Editorial: Why Pay for Footy on TV?

Editorial

Recently, a couple of fans wrote in that they didn't feel that the offering by Setanta was worth $11.99 per month for just one game and since they aren't interesting in anything else offered on Setanta Sports, they planned to cancel their subscription.  Another fan told us he was tired of waiting for the highlights and was bailing out. 

AFANA feels those attitudes are misguided and if they prevail, will doom any hope of live AFL coverage in the US for the rest of this decade.  Instead, we should be doing everything we can to support the live coverage and encouraging more fans to subscribe before the end of this season.  Despite the limitation of the coverage to DirecTV and Globecast customers, it needs to be supported for the long term good of footy fans in North America.

We believe Setanta is completely sincere about adding the highlights to their schedule as soon as possible (Ed. note: the highlights are now scheduled to start on Setanta on 30 June.) and likewise sincere about increasing the number of live matches each week if subscription growth justifies it.  Blaming Setanta entirely for the delays with the highlights is probably misguided.  As we explained in our TV and Media newsletter, they had to purchase the rights to the highlights (which had been bought exclusively for the year by MHz) and negotiate the contracts and that took time. By the time all the contracts were negotiated, they had a scheduling problem with the soccer World Cup underway. We agree it's taken longer than it should have. Setanta has been straight with us all along and we accept their explanation and will do so until they give us reason not to.

We think assessments of the value of the coverage by some fans are unrealistic.  You may decide you cannot afford $11.99 a month because of your situation, that makes sense.  But is the price worth the coverage?  AFANA thinks it is a bargain.  We have on several occasions tried to put together live packages of AFL games to sell here in the US. At 6 mos x $12 or $72 a season for 27 games that's far less than anything we feel could be done if it sold as a stand alone live pay per view package.  A price of $200 a year would be closer (the English Premier League with 10 times the audience costs $275 a year!). The only reason Setanta can do this is that they can spread the cost over their entire operation plus the AFL is subsidizing the cost of the fiber optic feed from Australia to Setanta's uplink center in Dublin, Ireland. AFANA has been warning fans for over 5 years now that sooner or later, we'd have to pay for the coverage if we wanted it to improve. Apparently, we didn't explain that often and well enough.

Would we like to see 2 or 3 or all 8 games live every week? You bet we would. Do we understand that the coverage would be better if more fans (beyond those on DirecTV and Globecast) could see it? Absolutely, we do.  But if this effort at one game a week fails because fans bail out now, we won't get another shot at live or even tape delayed full coverage for 5 or maybe 10 years. Remember, it took us 11 years to get this.

We know two other organizations that have expressed interest in doing live AFL feeds here, both even smaller than Setanta. Both have said if this fails for Setanta they may not step in next year or even bid. Moreover, the only coverage next year might then be on MHz only because neither Fox, ESPN, nor any other big network is interested in footy right now. As one programming manager at a major company told us last year: "the fan base is too small and the fans are unreasonable".  We strenuously disagree with the second part of that but situations like this do help us understand the point.

AFANA encourages fans to be patient with Setanta and support their efforts.  It won't get better than this anytime soon.  The days of games on ESPN at midnight are gone and are not returning.   If we thought fans could do better, we would support any effort to get footy fans there.    We've been on the side of the footy fan since our inception in 1996 and we're still on your side.  

by Rob de Santos, Chairman of AFANA