ESPN cashes in on sports digital expansion
Live sport is continuing to drive television growth and young audiences are driving it like no other sector, according to ESPN Internationals managing director Russell Woolf.
Despite conventional thinking suggesting young viewers are abandoning television, ESPN is seeing its broadcast numbers grow globally, boosted by multiplatform sports offerings on the back of younger audiences.
What were seeing in Australia is youre continuing to see the rise of live sports and the emergence of a new young audience, Wolff says.
The emergence of the young 18-34 audience on ESPN is growing like crazy and overall were up in high double digits in television.
It just reinforces the importance on live programming and on focusing on that young emerging audience who still love live sports and are actually more interested than their parents were in the global sports environment.
Woolf says younger sports fans, particularly in the US and here, still love their local leagues, whether it be the AFL or NFL, but they now have many more global sporting interests to watch.
John Kosner, the executive vice-president of ESPN Digital and Print Media says technology has helped, not hindered, the popularity of sports broadcasting because all of us can plug into whatever we care about.
You have this incredible intersection at this point in time, of the explosion of mobile devices, and explosion of third party social networks, which are creating new kinds of behaviour, Kosner says.
Young fans have always been interested in sports but their enjoyment has been enhanced by their ability to get real time information, to follow the athletes and teams themselves and to connect with each other.
ESPN is pushing those connections with its broad range of news, magazine and video content across all platforms. Its main espn.com platform will be relaunched this week with a cleaner, more tailored interface integrating video and social with news and results. ESPN expects to have an enhanced Australian version of the site tailored in the medium term.
ESPN is already the number one digital sports network in *Australia, but Kosner says the network appreciates that the new website pushes primarily American sports to global consumers.
What we havent done yet, which were going to do, is go the other way and create fantastic coverage of sports here that could be available to anybody who cares about them anywhere in the world.
It anticipates increasing coverage of the AFL and
NRL in particular after having recently improved its ESPNscrum rugby union site. Its ESPNcricinfo site remains the indispensable global cricket site, while the sports behemoth also has its high-end *digital offerings such as Grantland and Nate Silvers FiveThirtyEight site growing as they appeal to a high-end consumer.
ESPNs local Footytips site is approaching one million Australian users and Woolf says that acquisition has become an attractive proposition with its young, affluent and connected audience.
Kosner and Woolf are in Australia for the cricket World Cup, for which ESPN holds the US and Caribbean broadcast rights. The company introduced a direct-to- consumer product for those markets as an experiment, and is encouraged by subscriptions there ($US99.99 for the entire event; $US19.99 for yesterdays final).
The US has a big cricket market; it is the second biggest market for the cricinfo site globally behind India. ESPN broadcast its Cricinfo Match Point TV from Sydneys Mrs Macquaries Chair during the World Cup. Two programs are being produced: one for the US and another for the rest of the world. They follow the sports broadcasters dictum that it must be a live medium whenever possible. Were providing a program before and after the game, for a game we dont even have (the rights to), Wolff says.
He says ESPN is not perturbed about the NFLs announcement that it will allow a London match to be screened exclusively on a digital platform. While it is viewed as a sporting codes first major step towards its own distribution, Woolf says: This is about exploring a new way to do things digitally only and potentially new partners. We have a great long-term deal with the NFL. Were very comfortable with our relationship with them.
As yet, the digital giants the NFL might hope want to expand the sporting rights pie, such as YouTube, Netflix or Facebook, havent shown any interest. And that is good for broadcasters.
We see live sports as one of the linchpins of television, whether its free-to-air television or multi*channel subscription television, Wolff says. The value of live sports has never been greater in a world of DVRs and time shifting.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...igital-expansion/story-e6frg996-1227283726105
