A League Promotion

Guardian has a piece on whether A League should be free to air. Effectively now there is glut of free to air coverage of all football due to the many pirate and legal streaming services. I gave up Sky a year or so ago, prefer to buy legal streaming services where they exist but watch Match of the Day every week on the BBC because it is a better quality highlights show than the one I pay for. 

I pay for Premier League and PDC Darts and like that I can watch on any device and for that matter can watch darts and football at the same time. 

I hardly turn on the free TV now because I don't want to watch Border Vet Fishing - but then again when United were on breakfast free to air the other morning it was easy just to press the on switch.

Free to air games won't help the A League a lot, my interest is waning mainly because of lack of games recently in Wellington and very poor packaging of the league overall. The A League has one advantage over streaming TV, you can go down the stadium and see your team play in front of you. This also gets you more interested in the away games and other games, but I've gone from watching maybe four A League games a week to none at all this week because there's has been better entertainment elsewhere.  

A poor job is done promoting the A League in New Zealand (notable exception is Jason Pine and David Chote on the radio), give me a good streaming service with highlights packages and other shows like Premier League Pass and it's got a chance. 

You make some good points, and the one about poor packaging of A-League in New Zealand is something I raised in the past. This has more to do with SKY TV lazy and careless approach to the product they should at least try and showcase.

If anyone is squatting on the licence, it is SKY TV, not Welnix. But it is not helped by lack of a dedicated media officer at The Nix, someone who should be engaging with our broadcasters (radio, TV, online, press) to get better coverage between games and ahead of the games. Otherwise too much is riding on a momentary enthusiasm if we win the odd game at home.

Very very very very interesting topic ....

For streaming to be effective i.e. good quality, cheap, no lagging etc ... requires a certain standard Net and the cost of using large chunks of data usage at an affordable cost ... especially across mobile devices  platforms..

In Australia our net is not the greatest a decision was made we could not afford to put cable to every house and are putting cable to a Telstra Nod [I think a nod is a major junction box]  Then from the Nod to the house using existing Telstra copper wires... 

The end result is not great ... also the cost of data usage on mobile platforms is expensive ...

This slackness in the net and the relatively high cost of mobile devices data usage results in the Australian FTA stations having far more power than say in Europe and the USA ... our pay TV pick up is just 30% as an example ...

A number of recent articles in Australia from some of our best journalist have all said we need to get on a commercial FTA station even if it cost revenue so the game can grow and for future revenue..

Have no idea of your net in NZ but by the sounds of things  [your comments about your personal streaming] its better than ours. 

In Australia  FTA is seen by many as a way to connect to the player base as the % of players in Australia connected to the A-League is very low especially when compared to the other Football codes like League, AFL & Union.... Football has about 17% of its players connected to the A-League whereas the other codes the % is around 86% ... many see this as the way forward i.e. to connect to the player base and turn them into fans and FTA is seen by many as critical in the conversation... 

Some analysis see lifting the 17% conversation rate above 50% as the key to future growth ... who / what / how / when / because / this is achieved is very big question ... 

I think in general the issue in NZ with the a-league is down to SKY's lack of interest in football full stop, the meakly walked off when they lost the rights to the EPL, and with the a-league they are the only supplier here. Add to that, as mentioned above the Nix dont really put a lot of activity into promoting the game or coverage other than gameday.  

Both need to improve.

Some interesting stuff there Midfielder.

For NZ at least we don't have anywhere near as much FTA content, and sports are pretty rare but almost always delayed at a minimum.

Whereas In Aus I believe you have quite a lot, like if I remember correctly the NRL has a few games each week live on FTA, and the same for the A League?

Whereas in NZ sky has such a grip on content here that most sporting content that is FTA (there usually isn't much) is usually delayed.

The problem is both the perceived lack of interest in the sport and the A League product itself.  If I remember correctly the A League is having issues getting their stuff on FTA and get bumped down the list (I think I remember reading or hearing that, you can probably correct me).

The product isn't worth much, and as such it wont sell high, here and there.  How to improve the product?  fudgeed if I know.

Though I don't disagree, where do they need to advertise?

I've seen ads on TV, I've seen ads on buses, in bus stops, at the cinema, in the paper, etc.  There's no lack of advertising, its just obviously not the right advertising.

I don't agree that it is a sky issue that FTA is so poor when on.  Even when sky doesn't have rights, FTA has always treated sport poorly.  I remember watching a Chatham Cup Final on TV1, which cut away to the news DURING a penalty shoot out.  From memory, they didn't even cover it in the sports news!

FTA has changed drastically since everything went digital. TVNZ has a dedicated sports channel that only has two sports on it at the moment so you'd think they would be keen for content

Although the problem with freeview is that people with sky probably don't even have their TV aerial plugged into their TV so they will only get the main channels. 

I think Maori TV would be a good partner personally, it's on every platform and probably won't be as picky about putting content on in prime time weekend viewing.

Meanwhile, over in Geelong:

http://www.a-league.com.au/article/geelongs-bold-plan-beckham-style-academy-new-stadium/1fdxrn3tocrhi172bwfjj9wzei

Could someone forward this to the Hutt City council? They clearly have something to learn.

And to the Auckland City Council, while we are at it.

quite odd for that to appear as a news item on the A league website. 

^^Geelong team bid confirmed ;)