England Game on Internet only

It was revealed that the next England World Cup Qualifier game in Ukraine will be shown live only on Internet. And fans have reacted negatively to the announcement – claiming that all England matches should be shown on ‘proper media’.

It has long been predicted that online streaming video will be a real competitor to incumbent TV media platforms (free-to-air, cable and satellite). Various startups have been set to make this dream come true – but none has really been able to cut the mustard – despite some of them backed by serious money and large corporations.

In the USA, hulu.com is slowly getting the numbers and has recently gave the jitters to broadcasters there. As more and more TV programs being shown in hulu.com (sorry – malaysian viewers are blocked) advertisers are reportedly giving not-so-subtle hints that they will not advertise (or demanding significantly lower rates) if more TV programs are being made available on internet.

It was reported that online ad revenue in USA has fallen by 5% to $5.4 billion in the 2nd quarter this year. However, this is much lower drop than the 12% to 29% drop experienced by traditional media (print and TV) for the same period.

Back to the poor England fans:

The reason for the decision to stream the match on Internet is because the original rights holder for all England’s away games, Setanta, has gone bust. No other broadcaster has been able to meet Ukrainian FA asking price – so it has gone to the highest bidder – which in this case happen to be a digital sport specialist, Perform.

Is this going to be the watershed – setting the trend for online media to compete financially with traditional broadcasters? At first glance, one might think it to be far-fetched – but once you looked at it carefully – it will not be that far off.

Consider: if , say YouTube, take a fancy on 2016 Olympics in Rio De Janeiro – do you think they have the financial muscle to make a bid? You bet they could. The economics are there and they sure have the infrastructure to cater for the huge bandwidth requirement.

Even in Malaysia, the rate for broadcasting rights are not that big. Companies like Telekom, Maxis, Celcom and Digi are already used to splash on big events and they are easily able to outbid RTM, Astro or PrimaMedia for the next World Cup – if they wanted to. (Only their system and infrastructure may not be able to cater to the surge in traffic. Case in point – the big Blue crash during recent Raya. Let’s not talk about Streamyx eh.)

Just for the record – I’m a big fan of streaming media. My hit program ‘Ash Report’ on a streaming TV station Cyberjaya.tv had a strong following not just from Malaysia but also internationally. This is despite us being ahead of our time then… but aha… look like that We Shall Rise Again

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