Pay-tv, But what are we paying for?
Pay-TV, Pay-tv, But what are we paying for?
This time I want to talk about the rights on pay-tv. In Brazil there are many pay-tv channels not to talk about the sports and movie channels. All those channels people have to pay for to watch as the name describes.
But what are we paying for?
Let's pick GNT for example. This is one of the biggest pay channels in the country and yet they show so little. People pay for reprises. Some programs have 2 seasons a year and they are being repeated over and over throughout the year. And that's the case for almost all channels. If you see the programming for a week the same episode passes sometimes 3 to 4 times.
It's a vicious circle. Because of this people will more and more move to platforms as Netflix where they can watch tons of new content every day and these pay channels will lose more viewers and make less money. That’s a real threat. So pay channels need to invest more in new content, especially now it’s crisis in Brazil and people will spend more time watching tv at home instead of going out.
That brings me to another part of pay-tv. In Brazil among a growing amount of other countries people have to pay to watch live sports. We have nowadays FOX sports, ESPN, Esporte Interativo and SporTV in Brazil. Besides those channels there is as well Premiere. Premiere is a pay per view channel where you can watch only some soccer matches. These are matches from the same championship as the matches that pass on SporTV and FOX sports for example.
For example, a viewer from Rio de Janeiro can’t watch in many occasions the match of their favorite team from Rio. Those matches are blocked for the state of Rio but in the rest of the country you can watch those matches on SporTV. So the matches are only blocked in the state of the home team or the state where the match is being played. The viewers who want to see the match of their favorite teams are obliged to buy the game at the pay per view channel even if they bought a package of sports channels at their provider. That is for me the biggest example of screwing your viewers. You can see all soccer matches except for the ones that you really would like to see. Imagine a Chelsea fan who pays monthly to watch the matches in the premiere league but he can watch all matches except the ones from Chelsea. To watch a match of Chelsea he needs to buy a pay per view.
At this moment, especially, pay channels need to think what is important to them; happy customers or a lot of money. Because if they continue like this the money option is ending and that will result in less and less customers, read viewers, to whom they can sell their content and commercials.
Because…….
Brazilians are crazy about sports, but they are not crazy!!
Links:
Telecom and Pay-TV Services Markets in Brazil Set to Grow at 2.3% CAGR During 2017-2022
Number of subscribers of select pay TV providers in Brazil from April 2016 to April 2017 (in thousands)
Roeland van der Manden
More info you can find on his LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/pub/roeland-van-der-manden , Check his website or follow him on Twitter AmsterdamProductions
mentioned:
GNT
Netflix
FOX sports
ESPN
Esporte Interativo
SporTV