Spark Sport: Rugby World Cup 2019

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#2272381 9-Jul-2019 13:29

ockel:

tdgeek:

Well, you gotta start somewhere. How did Sky start off? I saw that somewhere, it wasnt much. A few key sports roll up soon, cricket and rugger. Thsts probably key

Agreed. But this is a complete turnaround in strategy. Going from standing on its own two feet to hoping that RWC subscribers stick around for Spark Sport. If that was the strategy then it would we would gave seen the Early Bird packages at $90 (same as last minute buyers) but giving 3 or 4 months of Spark Sport for free (Jun to Sept) etc.

Spark was all about monetising the RWC tournament. Now its a "suck it and see". Except its not management sucking the lemon but shareholders.

Its an unknown. They had no idea if subscriber demand would be poor, heavy or anywhere in between. I have no idea how anyone could come up with accurate hard targets for this. IMO, its ended up at the lower end. There does need to be more sport though, ideally one sport that one person per household wants.

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#2272382 9-Jul-2019 13:33

To retain customers, Spark Sport would have to obtain quite a number of rights, they may well be bidding against 1 or more incumbents with an appetite to retain the rights they own already, and use to generate income, I do wonder what Sparks shareholder appetite for competing heavily in this space, given the expenditure of the rights and the return they get. The stakeholders would have to be on the same page and understand in the medium term they would be losing significantly. Not sure I'd see sign off occuring for this.

In my view, to survive in that space, it would have to be at the cost of putting Sky out of business. It's possible, but probably less likely.

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#2272383 9-Jul-2019 13:34

Here's a bit of a question - what's people honest opinion on fixed wireless connections in urban areas holding up during world cup streaming?

I certainly wouldn't put a lot of faith in it being a smooth experience.

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#2272390 9-Jul-2019 13:51

I'd only use it if a better solution was impossible or entirely impractical

ockel

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#2272457 9-Jul-2019 16:37

tdgeek:

ockel:

tdgeek:

Well, you gotta start somewhere. How did Sky start off? I saw that somewhere, it wasnt much. A few key sports roll up soon, cricket and rugger. Thsts probably key

Agreed. But this is a complete turnaround in strategy. Going from standing on its own two feet to hoping that RWC subscribers stick around for Spark Sport. If that was the strategy then it would we would gave seen the Early Bird packages at $90 (same as last minute buyers) but giving 3 or 4 months of Spark Sport for free (Jun to Sept) etc.

Spark was all about monetising the RWC tournament. Now its a "suck it and see". Except its not management sucking the lemon but shareholders.

Its an unknown. They had no idea if subscriber demand would be poor, heavy or anywhere in between. I have no idea how anyone could come up with accurate hard targets for this. IMO, its ended up at the lower end. There does need to be more sport though, ideally one sport that one person per household wants.

Yeah, nah. I recall (but cant find the source) that the head of Spark Sport was happy with the earlybird uptake on the last day of earlybird offer (the day that the site went down for maintenance). And it would be woeful planning if Spark didnt undertake focus group testing to gauge potential uptake at different price points (not hard to make this statistically robust to plan across the population or target sub populations). It would a trival cost in the scale of dollars spent on rights et al.

It doesnt feel like a demand issue (unless things have dropped over significantly over June) but it could be. It feels like a cost issue. And bear in mind that the cost of development for different devices/platforms would be sunk in the "Spark Sport platform" box and amortised over the duration of the Sport asset life (ie costs not attributed/allocated to the RWC project). Instead its more likely that Spark underestimated the cost of carriage/provisioning/delivery of content such that its sufficiently robust not to fail at first blush.

Major cost blowouts before the event? Poor management/planning if thats the case.

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#2272531 9-Jul-2019 17:14

I am not sure it's a cost issue. Most people I know who were considering it, considered cost to be negligible. I think many people are suspicious that the delivery won't be smooth. Many people seem suspicious of the whole thing. Spark Sport don't have reputation that Netflix does.

I know a few people holding off until Spark deliver on the apps that have been promised.

I feel that it would have been smart to say "if you are an early bird, heres an extra month of Spark Sport on us", that way people could have tried the service before the world cup.

tdgeek

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#2272545 9-Jul-2019 17:45

ockel:

Yeah, nah. I recall (but cant find the source) that the head of Spark Sport was happy with the earlybird uptake on the last day of earlybird offer (the day that the site went down for maintenance). And it would be woeful planning if Spark didnt undertake focus group testing to gauge potential uptake at different price points (not hard to make this statistically robust to plan across the population or target sub populations). It would a trival cost in the scale of dollars spent on rights et al.

It doesnt feel like a demand issue (unless things have dropped over significantly over June) but it could be. It feels like a cost issue. And bear in mind that the cost of development for different devices/platforms would be sunk in the "Spark Sport platform" box and amortised over the duration of the Sport asset life (ie costs not attributed/allocated to the RWC project). Instead its more likely that Spark underestimated the cost of carriage/provisioning/delivery of content such that its sufficiently robust not to fail at first blush.

Major cost blowouts before the event? Poor management/planning if thats the case.

Look, I disagree. We have had solid, robust, reliable Sky till now. While its NEVER been a monopoly, they owned sport. For an upstart to disrupt this there is no way anyone can reliably predict the uptake.

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ockel

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#2272616 9-Jul-2019 20:10

networkn:

I am not sure it's a cost issue. Most people I know who were considering it, considered cost to be negligible. I think many people are suspicious that the delivery won't be smooth. Many people seem suspicious of the whole thing. Spark Sport don't have reputation that Netflix does.

I know a few people holding off until Spark deliver on the apps that have been promised.

I feel that it would have been smart to say "if you are an early bird, heres an extra month of Spark Sport on us", that way people could have tried the service before the world cup.

Not a consumer cost. Cost for Spark to provide. The cost of supplying the service - rights+CDN+provisioning+linking+platform etc etc

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#2272629 9-Jul-2019 20:38

In my view, the way they handled the wholesale rights (or didn't as the case is), was very Telecom esk and kinda scummy. They could potentially consider lifting their game and hope decent wholesale offerings could boost subscriber numbers.

I really hope they don't try and cut costs between now and the RWC and risk delivering a lesser experience.

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#2274215 10-Jul-2019 18:23

Just a heads up, the ATV4 app is out. Now, I know some don't like Apple or have an ATV4, but it works very well. I have Sky, I like Sky a lot, and while using my iPads or iPhone via Airplay or CCu was fine, the ATV 4 app means that I am at Sky UX. Im happy. Bliss in fact. Remotes matter.

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#2274221 10-Jul-2019 18:34

networkn:

I really hope they don't try and cut costs between now and the RWC and risk delivering a lesser experience.

I seriously doubt that. Its Spark making a play for sport. Spark Sport isn't a Summer thing to play with. Jeff Latch has advised publicly that RWC probably wont make money. Its no secret that they are going after rugby and cricket whose contracts end soon. Yes, while I work for Spark Im not involved in SS, and I have placed criticism here and there, what the media have shown is that it's serious. So as regards your post, if anything it would probably be throw money at it to make it succeed. The rest will sort itself out.

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#2274469 11-Jul-2019 10:12

I guess we will wait and see, but given Spark has the rights to what would be considered by most to be the penultimate sporting event in NZ this year, and they aren't going to make money from it, and other companies have said they will be working a lot harder to retain or obtain sporting rights, one has to wonder if Sparks shareholders would have the appetite to throw the money required to be truly competitive in this space.

I was wondering this morning, if there was likely to be heavy price discounting or additional incentives to bring the numbers up (which I'd expect to be perceived poorly by those who did subscribe early), and those who haven't subscribed yet, if they have decided they don't want to watch Rugby with Spark, or are happy to watch it on TV an hour or so delayed.

I'm a big Rugby fan, within reason, whatever the cost, is what it is, I'll likely watch every single match, but most fans wouldn't be interested in a lot of the minnow vs minnow games (though honestly, last RWC, they were some of the best games of the entire tournament).

It's a slight worry that if people aren't going to watch it, whether interest in Rugby in NZ wil take a hit.

I also remain very concerned at how this will operate in bars and pubs, if it's not executed properly, its actually the bars and pubs that will take the hit. Unlike with Sky, having 6 screens showing the same image doesn't require more bandwidth. I am entirely sure what Spark is suggesting to commercial sites to ensure smooth operation, but for many, getting Fibre before the RWC is going to be a huge challenge.

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#2274532 11-Jul-2019 11:15

Won't bars and pubs have to have the feed come into a device which then distributes it?

Stream doesn't have sync so the screens will quickly get out of sync with buffering etc.

Never mind the cheer from the pub down the road before it happens for you...

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#2274534 11-Jul-2019 11:17

Well, I am unsure what kind of device they would use to distribute. I use plex at home. If I stream the same video to 2 devices at the same time, they will often end up out of sync.

I guess the way it could work is if they could find something to mirror to the screens, that would likely end up better. Not sure what hardware is being offered for this.

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#2274544 11-Jul-2019 11:28

mentalinc:

Won't bars and pubs have to have the feed come into a device which then distributes it?

Stream doesn't have sync so the screens will quickly get out of sync with buffering etc.

Never mind the cheer from the pub down the road before it happens for you...

my expectation is a bar that has multiple screens would use one stream, and distribute it internally (be that an HDMI splitter, DVB-T muxer etc)

For a bar to say, we have 20 screens, and will buy 20 chrome casts to stream, that would be ugly.. plus then your talking Requiring minimum a 200mbit connection.. and Ethernet to those chromecasts (although they likely wouldnt be ultras so Wifi to provide 200mbit consistent throughput)

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