OneSoccer

[BearcatSA]

Traditional/legacy media broadcasting outlets like TSN are steadilly dying off but a key to One Soccer's and the CPL's future is to get on a traditional media broadcasting outlet?

[Cicero]

4 hours ago, BearcatSA said:

Traditional/legacy media broadcasting outlets like TSN are steadilly dying off but a key to One Soccer's and the CPL's future is to get on a traditional media broadcasting outlet?

I don't think it's completely dying, it's just concentrating into specific properties and content that are the most profitable. So there are still lots of eyeballs on commentators instead of news, and on the big sports leagues, and thus plenty of money for those things, but there's little to nothing for everything else because people aren't interested in their local scene to the same extent. Especially young people. Plus, advertisers are steadily shifting spend to digital, particularly Google, even when listener and viewer numbers are still decent. The higher ups simply believe it's more effective, and they can readily measure the results of their spend, so it's easier to justify whatever their spend-level is. I have some inside insight into this trend.

But to break through and become relevant to the broader public, getting the exposure of a TSN or CBC is still important, even if their overall viewership is lower than it used to be. How else can you do it? You have to get people talking about you. If you can't afford to bring in Messi, you've got to at least get on screens that people might see at a bar or flip to randomly when nothing else is on.

 

[Watchmen]

If you're relying on YouTube or anything similar for your "news", you're also just getting regurgitated whatever is in your algorithm. It's what you alreadt want to to see/hear, not things outside your bubble.

[red card]

1 hour ago, Cicero said:

 

But to break through and become relevant to the broader public, getting the exposure of a TSN or CBC is still important, even if their overall viewership is lower than it used to be. How else can you do it? You have to get people talking about you. If you can't afford to bring in Messi, you've got to at least get on screens that people might see at a bar or flip to randomly when nothing else is on.

 

For tier 2 or lower Canadian sports properties, it hasn't been yet proven since the advent of cord cutting that being on TSN/CBC makes them relevant to the broader public. None of them are yet getting paid for rights and average attendance for leagues like CEBL are still lower than CPL and/or haven't grown materially. CHL regular season games have been on and off SN, CBC & TSN for the past decade.

As seen with the PWHL, you need to have a product that gets a large chunk of the target market excited and/or capture the general zeitgeist as the Canadian teams basically sold out season tickets before the first broadcast. MLS grew without any growth seen in US linear tv audience numbers. NWSL grew even though nearly all of the games in the many of the years were broadcast on non-sports tier 2 cable, a sports network not in many homes or streamed on P+/twitch.

Since you can now watch what you want anytime you want, the days of randomly switching channels aren't in vogue or moved over to scrolling social media. Based on US viewing behaviour, ex NFL on holidays/playoffs, out-of-home viewing isn't significant (<10%). And most of the out-home-viewing is in another home while bars are second.

 

 

[Cheeta]

2 hours ago, Cicero said:

I don't think it's completely dying, it's just concentrating into specific properties and content that are the most profitable. So there are still lots of eyeballs on commentators instead of news, and on the big sports leagues, and thus plenty of money for those things, but there's little to nothing for everything else because people aren't interested in their local scene to the same extent. Especially young people. Plus, advertisers are steadily shifting spend to digital, particularly Google, even when listener and viewer numbers are still decent. The higher ups simply believe it's more effective, and they can readily measure the results of their spend, so it's easier to justify whatever their spend-level is. I have some inside insight into this trend.

But to break through and become relevant to the broader public, getting the exposure of a TSN or CBC is still important, even if their overall viewership is lower than it used to be. How else can you do it? You have to get people talking about you. If you can't afford to bring in Messi, you've got to at least get on screens that people might see at a bar or flip to randomly when nothing else is on.

 

It's about the here and now isn't it?

Six, seven, eight years from now the world will be different but guess what?  You still need to get through those six, seven, eight years from now without going bankrupt.

I read somewhere that 85% of consumer dollars are still spent at brick & mortor stores. That's very nearly the same as it was 4 years ago.  Pandemic, Amazon and on-line grocery sales be damned.  

Now I don't know if that's true or not but even if its half true it's very telling.  Its very informative.  Not suggesting on-line consumption has plateaued, far from it.   Just suggesting that in the here and now things aren't so different then they were not so very long ago.

Concern yourself with the paying customers.  Because the ones who don't pay, guess what?   They aren't customers.  

 

[BearcatSA]

5 hours ago, Cicero said:

But to break through and become relevant to the broader public, getting the exposure of a TSN or CBC is still important, even if their overall viewership is lower than it used to be. How else can you do it?

For one thing, maybe do what MLS and Apple have done and make some of the content free to view? The MLS championship game was free and easy to access.  The CPL championship game could have been that way, too.

As you have implied yourself, the shrinking resources available are going to be concentrated on the most profitable content and properties by those traditional outlets like TSN.  And for TSN and soccer, that will likely continue to be the three Canadian MLS teams and their other international soccer properties only.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

On 2/9/2024 at 5:21 PM, Kent said:

That pic suggests when Montagliani said "they" he was talking about MediaPro and CSB, but in listening to the question and his answer I thought it sounded more like just referring to One Soccer. Basically, One Soccer disappeared for a bit, and now they are back, because they sorted out their own issues. And then he is hopeful that the issues between Media Pro and CSB will also get sorted out...

That's how it sounds to me as well. Later he says these things always get resolved and he's not going to worry about it. That's unambiguously in the context of CSB and Mediapro with the implication being that it hasn't happened yet, so the they'll announce it when they are ready to announce it part earlier than that more than likely is specific to whatever happened at Onesoccer that led to a resumption of programming related to the CONCACAF Champions Cup. He's likely happy for there to have been a level of ambiguity involved though, which obviously begs the question why Sharman & Co didn't follow it up with more questions to fully clarify matters. 

After listening to that podcast some of what Victor Montagliani slips into the conversation sounds like a subtle threat to the Footy Prime guys that they need to toe the line to maintain access to him in future. A lot of what he has to say is a self-serving revisionist version of Canadian soccer history. There was nothing before 2012? I just imagined that the U-20 World Cup happened and resulted in a soccer specific 20,000 seat stadium build in Toronto? Does the TFC launch ring a bell, Victor? How about the Whitecaps moving to MLS in your hometown as well prior to that? The panel are too shit scared to call him out with questions like that though.

Edited February 10 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[SpursFlu]

Yesterday along the scroll on Sportsnet i was excited to learn that Oklahoma State and Illinois have hired new offensive coordinators. I think that's probably more important to Canadians than Champions Cup results by Canadian teams. No wonder so many Mexicans showed up to those games. They were actually aware they were happening 

[BearcatSA]

4 hours ago, Ozzie_the_parrot said:

He's likely happy for there to have been a level of ambiguity involved though, which obviously begs the question why Sharman & Co didn't follow it up with more questions to fully clarify matters...after listening to that podcast some of the panel are too shit scared to call him out with questions like that though.

Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of journalism is going that way, and not just in sports.  Respectful scutiny is becoming verboten.  

[fil]

This isn't a new thing...

I remember listening to sports radio over ten years ago. Thought they were talking about the growth of basketball, and it being played in the Yukon territory. Then realized they were talking about Yukon college basketball in the states. Then thought their must be Canadians on the team. Nope, not one. I wondered why they couldn't find anything Canadian to talk about. 

I don't see the point of having so much coverage of American sports in Canada, especially amateur College sports. This inferiority complex of Canadian sports frustrates me, Euro Snobs are another example of this... It really holds back the growth of sport in Canada.

Plenty of times listening to radio I couldn't tell if it was a Canadian broadcast or American. Television wasn't much better.

I pretty much abandoned sports radio at the time and started listening to podcasts. If I really wanted American or European sports coverage I can get it directly from foreign podcasts anyway. No point in listening to someone living in Canada talking about sports being played in another country. 

 

 

[Kent]

I've heard people talk about watching March Madness (college basketball tournament) but it's rare. I don't know why they try to shove even more US college sports down our throats. TSN has been showing quite a few college football games this year and I think last year as well, not sure if it goes back further than that. Anecdotally I've never heard of anyone in Canada caring one bit about college football. Yet they promote that and you don't hear a peep about CPL or CEBL, despite those being local and not actually taking advantage of young people bashing their brains in for free.

[MuirtonPark]

Actually, it wasn't Yukon College, although it sounds just like that.  It was UConn, or the University of Connecticut, a powerhouse in NCAA BBall.   As a Purdue engineering grad, i was made aware of this when in Indiana.

The point in the post was otherwise well made and accurate

[SoccMan]

I still can’t understand why some CPL games are not on TSN or Sportsnet ? Is is simply because of OneSoccer and the contract they have with the CPL? I mean a game of the week on a weekend on either TSN or Sportsnet would be nice . I see that the CEBL has games on TSN I believe , can’t see the CEBL getting that much  more viewership on TSN than the CPL would get .Moreover, I know TSN has MLS but TSN also has the Raptors and the NBA but still televises CEBL .

Edited February 11 by SoccMan

[JamboAl]

1 hour ago, MuirtonPark said:

Actually, it wasn't Yukon College, although it sounds just like that.  It was UConn, or the University of Connecticut, a powerhouse in NCAA BBall.   As a Purdue engineering grad, i was made aware of this when in Indiana.

The point in the post was otherwise well made and accurate

Ha ha…never thought of it as Yukon College, always been UConn to me.
By the way, I went to school an hour from Purdue in a place called South Bend.  You probably have heard of the university there.  

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

1 hour ago, SoccMan said:

I still can’t understand why some CPL games are not on TSN or Sportsnet ? ...

Mediapro-produced WCQ games wound up on Sportsnet so when there was a buck to be made the deal got done.

Apparently you need about 100k viewers for a Onesoccer scale outside broadcast of a sports game to make sense financially.on mainstream cable in Canada. Otherwise they are better off showing some baseball cap wearing redneck out fishing somewhere in the flyover states on repeat for the twentieth time. 

The only reason CanPL landed a deal worth $85 million in rights fees over 10 years is that Mediapro were completely clueless about the probable interest level in domstic pro soccer in Canada that isn't MLS and has much lower budgets for player salaries. From what we have been told peak audiences on Onesoccer have been about 2% of what you would need to make it work on mainstream cable.

[Bison44]

1 hour ago, SoccMan said:

I still can’t understand why some CPL games are not on TSN or Sportsnet ? Is is simply because of OneSoccer and the contract they have with the CPL? I mean a game of the week on a weekend on either TSN or Sportsnet would be nice . I see that the CEBL has games on TSN I believe , can’t see the CEBL getting that much  more viewership on TSN than the CPL would get .Moreover, I know TSN has MLS but TSN also has the Raptors and the NBA but still televises CEBL .

The difference is Onesoccer is trying to sell its CPL games, get viewers to them (subscribers) and letting some of their product out to other people might not get more eyeballs on their streams eh?  I agree with you and think it wouldnt hurt, get more exposure, remember the CBC games in year one. 

 CEBL most likely pays TSN to put their product on TV same as CSA had to pay TSN to put CMNT games on.  That cant be very good for the CEBL bottom line, and isnt a good longterm  business strategy.  

[RS]

16 hours ago, Kent said:

I've heard people talk about watching March Madness (college basketball tournament) but it's rare. I don't know why they try to shove even more US college sports down our throats. TSN has been showing quite a few college football games this year and I think last year as well, not sure if it goes back further than that. Anecdotally I've never heard of anyone in Canada caring one bit about college football. Yet they promote that and you don't hear a peep about CPL or CEBL, despite those being local and not actually taking advantage of young people bashing their brains in for free.

The answer is extremely simple: It's cheap content that doesn't require any effort to put on the air.

[BearcatSA]

2 hours ago, RS said:

The answer is extremely simple: It's cheap content that doesn't require any effort to put on the air.

I would also add the content with advertising money behind it, like poker.

[Ed_S]

I'm glad to see OneSoccer's back to normal. I quite enjoy the Canadian content.

[johnyb]

15 minutes ago, Ed_S said:

I'm glad to see OneSoccer's back to normal. I quite enjoy the Canadian content.

Coverge of the CCC has been good. 

[RS]

 

[narduch]

Lol

[Kent]

For me at least, that's a big relief.

[Ozzie_the_parrot]

Story is behind a paywall. Any details on whether CanPL will ever receive the missing rights fees, what happens because of the failure to deliver the envisaged number of games etc? Guess this is when a rehash by Northern Tribune has its uses.

Edit: some snippets from Reddit:

 

Edited February 16 by Ozzie_the_parrot

[red card]

Most of the article goes over past news. The only new stuff is what is in the tweet and then this:

However, according to multiple Canadian broadcast sources, Mediapro and CSB have held talks with a view to OneSoccer showing the forthcoming CPL season but with assets transferred to CSB.

It is thought that, under the plan, OneSoccer would continue to be operated by Mediapro and matches produced by the company when the new campaign begins on April 13. The production specification has been one of the main areas under discussion with the league keen to retain the same levels.

Mediapro is still expected to wind down its operations in Canada after this season.

The knock-on effect of any agreement over CPL coverage on the litigation is not yet clear. It is also not known if OneSoccer would continue its coverage of the men’s and women’s Canadian national teams.

Contacted by SportBusiness, both Mediapro and the CPL declined to comment.