Capítulo V Planteamiento de estrategias
1. Escenario apuesta
Premium sport and movie content is scarce. A fixed number of major sporting events are staged each year. The governing bodies of elite sports determine the number of teams in a league, the number of events to be staged and the maximum number of television rights to such events. By intensifying demand from broadcasters, this increases the wholesale cost to broadcasters of acquiring such rights which may be passed on to consumers in the form of higher subscription fees, reduced quality and/or less innovative services. For example, in the UK, the Premier League had a policy of making 168 of its 380
matches available to live television.140 Limited supply saw demand reach unprecedented levels in 2015, when the Premier League agreed a record-‐ breaking £5.1billion rights deal with Sky and British Telecommunications plc (“BT”) for the three seasons from 2016/2017.141 This represents a 70 per cent increase on Sky and BT’s previous rights deal worth £3billion.142 As will be discussed in the following chapter, all Sky and BT subscribers have since experienced slight price increases (not just sports channel subscribers).
Policies of restricting the number of live television rights to major sporting events may be subject to regulatory scrutiny. This issue arose in Virgin Media’s complaint relating to the FAPL in 2014.143 Virgin Media claimed that
the 41 per cent of Premier League matches that were made available for live television was lower than some other leading European leagues.144 It was
argued that this contributes to higher prices for consumers of pay-‐TV packages including premium sport channels and for the pay-‐TV retailers of such channels.145 As will be seen in Chapter 6, Ofcom closed the case after the
Premier League made commitments to (amongst other things) increase the number of matches available for live television in the UK to a minimum of 190 per season from the start of the 2019/2020 season.146
Central to concerns about restrictions on the number of live television rights is that major sporting events (and, to a lesser extent premium movies) are regarded as unique. The competitive nature of sporting events means that
140 Dan Roan, ‘Premier League: Football broadcasting battle hots up’ BBC Sport (15 December 2015)
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/35099081> accessed 13 August 2017.
141 ibid.
142 ‘Premier League TV rights: Sky and BT pay £5.1bn for live games’ BBC Sport (10 February 2015)
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/31357409> accessed 13 August 2017.
143 ‘Ofcom Investigation into Premier League Football Rights’ (Ofcom news release, 18 November
2014) <https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-‐ofcom/latest/media/media-‐releases/2014/premier-‐ league> accessed 13 August 2017.
144 ‘Competition Act investigation into the sale of live UK audio-‐visual media rights to Premier League
matches’ (Competition and Consumer Bulletin, CW/01138/09/14, 8 August 2016).
145 ibid. 146 ibid.
they can never be precisely reproduced.147 Similarly, a limited number of Hollywood blockbusters are released each year (partly due to the fact that despite technological advancements, the cost of production remains relatively high).148 The unique quality of major sporting events and Hollywood blockbusters means that there are typically considered to be few, if any, close substitutes (i.e. products or services to which viewers may switch in response to a relative increase in price, variation in quality or other change to the conditions of supply). For instance, as discussed in Chapter 4 within the context of market definition, there are generally considered to be limited (if any) substitution possibilities for viewers between different sports, and even between different codes of the same sport.149
The absence of close substitutes is particularly relevant to the live coverage of major sporting events because most viewers still prefer to watch such events in real time.150 There are a number of possible reasons for this,
including a desire to participate in a shared experience or to enjoy the thrill associated with the uncertainty of outcome.151 Time-‐shifting technology is
therefore likely to have relatively less impact in fragmenting the audiences of such events. This is supported by Ofcom’s findings in the UK that as a percentage of total viewing time-‐shifted viewing for sport is 8 per cent, compared to 32 per cent for drama.152 Similarly, in the US, live viewing
147 Alexander Scheuer and Peter Strothmann, ‘Sport as Reflected in European Media Law’ (2004) 14(1)
Media Law & Policy 6, 9.
148 There are also reports that the number of releases by the Major Hollywood Studios is in decline.
Cynthia Littleton, ‘Major Film Studios Prosper on the Margins’ Variety (18 April 2013)
<http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/major-‐film-‐studios-‐prosper-‐on-‐the-‐margins-‐1200376494/>
accessed 13 August 2017.
149 Evens, Iosifidis and Smith (n 24) 96.
150 Robin Foster, ‘Future Broadcasting Regulation’ (Commissioned by the Department for Culture,
Media and Sport, January 2007) para 7.3.20
<http://www.refoster.co.uk/FutureBroadcastingRegulation.pdf> accessed 25 July 2016.
151 Lawrence A Wenner, Media, Sports and Society (SAGE 1989) 15.
152 ‘Communications Market Report 2015’ (Ofcom, 6 August 2015) 159
<https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0022/20668/cmr_uk_2015.pdf> accessed 13
August 2017. Across all types of content, live viewing remains the standard. In Australia, for instance, 89.6 per cent of FTA television and pay-‐TV is watched live-‐to-‐air each month. ‘Australian Multi-‐Screen Report: Q4 2016’ (Oztam, Nielsen and Regional Television Audience Measurement, 2017) 13
remains the standard for sport, with 95 per cent of total viewing being live.153 This also makes live sports events especially attractive to television advertisers as, for example, ad-‐skipping is likely to be less prevalent than in the case of premium movies and drama.