As of last week, all 🇪🇺 European Big-5 football leagues ⚽ have returned to the field and there have been both legal and financial incentives to do just that—inevitably putting public and private health and safety at risk.
The COVID-induced impact, though, will be felt by 🇩🇪 Bundesliga (returned on May 16), 🇪🇸 La Liga (June 11), 🇬🇧 Premier League (June 19), and 🇮🇹 Serie A (June 22) for years to come.
Unlocking the two most important revenue streams, namely 📺 broadcasting and 👕 commercial income, was probably still worth it for all of them—although there will be an interesting control group with the 🇫🇷 Ligue 1.
Looking at the Premier League, the 800-pound 🦍gorilla of the world's most global ⚽ sports, specifically, a lot of concessions to broadcasting and commercial partners have been made in order to avoid as much business disruption as possible and retain financial integrity—but will this (required) short-term thinking will come back hurting the league in the long-run?
- ⚽ Supply of Games increased to all 92x remaining games available (i.e. 45x additional games),
- 📺 Free-to-Air Coverage for broader access while facing the inherent trade-off between monetizability and access,
- 📆 Staggering of Games to maximize live programming minutes and catering to overseas broadcasters as well,
- 🕒 Temporary Lift of Blackout Window on Saturdays @ 3pm as in-stadium attendance is not part of the equation anymore, and
- 🤳🏻 Other concessions like increased player access or behind-the-scenes footage.
The big question will be whether the league can put the genie back in the bottle once we have returned to some kind normalcy down the road and today's concessions are considered as 💰 added value instead of taking them as a 🤷🏽♂️ given by would-be buyers of broadcasting rights in the future?
With settlement talks with domestic and 🌍 international broadcasters hopefully out of the way soon—whereby the revenue collection from the latter should the even bigger but thankfully less impactful challenge—leagues will shift their attention to restoring sponsorship and advertising dollars lost to the global pandemic. Just like with their broadcasting partners, making good on previous commitments will probably last way into next season:
Similar to the above-mentioned concessions, newly offered physical and digital advertising inventory was originally intended to sustain future revenue growth 📈 and to be incremental in nature. Now, it will be needed to serve as compensation for existing instead of new commercial partners and make good for already budgeted, booked, or even reinvested revenues.
In a nutshell, the 🇬🇧 Premier League has unquestionably set some dangerous precedents during "Project Restart" to overcome the current crisis—will it come back to hurt them down the road?
In the end, there are some QUICK HITS on stories to watch 👀 around professional football coming back, including:
- 🔊 Fake Crowd Noise: Why did the Bundesliga the best?
- 🏟️ Tarps/CGI Fans in Stadium Stands: How did the Premier League combine visual appeal combined with commercial opportunity as we will have a "purely-made-for-TV" product?
- 💰 Accelerated Innovation in Watch XP (and Commercial Models?): How did COVID19 help to finally realize some of OTT's promises and when does innovation in commercial models follow suit?
- 🕶️ Outlook for the 2020/21 Season: What does happen with the 180x not-scheduled-to-be-live-broadcasted games next season—a unique opportunity for the EPL?
