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James Abraham, World Rugby’s content and programming manager, believes the governing body will eventually incorporate its own over-the-top (OTT) service into its rights structure, though has ruled out any drastic changes before the end of this year’s Rugby World Cup.
He says that there must first be a demand for a “compelling” service before rolling out a dedicated streaming platform, though does foresee a time when a World Rugby OTT service will be able to facilitate the distribution of rights in the sport’s smaller markets.
“The biggest challenge for us is that we don’t have a direct relationship with our audience that is transactional, in terms of cash,” Abraham told an audience during Digital Sports’ Growing Rugby Through Digital Innovation panel discussion in London.
“When we sell tickets to the Rugby World Cup, that is done through another company, so that is something that we are wrestling with. Whether we want to make money out of [an OTT service] or whether it is something that is important for the audience, these are points for us [to consider].
“It has to be in our future and it has to be a service that we can roll out to competitions and unions. [For example], if France have no interest in selling their rights to their home internationals in Southeast Asia, we should be able to provide a platform that allows viewers to access [their coverage] there.”
In the short-term, Abraham says that an OTT model could involve a free service that sits behind a registration wall.
“It has to be in our future,” he continued. “We are not quite there as yet and I think, for this year’s Rugby World Cup, you will see something similar to the approach in 2015.
“It is certainly not something that we are going to rush – we don’t have the head count to run it – so, while we are very much looking at it, we are not going to jump into it and make a huge mistake around our biggest tournament.”
His sentiments were also echoed by other digital leaders within Europe’s club and international rugby circuits.
Martyn Hindley, head of communications for European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR), explained how the body came to the decision to stream matches to its Challenge Cup competition, the second tier of European club rugby.
“With the change to broadcast contracts this season – we are delighted to be with BT Sport for four years – what we found is that they obviously majored on the Heineken Champions Cup, and we had a big corporate kick-back as to what was perceived as an ignorance or a negligence to the Challenge Cup.
The @StadeToulousain men combined brilliantly for France today as they have done in the #ChampionsCup all season ����
Will they continue their hot form into the QFs? �� pic.twitter.com/VHemUgwXw8
— Heineken Champions Cup (@ChampionsCup) February 23, 2019
“The job for us was actually to take on online streaming. It was an urgent path for us to give fans access to the tournament and we had to be smart about how we did that. The numbers were also very encouraging so we have to follow it up and have to do it at the right time and hopefully delivering a decent value back to our platform and our other partners as well.
“We have to make sure the rugby is good enough. There are other rights holder who do this content create well and I think we need to focus on other areas first.”
The Six Nations could also follow a similar path. The tournament’s digital manager Shane Whelan, who also joined the Digital Sport event, said that OTT would be a “natural fit” for the tournament’s archive footage to shoulder its traditional media rights.
“In terms of the amount of content that we have, I think it’s something that’s a very natural fit in terms of we have our archive and we have a couple of months of the year to fill,” he said. “It is definitely in our thinking but we are probably a little bit away from it just yet.”
James Abraham, World Rugby’s content and programming manager, believes the governing body will eventually incorporate its own over-the-top (OTT) service into its rights structure, though has ruled out any drastic changes before the end of this year’s Rugby World Cup.
He says that there must first be a demand for a “compelling” service before rolling out a dedicated streaming platform, though does foresee a time when a World Rugby OTT service will be able to facilitate the distribution of rights in the sport’s smaller markets.
“The biggest challenge for us is that we don’t have a direct relationship with our audience that is transactional, in terms of cash,” Abraham told an audience during Digital Sports’ Growing Rugby Through Digital Innovation panel discussion in London.
“When we sell tickets to the Rugby World Cup, that is done through another company, so that is something that we are wrestling with. Whether we want to make money out of [an OTT service] or whether it is something that is important for the audience, these are points for us [to consider].
“It has to be in our future and it has to be a service that we can roll out to competitions and unions. [For example], if France have no interest in selling their rights to their home internationals in Southeast Asia, we should be able to provide a platform that allows viewers to access [their coverage] there.”
In the short-term, Abraham says that an OTT model could involve a free service that sits behind a registration wall.
“It has to be in our future,” he continued. “We are not quite there as yet and I think, for this year’s Rugby World Cup, you will see something similar to the approach in 2015.
“It is certainly not something that we are going to rush – we don’t have the head count to run it – so, while we are very much looking at it, we are not going to jump into it and make a huge mistake around our biggest tournament.”
His sentiments were also echoed by other digital leaders within Europe’s club and international rugby circuits.
Martyn Hindley, head of communications for European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR), explained how the body came to the decision to stream matches to its Challenge Cup competition, the second tier of European club rugby.
“With the change to broadcast contracts this season – we are delighted to be with BT Sport for four years – what we found is that they obviously majored on the Heineken Champions Cup, and we had a big corporate kick-back as to what was perceived as an ignorance or a negligence to the Challenge Cup.
“The job for us was actually to take on online streaming. It was an urgent path for us to give fans access to the tournament and we had to be smart about how we did that. The numbers were also very encouraging so we have to follow it up and have to do it at the right time and hopefully delivering a decent value back to our platform and our other partners as well.
“We have to make sure the rugby is good enough. There are other rights holder who do this content create well and I think we need to focus on other areas first.”
The Six Nations could also follow a similar path. The tournament’s digital manager Shane Whelan, who also joined the Digital Sport event, said that OTT would be a “natural fit” for the tournament’s archive footage to shoulder its traditional media rights.
“In terms of the amount of content that we have, I think it’s something that’s a very natural fit in terms of we have our archive and we have a couple of months of the year to fill,” he said. “It is definitely in our thinking but we are probably a little bit away from it just yet.”
