Access to basketball has gotten easier but there’s still work to do. Emmet Ryan on the baby steps to give fans in Europe more access to more competitions but the need to make some giant leaps. Emmet Ryan on the slow progress being made.
The new season is in full swing and, no matter where you are in Europe, getting to watch every game you want to see isn’t exactly a dream experience. While Euroleague, Eurocup, Basketball Champions League, and FIBA Europe Cup are easy to catch, you take one step beyond the pan-continental competitions and things get complicated.
You need the skills of a private detective to find some of Europe’s biggest games in domestic leagues. That usually involves having multiple accounts across a range of providers. Even then, you might hit a geographic restriction brick wall that has no legal route to access.
In Ireland, where I’m based, and the UK the natural one to point at here is the ABA League. It used to be worse however as, for a very long time, watching any games in France, Spain, or Italy proved troublesome. The fan experience shouldn’t be this hard.
The great basketball treasure hunt
The majority of fans largely only care about one team and two or three competitions. There’s a significant minority, like me, that will watch anything. Across both groups however are those that will watch casually if something is easy to find and pushed towards them.
Right now, it’s anything but easy. The NBA, Euroleague, and FIBA (through Dazn mostly) already depend on three separate subscriptions in most jurisdictions. With rights varying from country to country, even going to somewhere like r/Euroleague isn’t necessarily going to help for advice.
Subscriptions add up quickly and not just with the obvious financial hit. Maintaining a range of passwords and logins is straightforward these days but that involves where every service is. That creates a discovery barrier for customers and reduces the overall reach of any single game or competition.
A chance? A hope!
This isn’t the first time this site has called for a Netflix of basketball. This past summer saw real steps towards that from two contenders. Euroleague TV expanded its rights to include selected games from Australia, China, France, Germany, Greece, and Italy. Dazn, which took over provision of Courtside 1891, has either added or finally exercised its existing rights for Spain, Portugal, Britain, and Japan.
These are on top of the pan-European competitions shown by both providers. It’s far from perfect. Notable examples that require other platforms include Türkiye, ABA League, and Lithuania. Still it is a step forward.
While there are some territorial variations, consolidation into the core two or three apps (including the NBA) is a notable step forward. It increases discoverability considerably. That said, there’s still work to do. Euroleague TV for starters could push the games outside of Euroleague and Eurocup far better, especially on desktop, to improve discoverability.
BallinEurope is ramping up its YouTube game this season. Subscribe to our channel now for player exclusives, analysis videos, and much more.
This isn’t rocket science
Access means far more than just the legal right to watch a game, be it paid or free. Marketing doesn’t even need a huge all-out blitz. If fans know where games are on, when they are on, and are reminded at the best time to engage them, they’re more likely to watch those games.
Slapping a pile of games on a platform is just the beginning. If you want people to watch them, you need to engage with the potential audience. This is most relevant at a time when cost of living issues make people more prone to cutting subscriptions. The broader a range of content you get a customer to associate with your service, the more likely they are to keep paying subs.
Reducing friction is the easiest win for any provider. The more content you can pile into your app that is relevant to your audience, the more you should help that audience find it. A die hard Partizan fan may not want to watch Porto play 6 days out of 7 but they might well tune in to Porto vs Benfica if the messaging lands at a time that works for them.
BallinEurope has a book, a real life actual book called I Like it Loud, and you can buy it on Amazon now. It’s here as a book and here in Kindle form.
Remember what you’re selling
This is the mistake that so many content platforms seem to forget. You sell someone a house, you probably don’t need to engage with the customer much after the first purchase. If you sell them a subscription and are so idle, it’s going to cost you.
Sure, you might get them to forget about it for a while but, more often than not, they eventually remember to cancel. They also probably won’t resubscribe later. Doesn’t it make more sense to make them want to keep you? The best way to do that is to do the work for the consumer.
The product is not the problem. Basketball has spent decades making people fall in love with it. The sport has succeeded. You don’t stop working on a relationship once you get that first special look in the eye. That’s when the work begins.
Leave a Reply