Simon Jordan (former Crystal Palace FC owner) wrote a fascinating article yesterday…
For those who don’t like football, please bear with me, as there is some very important business lessons & opportunities in what he says.
Simon says (no pun intended) the cost of premier league football has gone through the roof & our ability to watch it involves having to subscribe to other broadcasters like BT, SKY & Amazon Prime. Costing up to £1,000 a year.
In this digital age the idea that broadcasters control how & when we watch the game, together with charging us exorbitant prices to view is laughable & should be canned.
IPTV (piracy) is on the rise & I bet we all know someone watching a game on a dodgy box, fire stick or through open source software. But with the current state of play who can blame them.
To solve this situation. Simon’s idea is brilliant & I can’t believe it’s not already been done…
It turns out that the Premier League owns its own content. Meaning it could build its own platform to stream every single one of their games all of the time. To become the Netflix of Premier League football.
This would allow the Premier League to service its own growth & reward it’s loyal & deserving audience. Charging a subscription of say £10.00 a month to give a global audience the opportunity to watch every Premier League game.
Simon thinks they’d easily get 100 million global subscribers. But at that price I firmly believe they would get much more. Football & the Premier League is huge all around the world & £10 a month is affordable for most.
Let’s say they get 200 million subscribers. That’s £24 billion a year & dwarfs the current £2.7 billion they get. It just shows the broadcasters are making billions more on the back of our own national game.
Imagine the money that could be pumped back into grass roots football. Supporting not just the struggling teams like Bolton & Bury. But non-league football, ladies’ football & children’s football. Football really would come home.
Some time ago I wrote an article about the way how we view TV is changing & that soon we’ll watch things through subscription-based video on demand services.
No longer will you be flicking through channels trying to find something to watch that floats your own boat. Instead, you’ll subscribe to the genre’s that interest you & decide on your provider.
In the article it stated 2/3 of all American’s already subscribe to subscription video on demand (SVOD) services. And as broadband speeds increase in the UK, so will we.
Last night I nearly fell off my chair…
It seems we are waking up to reality. On the 10 o’clock news it stated nearly 1 in 2 UK households have already signed up to some kind of video on demand service. And then questioned what the BBC are going to do about their dwindling numbers.
In Simon’s model (if football floats your boat) you can subscribe to the Premier League (as they become the provider) for £10 a month & watch every premier league game. No matter who’s playing when. Brilliant.
You can use this same model in your own business. Niche down. Become known for doing 1 thing fantastically well. Offer it in a monthly subscription. Making it affordable to all. Like we do for printer & photocopier technology.
