The NBA is aiming to turn a nation of cricket and rugby nuts into basketball fans by showing live-streamed games for free. It's struck a deal with Perform Group to stream a game a week live from the US via Sportal.com.au/nba.
The two think it will quickly have 250,000 pairs of eyeballs glued to their screens every Friday, and hope to draw in more with sticky local content. Advertisers have already piled in. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Bob Jane T-Mart are advertising for this Friday's launch – and they have reportedly paid premium prices to be there.
NBA has a partnership with ESPN, with games shown in Australia via Foxtel. It also has an all-you-can-eat subscription model called League Pass.
Geraldine Pamphile, vice president of media distribution and merchandising, NBA Asia, said cannibalisation of those revenue models was not a concern. While marketers locally talk about growing the pie, she said the move is all about “growing the ball” via a combined subscription and freemium ad-funded model.
It's a model many local publishers, such as News and Fairfax, are trying to crack.
“It's a dream model,” she said, with the ad-funded games drawing in new fans which can be converted to pay for a subscription, or just keep watching for free. Either way “they feed each other”. The reason for tying up with the Sportal platform – which also covers all types of codes, is because it will likely attract those already interested in sports, she added.
In a country as obsessed with sport as Australia, that's plenty of potential traffic. But local content is king, said Pamphile. Perform will build out the local website and is hiring journalists to make the content sing. “It is critical. You have to give it to people with their fingers on the pulse.”
Perform will also look to monetise that content, as well as the live games and highlights. Managing director James Rushton said the combination of streamed video with pre-rolls and mid-rolls in breaks in play, plus standard web formats, means advertisers can be “highly creative” and link video and display. He said that brands will pay a premium to reach an anticipated 250,000 audience, largely 16 to 24-year-olds, via those interactive formats. One difference to paying to watch games on TV, he said, was that users are only a click away from conversion.
To drive traffic and reach that 250,000 mark, he said that the firm will harness Twitter and is in talks about using Amplify. That could generate further revenue and traffic during live games. Rushton said that, because there was some flexibility over which games are streamed, there was also the opportunity to strengthen the following with “retweet competitions ... with the most retweets deciding which game airs”.
The games for this Friday are already set. It will be interesting to see how many people tune in. But whatever the numbers, Rushton said the combined model of free and paid will be the model that succeeds.
“As platforms converge, more and more rights owners will be looking for partners to create freemium models [in combination with paid models], because the more eyeballs, the better it is for the game.”
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