Disrupting the sports production process

The sports market, particularly for big spectator sports like football, Formula 1, baseball and many more, is big business for all involved.

In a nutshell, advertisers can reach huge audiences, players are paid big bucks through their clubs and sponsorship deals, clubs make massive profits through ticket sales, merchandise and transfer deals and the leagues make vast sums each year through the sale of broadcast rights. Over the past five or ten years we’ve seen major disruption in the television industry and the sports is no exception.

Let’s take the English Premier League, the most watched league on television globally with a potential audience of 4.7 billon people in 185 countries, as an example.

The Premier League was formed in August 1992 following the First Division Clubs’ resignation from the Football League, in May the same year. This decision was mostly based on the opportunity for lucrative television rights deals.

Since then, and not surprisingly, there’s been a wrangling between broadcasters over these rights. In recent years between Sky and Setanta Sports – later ESPN - and then Sky and BT with BT securing rights to broadcast live games for the first time in 2012.

Last year shockwaves were felt when…