Blow up your video

Bite-sized sport, the aging disease and the ECB arrowed

A leading cricket journalist bemoaned the lack of test cricket on terrestrial tele to me recently, trotting out the well-worn argument that the ECB had severely weakened the sport when it signed coverage over to Sky back in 2005. That’s as maybe, but if long-form cricket was free to view on mainstream TV today, I doubt younger generations would watch it. And not because their awareness of the game is slight. Technology has transformed viewing habits and sports’ owners are struggling to adapt.

We live in a bite-sized world, scrolling through mobile devices for snatches of entertainment, information, connection and distraction. The sports industry has been aware for some time of the diminishing propensity of followers to watch entire matches or competitions. The younger the fan, the less inclined they are to tune in for any material stretch of time. They are happier than their elders to search for condensed highlights or even brief clips of key moments. Social forums, the plethora of competing products and the habits embedded by technology are all key drivers.

A new study by strategists Altman Solon makes stark reading for those clinging onto old broadcast models. Their survey shows 18-24 year-olds watching around six hours of sport a week, only 55% of it live, the rest highlights. By contrast, 55-64 year-olds watch seven hours of sport, around three quarters of it live. As the current young generation ages to be replaced by today’s teenagers, it is impossible to envisage the trend towards greater ‘pick and mix’ consumption reversing.

2024 Global Sports Survey, Altman Solon

In parallel, in-stadia viewing remains popular. If anything, the lure of the communal experience of live attendance is growing. Perhaps this is an enduring post-Covid effect; more likely a consequence of social media and the cachet of an Instagram post from close to the action. Why else do so many spectators raise their phones to film a penalty when high resolution replays from multiple angles will be available online within moments of its drama?

Big sport has relied for years on streaming broadcasters paying hefty rights fees for live action as a lure for paying subscribers. The fragmented streaming market is a severe financial test for committed fans. Altman Solon calculates that it costs around £650 a season to be able to watch every live broadcast Premier League football match in the UK - although a canny sofa-bound supporter could haggle this down through offers and deals. Their young offspring might also hook them up to a free illegal stream or two.

These juicy rights fees are only available to the biggest events and competitions. Most sports, with more modest dedicated fanbases, have of necessity given up their product to the major streamers for free in return for having some visibility on their platforms. Or increasingly are employing YouTube as their host, hoping to generate some ad revenue while providing a service to fans and visibility for sponsors.

The use of YouTube for many sports has been born of necessity, but is now serendipitously riding the platform’s huge upwave. If polemical commentators can enrich themselves by commanding audiences in the millions for their offerings on YouTube and the most successful influencers do the same across social media platforms, sport must accept that this is the way to capture the younger cohorts of fans.

How to monetise sports content in this fast-evolving world? Online advertising can bring in some revenue but the key is likely to be paid-for premium content. If the ECB’s contract with Sky expired it would do well to make the England team free to view online with instant analysis, build-up and post-event programming and exclusive behind-the-scenes footage all available on a pay-per-click basis.

It needn’t take a contract trauma to effect such a change. Audiences range across the age spectrum and all can be catered for. Expect future rights deals by the major sports to gradually de-emphasise long-form viewing while building the range of ways in which fans can engage with the key moments and personalities that jump out of the broad storyline of competition. In the process all of our attention spans will be tested, whatever our vintage.

Gives you wings

In a fragmenting viewing world, there will be increasing room for the weird and the wacky. The Enhanced Games promise athletic competition fuelled by performance enhancing drugs. Who is to say it can’t or won’t garner a massive audience of the curious, the prurient and the libertarian? An email arrives from the Enhanced Games president Aron D’Souza this week parading a series of key staff hires with the likes of Team USA, Nike, Red Bull and Snapchat on their CVs. It then veers off into different territory:

Under President Trump’s leadership, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make history by classifying ageing as a disease.

There is a link to an open letter to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Just as President John F. Kennedy inspired a nation to reach for the stars with the Apollo Mission, you have the opportunity to lead humanity into an era where aging becomes a thing of the past.

Not in my lifetime, I warrant.

If I had a hammer

My life is definitely too short to watch the IPL auction, but the results are always fascinating - not a perfect exercise of the laws of supply and demand, but the swings and disparities in player valuations are a brutal reminder of the influence the IPL exerts over global cricket.

Sam Curran’s contract value was down by 88% on last year. But at least he’s been hired. Just imagine what it must be like to put your services up for sale and then find yourself left on the shelf while teammates from home bank over a million quid for a couple of months’ work.

The most revealing sub-plot from an English perspective this year was Jofra Archer bagging one of the ten most lucrative IPL contracts in spite of the ECB’s original desire to use its central contract with the injury-prone fast bowler to keep him out of the competition as it manages his fitness through to next winter’s Ashes series. Perhaps there is a back-door agreement that Archer will only play a few matches in India and pocket a proportion of his £1.2 million fee. Either way, there can be no doubt where the real power in cricket worldwide now resides.