Lat the first debate table of the Expansion & BRAND Business Sport Forum addressed the problem of piracy and the new audiovisual scenario in sport, with the emergence of live platforms. A table that could not be missed Javier Tebaspresident of LaLiga and who has championed the fight against piracy in recent years.
Thebes was accompanied by Tacho BenedictCEO of Mediapro; Bosco ArangureCEO of DAZN España and Iris CordobaCEO de Global Sports Innovation Center by Microsoft (GSIC).
This has been the second edition of the Expansión & MARCA Business Sport Forum
Although the topic of piracy was the last to be debated, it was the one that provoked the most vehemence in the speakers. “I haven’t called it piracy for a long time, I call it stealing”Thebes pointed out. “I want to go to specific cases, because we have to say names of companies: Google and Apple are thieves because they collaborate. After much fighting, we have managed to get Google and Apple to remove the applications with which the consumer reaches pirated content, but they are still on smartphones. Those who have already downloaded it continue watching football for free or paying five euros to watch all of Movistar or all of DAZN. We are not going to go with the lily in our hand, we are already tired of the stories they tell us. We already have a court resolution that forces Google and Apple to remove these applications from their mobile phones,” said the president of LaLiga. And he concluded: “They are robbing us, it is as if I go to a restaurant that has a Michelin star and since it seems expensive to me, I make a ‘simpa’.
On this subject, Tatxo Benet believes that it must be finished “romantic concept of piracy”. “As a society, we have minimized the theft of data, the theft of games, the theft of series… We have portrayed the person who stole the game as a lone ranger who did good. We have to take it seriously, stealing a football game “It’s like stealing the data from Banco Santander, people have to see that it’s morally bad, as bad as robbing a store.”
Bosco Aranguren offered some data, such as that if piracy ceased to exist, more than 100,000 jobs and 680 million more would be raised. In addition, it sent a warning message to the end user, the one who consumes pirated content: “75% of malware is produced in the first five minutes of connection. “When you accept, accept, accept, you already have the bug.”
New audiovisual stage and bubble
In the talk, which was moderated by Estela S. Mazo, a journalist from Expansión, the new audiovisual scenarios and a possible bubble in the world of sports broadcasting were also discussed. “To see if there is a bubble, first what you have to see is what your demand is. The more demand you have, the more the price will rise. As long as demand continues to grow, the price will not drop. Either we intervene as they have done with the price of apartments in Barcelona with little success, or it will continue to grow. I would not talk about a bubble in any case“said Tatxo Benet on this last matter.
The president of LaLiga referred to the new scenarios that the rights holders find themselves in. “When you are going to offer your rights to a single OTT, it does not have the budgetary capacity that it had before when there were only two cable TVs. The consumer has been divided, making it very difficult to go to many territories with exclusivity. This makes it our strategies change.”
Tebas pointed out a new possibility for the coming years: “We are on the way to several sports properties being able to join some territories in the world and go to market together.. We must work harder than before on the model of those of us who sell the rights and take steps forward and if we go alone we will lower our values. If we go with other sports properties they will go up. If you sell for 10,000 million together and for example LaLiga is seen in that OTT 23% of the minutes and the Premier 50%, then we will take 23% of the money and the Premier 50%.” Tebas believes that not It will be many years until this type of situation is chosen.
“The user is still at the center, but today they can choose when, where, what they consume and in what format, even if I can generate my own content,” said Iris Córdoba. Regarding the new scenario, she explained: “At home I have different platforms to consume different content. It’s a bit of a journey, how we make it sustainable. “I watch the Copa América, the Superclásico, Formula 1… You no longer only compete for content, you compete for experiences.”
Furthermore, Tebas warned that one market is not the same as another and that therefore the strategies have to be different depending on the market in which it operates. “The world of OTT will end up being the majority of consumption, in 2030 80% of the world will consume sport through OTT, but the United States is not the same as France. You have to know how to read each market very well to know the strategy “.
