The Consumer Generated AFL Website Opportunity
So I just scouta'd (nice inside BRW cover feature pic rich) from the shoreham to rye residences :) to watch Melbourne give up a 30 point 3r qtr lead to Hawthorn : Subsequently losing + knocked out of what I think they call the NAB pre-season cup.
It's all about Telstra, Ch7, Toyota and NAB when it comes to AFL $840m programming rights to AFL incl online : The assumption being more advertising, subscription and other revenue/profit can be generated. (ala murdoch uppd the ante + programming prices in his early/mid 90's bids for NFL sports in the US and Soccer in the UK... i digress back to the dees)
Previous September AFL winners have not performed during the pre-season comp, and it was great to see Lance Franklin slot (was it) 4 goals for the Hawks from the forward flank Telstra Dome pockets. (Bell + Miller continue to pain MFC supporters) The young kids ala Franklin are taller 6'6 and faster eh. Melbourne lost twice to Carlton at TDome last year, and they cant play there. At all. Tonite was no different.
So with my life being ping pong between internal contributors to the biz, investors/advisors and enterprise clients (oh and wasting time on blogs/rss.. its work yeh ? although im currently blogging and 47% thru 2 series of HBO's Deadwood.. which is like the Clint Eastwood movie The Forgiven)... So it was good to meet the 3eep.com guys. "The Long Tail of Sports"; Founders ex Fairfax/Peakhour and Hothouse, who just launched their beta after 6 months of plunging "the" savings and deprogramming from Corporate life. It's all about shipping, to start with. So kudos dudez.
Talking Collins St Sport, 2.0, and Sponsorship reminded me of a life prior on afl.com.au (sensis mediasmart sell the display ads) and also advising (my) AFL club (then for a bit). (tinfinger sets the scene well on the latest round of afl deals.. as well as their riff on afl.com.au being a "beta" lol) Dejavu 2001-3 chatter around what was called The Unofficial AFL Dot Com Opportunity; Which very simply was a bottomup AFL website, generated largely thru content from fans (and some algorithmic scraping!)
As the AFL website is now a $60m telco funded rights play, this may sell more Bigpond, NextG + Foxtel, but what about the consumers who don't like flash or want more up to date content, to share fanaticisms with others, as well as advertisers that can't advertise on AFL.com.au due to exclusive arrangements (like all the car manufacturers other than Toyota; All the banks other than NAB; All the alcohol other than CUB etc) How do they reach the AFL consumer ? Or for that matter the NRL consumer ? (who is tied up the same way, just for not as much $$)
I'm a big MFC Demons AFL footy fan, hence I visit demonland.com, which is where other dees fans frequent. Nearly every major sports club has it's own equivalent forum website using same old boring software with google ads; If sports programming rights are worth so much and Web 2.0 is about cheap to build user generated content websites, isn't there a gap ?
There is no real consumer generated website or tools available from afl.com.au or any other website, whether it be foxsports.com.au etc. This is where companies like 3eep.com come in.. (not that i don't have my own ideas or discussions going on around sports, esp when it comes to major media mastheads jumping on the structured user generated content space.. but it's a big pie if shared properly)
So the 3eep guys have done the 2 hardest things : Give up income/status, and shipping their first 3eep site. I'll leave the violins for someone else's mashup. What I'm interested in is the %share the Sports 2.0 Category of websites will get vs club based forum sites, and professional media feeds/news ala realfooty.com.au, afl.com.au, baggygreen.com.au, cricinfo, nrl.com.au and so on. (eg Youtube, MySpace and Wikipedia are all Top 10 Australian visited websites, and AFL.com.au (historically #1 website even being a seasonal site) - so I wonder (overtime) how big Sports UGC will become ?)
The next step in the Vertical Local Web 2.0 space will be : How is it monetised ? Just using google won't be the answer, and hiring a salesperson is not economically effective until one has at least 500k-750k unique users per month. There needs to be a consolidated back end solution.
Back to Sports 2.0 : The smart strategy is to not compete directly against the majors, initially; Build up mass, then disrupt. (ie Google's overbloggd strategy against Microsoft last week) Will Sport 2.0 be won by redressing Pro Media's BIASED coverage of the "Hit" sports they have paid hundreds of millions for (or billions in US/UK case) ?
Or will consumer generated best of breed vertical web apps focused on sport aggregate the best of longtail along with scraping the majors feeds, html, licensing etc ? (just as fanfooty site has been very popular and could be expanded too within afl)
The oldest example of this debate is Netball being the most participated sport in Australia.. Just because a sport is played and popular, will consumers watch and interact with it, and advertisers follow ? Netball has had limited public Ch2 coverage over the years, and does not get even a sliver of the $680m in TV programming rights AFL does.
With AFL TV programming worth $680M (and online worth $60m), the maths should mean even larger AFL specific advertising budgets : Even if Ch7 and private equity invested because being #1 in 2007 helps drive more network advertising and marketing benefits.
Similarly, in AFR on weekend Kim Williams the artsy CEO talks about Foxtel having had their biggest subscriber uptake since launch (in January 07) because of the AFL deal they cut - which involved shutting down Fox Footy Channel, Sacking most staff until telling them at last moment they had a reduced job, and negotiating for 400 days (because AFL stoopidly wholesaled rights to Ch7/10)
It was very impressive negotiation by Foxtel even if I had to drive 25 minutes each way to watch Melbourne lost today to Hawthorn. Now if the 3eep/fanfooty's of this world can get themselves a seat at the table, of how sports are being used to sell broadband, cable TV and advertising - they will be very well placed. The only risk is that the long tail may not be as important the hits.
While I love the long tail, I'd prioritise consumer generated content related to the sports which have hundreds of millions of dollars of progamming and sponsorship attached. There are more people that dont play sport that are interested in their football team, that would also create content. They are the dollars to cannibalise. There are also many advertisers that can't advertise on afl.com.au and other sites which dont allow multiple advertisers in each category. (as big as finance, banking, fmcg, alcohol etc)
Even if enabling the longtail is good trojan horse marketing.. as long as it doesn't become another all in one Web 2.0 featureset focused on a vertical, which leads consumer-creators to wonder whether their first click should be to blog about their AFL footy team, or their kids basketball club.
It's all about Telstra, Ch7, Toyota and NAB when it comes to AFL $840m programming rights to AFL incl online : The assumption being more advertising, subscription and other revenue/profit can be generated. (ala murdoch uppd the ante + programming prices in his early/mid 90's bids for NFL sports in the US and Soccer in the UK... i digress back to the dees)
Previous September AFL winners have not performed during the pre-season comp, and it was great to see Lance Franklin slot (was it) 4 goals for the Hawks from the forward flank Telstra Dome pockets. (Bell + Miller continue to pain MFC supporters) The young kids ala Franklin are taller 6'6 and faster eh. Melbourne lost twice to Carlton at TDome last year, and they cant play there. At all. Tonite was no different.
So with my life being ping pong between internal contributors to the biz, investors/advisors and enterprise clients (oh and wasting time on blogs/rss.. its work yeh ? although im currently blogging and 47% thru 2 series of HBO's Deadwood.. which is like the Clint Eastwood movie The Forgiven)... So it was good to meet the 3eep.com guys. "The Long Tail of Sports"; Founders ex Fairfax/Peakhour and Hothouse, who just launched their beta after 6 months of plunging "the" savings and deprogramming from Corporate life. It's all about shipping, to start with. So kudos dudez.
Talking Collins St Sport, 2.0, and Sponsorship reminded me of a life prior on afl.com.au (sensis mediasmart sell the display ads) and also advising (my) AFL club (then for a bit). (tinfinger sets the scene well on the latest round of afl deals.. as well as their riff on afl.com.au being a "beta" lol) Dejavu 2001-3 chatter around what was called The Unofficial AFL Dot Com Opportunity; Which very simply was a bottomup AFL website, generated largely thru content from fans (and some algorithmic scraping!)
As the AFL website is now a $60m telco funded rights play, this may sell more Bigpond, NextG + Foxtel, but what about the consumers who don't like flash or want more up to date content, to share fanaticisms with others, as well as advertisers that can't advertise on AFL.com.au due to exclusive arrangements (like all the car manufacturers other than Toyota; All the banks other than NAB; All the alcohol other than CUB etc) How do they reach the AFL consumer ? Or for that matter the NRL consumer ? (who is tied up the same way, just for not as much $$)
I'm a big MFC Demons AFL footy fan, hence I visit demonland.com, which is where other dees fans frequent. Nearly every major sports club has it's own equivalent forum website using same old boring software with google ads; If sports programming rights are worth so much and Web 2.0 is about cheap to build user generated content websites, isn't there a gap ?
There is no real consumer generated website or tools available from afl.com.au or any other website, whether it be foxsports.com.au etc. This is where companies like 3eep.com come in.. (not that i don't have my own ideas or discussions going on around sports, esp when it comes to major media mastheads jumping on the structured user generated content space.. but it's a big pie if shared properly)
So the 3eep guys have done the 2 hardest things : Give up income/status, and shipping their first 3eep site. I'll leave the violins for someone else's mashup. What I'm interested in is the %share the Sports 2.0 Category of websites will get vs club based forum sites, and professional media feeds/news ala realfooty.com.au, afl.com.au, baggygreen.com.au, cricinfo, nrl.com.au and so on. (eg Youtube, MySpace and Wikipedia are all Top 10 Australian visited websites, and AFL.com.au (historically #1 website even being a seasonal site) - so I wonder (overtime) how big Sports UGC will become ?)
The next step in the Vertical Local Web 2.0 space will be : How is it monetised ? Just using google won't be the answer, and hiring a salesperson is not economically effective until one has at least 500k-750k unique users per month. There needs to be a consolidated back end solution.
Back to Sports 2.0 : The smart strategy is to not compete directly against the majors, initially; Build up mass, then disrupt. (ie Google's overbloggd strategy against Microsoft last week) Will Sport 2.0 be won by redressing Pro Media's BIASED coverage of the "Hit" sports they have paid hundreds of millions for (or billions in US/UK case) ?
Or will consumer generated best of breed vertical web apps focused on sport aggregate the best of longtail along with scraping the majors feeds, html, licensing etc ? (just as fanfooty site has been very popular and could be expanded too within afl)
The oldest example of this debate is Netball being the most participated sport in Australia.. Just because a sport is played and popular, will consumers watch and interact with it, and advertisers follow ? Netball has had limited public Ch2 coverage over the years, and does not get even a sliver of the $680m in TV programming rights AFL does.
With AFL TV programming worth $680M (and online worth $60m), the maths should mean even larger AFL specific advertising budgets : Even if Ch7 and private equity invested because being #1 in 2007 helps drive more network advertising and marketing benefits.
Similarly, in AFR on weekend Kim Williams the artsy CEO talks about Foxtel having had their biggest subscriber uptake since launch (in January 07) because of the AFL deal they cut - which involved shutting down Fox Footy Channel, Sacking most staff until telling them at last moment they had a reduced job, and negotiating for 400 days (because AFL stoopidly wholesaled rights to Ch7/10)
It was very impressive negotiation by Foxtel even if I had to drive 25 minutes each way to watch Melbourne lost today to Hawthorn. Now if the 3eep/fanfooty's of this world can get themselves a seat at the table, of how sports are being used to sell broadband, cable TV and advertising - they will be very well placed. The only risk is that the long tail may not be as important the hits.
While I love the long tail, I'd prioritise consumer generated content related to the sports which have hundreds of millions of dollars of progamming and sponsorship attached. There are more people that dont play sport that are interested in their football team, that would also create content. They are the dollars to cannibalise. There are also many advertisers that can't advertise on afl.com.au and other sites which dont allow multiple advertisers in each category. (as big as finance, banking, fmcg, alcohol etc)
Even if enabling the longtail is good trojan horse marketing.. as long as it doesn't become another all in one Web 2.0 featureset focused on a vertical, which leads consumer-creators to wonder whether their first click should be to blog about their AFL footy team, or their kids basketball club.
posted by redbarren at 10:41 PM
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