the football, you know, venture. So well done then. Netflix is the one that people often look at.
- [34:20]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [34:20]
Matt Slater
They appear to have won certainly this sort of first round of the streaming wars. But they are offering you basically like BBC1, BBC2, they're saying there's something for everyone. You must be a subscriber of Netflix because you're going to get great drama, great films, great, great docs, and we're going to do maybe a bit of sport now. Because we think there's some sports fans in your family and we want to keep you in our wall garden. We don't want you if you're, you know, worried about, oh my God, how many subscriptions have we got? Well, Netflix is the last one you're going to drop because by the way, we've got NFL on Christmas Day and we've got whatever it is they're going to do next. So this is what I think Roger Mitchell's talking about. The big stuff that will never go out of fashion, that will always be popular. You know, NFL are now they often watch where they go. Right. Because they everyone else is watching. You can get you got the first game of the season on YouTube. Like I've already mentioned Christmas Day on Netflix. They already pretty much in America, everyone, all the broadcasters get a little slice. They've been doing Thursday nights on Amazon. So I think we're going to see, I'm afraid, more of this if you're a British, if you're a European football fan, not less, and if you are a Premier League fan, which again is in that top bracket, NFL, F1, arguably Indian Premier League champions league of the stuff that is always going to be desirable. Yeah, you're probably going to have to have a few subscriptions until someone reinvents something called cable TV and you put it all back together again and you pay one person for a range of apps if you like, but we haven't quite got there yet.
- [35:57]
Podcast Host
Adam, I'll come back to Matt in a minute about maybe taking us into sort of 2035 and where we might be. But I wanted to put this to you, Adam. If there needed to be the case that the Premier League had to survive on less money and players earned a bit less and overall the league wasn't worth as much money, do you think intrinsically would make it less attractive if, if the players were just earning less and the clubs had to just act a little bit more frugally?
- [36:34]
Adam Leventhal
I think even the suggestion is to kind of just ignore the current state of the world. This is not something we're seeing in any industry at the moment. We're not seeing the richest and most successful get poorer. We're only seeing more stratification. I don't mean to sort of make this political, but like, you know, we are, we are seeing across industries kind of this stratification where you have a small number of market industry leaders pull away from their competition. And I think the Premier League is that within football. And I think it's also by the way, one of the reasons why they haven't dared to do something like this, maybe let someone else take this risk first and see, you know, let La Liga do it. See how they get on a bit like the game abroad thing, because our position is really strong. There isn't a need to do this other than clubs have talked themselves into this place of being, oh, the rules are hard, we don't have enough money to spend, despite actually having more money to spend than every other team in Europe and the world. That's basically it. It's this kind of obsession with growth and that's maybe why it's being successful. But FEMI league doesn't talk about its own growth that much, which probably tells you that it's grown. You know, other leagues are talking continuously about growth and maybe they do when they're doing pitches and maybe when they're talking to Matt behind the scenes, but they don't want coverage, saying, we're growing in the way that a lot of other sports and leagues, particularly in the United States are having to do constantly.
- [38:07]
Podcast Host
Let's move this into 2035. Where are we and how are we going to be watching our football? Matt, do you think that after 2029, when the next UK rights cycle comes up for grabs, I mean, Richard Masters, who features in the documentary has basically said he doesn't necessarily think it's coming anytime soon. A new prem flicks or a massive sort of switch on, switch off situation. Where do we go to? Where do you envisage football being consumed online is going to be by 2035, 10 years on?
- [38:41]
Matt Slater
It's a great question and it's, it's one of the things to debate. But I, you know, I, I think we've all got to be very careful, right? Because just in my career there's been a dozen things that now seem normal that no one predicted. You know, one of the very first jobs I had was when BBC Sport website launched its website and hired a load of people to do sport on a website. And we all, it was seemed as like, I don't know, is this going to work? Should we give this a go? The story of our, of our own venture, our own humble venture, the athletic, you know, going behind a paywall on an app. So it's very hard to predict as anyone. You know, you see, it's always quite funny to look at people make predictions about England teams of the Future in like 10 years and you'll have a laugh and go, how on earth did they think that so and so was going to be our starting number nine. Here's what I'm reasonably certain about though, because it's already starting to happen and audiences appear to like it. So hyper personalization. By that I mean the old fashioned way. So we've been talking a lot about old fashioned ways where BBC one, whoever, the big broadcaster would put something on, you know, they'd talk to people and they'd try and make it nice and fresh, but it's still what they think you like. Well, already we're seeing that people. You know what? I might want a different audio commentary. I might want Home Bias, I want my club's commentary, I might want my favorite content creator, my favorite YouTuber. I might want a jokey one, a funny one. I might be a mad gambler and I want loads and loads of gambling odds and I want loads of data. I might be a fantasy football player and I want that reflected in how I'm viewing. So I think we're going to see a lot of overlays. We're going to see a lot of kind of L shaped stuff on screens. Like when you watch, you know, the goal show or you know, prem Rugby is doing a lot of this now. If I see someone about to take a penalty instead of looking at my second screen, you know, what's this guy like at penalties? Or, or so, you know, Brighton's new signing I've never heard of. He suddenly scores two goals. Where's he from? Where'd they buy him from? What this guy? Who is he? So instead of having to watch it on my phone, maybe I can just watch it on whatever screen I am watching on, you know, whatever device it is. We might get some new tech. You know, I think for about 10 years people have been trying to tell me we're all going to be watching on those great big goggles and visors and stuff. I'm not convinced that's going to happen because frankly, certainly Brits don't like looking like idiots. And it also seems, it seems very kind of lonely and, and let's be honest, football should be communal. You're cutting yourself off. I definitely understand apparently that in the States it's just starting to grow. I think it's more of a gaming thing. I still think though. Anyway, gaming I think is interesting. All broadcasters are learning from gamers. I know ea, ea, the game is doing some quite interesting deals with Saudi pro league MLS where you don't leave the game. Think of it as a platform in itself. So you are playing the game, you might be following the game. You might be watching the game, you might see someone throw a touchdown pass, you might see someone score a penalty and you might think I'm gonna have a go at that in the game. So already I'm thinking in those terms and it's, I don't think it's any accident whatsoever. The EA have just been bought by Saudi money. It's really interesting deal. There's a bit of kind of entertainment private equity money in there. Of course, there's a bit of Trump money in there as well. But anyway, the Saudi money I think is really, really interesting. We know that Saudis are already putting loads of money into Dazn. Dazn are already trying to sort of kind of be that Premflix that Netflix was sport. So look, hyper personalization, a lot more streaming. Does it have to be 90 minutes? Do my kids have to consume it the way I consumed it? Maybe they like highlights packages. Maybe they want to watch four games at once again. I know that's really common now in the States with NFL, isn't it Adam? A lot of people are watching the multiview where you watch four games and you choose which game you really care about. That's the one you have the audio on. So we're going to get a lot more of that, I think. I suspect actually the very last thing to go will be sport. When I say go, I mean like old fashioned thing. So long after everyone stopped watching TVs to see drama or the news or documentaries, I still think people will be gathering together in pubs to watch big games 15, 20 years from now. I think it'll be the last thing.
- [43:09]
Adam Leventhal
I, I want to pick up on a few of the things Matt said. I mean first of all, I think what you say about kind of highlight packages, I think that's already been, you know, something that BBC have done this season which they've, I don't think they've done before is Match of the Day, the highlights show in the evening. You can now watch the goals on their website many hours before the show's even out. You know, that's a difference. I don't think that actually cancels out the audience for Match of the Day. That's just the BBC serving as many people within its demographic as possible. Right. There's some people who just want to watch the, the goals and there's some people that want to sit down at half ten on a Saturday night and watch a whole TV program. This idea of how data is used and I don't mean this in the sense of like tactical, technical Data. I actually mean player data. And I think this is going to be a really interesting discussion with player associations. And also who benefits financially from some of this stuff. I think of something like World cup next summer, it's a penalty shootout. Wouldn't it be cool to have the heart rate of the player walking up to take the penalty on the screen? Almost like, you know those charts when you have your blood pressure done. And also a few players who are reacting, maybe a coach, maybe a player, maybe the guys being clowns in the studio, whatever. I think there's something that's really interesting that could be done with that. I was at an event recently in New York where ideas like this were touted. The Danish Players association were there and they were saying that something similar to this was touted to their players around kind of heart rate data or physical data. And they didn't like it because of the Christian Eriksen experience a few years ago. And also because of there could be this possibility that physical data becoming so player data becoming public could jeopardise future transfers or the world knows too much, all that kind of stuff. And then also who benefits financially? Is it the players whose data is being used? Is it the broadcaster who's showing it? Is it FIFA as the competition organizer? So there is a danger that you have these dollars on the table and everyone has their hands in and it just ends up being in a situation where the money ends up getting taken off the table because no one can agree on it. And in terms of how it's going to change viewing experiences, I think the broadcasters will continue to push for more and more access. Some of it so far hasn't really worked, like the halftime interviews and all of that kind of stuff. But I think they will want more dressing room access, more stuff that fans really, you know, want to see. And then just the final point, picking up on what Matt said, you're so right about like the hyper personalization. And you have these kind of two things going on at the same time. Where 20 years ago people would pick up a newspaper and they would read something they wouldn't expect to have read about that day. This does not happen anymore. Right. Unless you are really committed to doing that. Because even like, you know, the apps you follow have splintered out. You know, you might follow, you might be a subscriber to the Athletic or to National Geographic or you're so hyper niched as a consumer now and in your algorithm as well. On social media, you are so given what your interests are, but at the same time, you have these platforms like a Netflix, like an Amazon, like an Apple that want to be 247 your life. You know, Apple want to be what you use your credit card for, what you pay with, what you watch your TV with, what you how you consume your sports, Apple news, Apple music and Amazon's doing the same and how you do your shopping. So you have simultaneously this hyper personalization and also these kind of three or four mega companies at the top of it all that want to own all of it and it's either going to be it could be a Premflix that is a completely niche break off or it's an Apple and we're all owned by Apple. You know, like I sound like one of those conspiracy theorists now or Sky Sports are still going because so far that's what's happening.
- [47:10]
Podcast Host
Well Matt, Adam, thank you very much. We've got into plenty of the strands that will be pulled on for time immemorial for many weeks and months to come. Matt, you're gon be talking more about the future of the Premier League in English football on the next edition of the Athletic FC podcast which we look forward to. Adam, Matt, thanks very much for your time. We will be back tomorrow.
- [47:37]
Podcast Advertiser
You've been listening to the Athletic FC Podcast. The producers are Guy Clark, Mike Stabre and Jay Beal. Executive producers are Abby Patterson and Adie Moorhead. The Athletic FC podcast is an athletic media company production.
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