Originally Posted by
BLR
Personally I think that world is dead going forward. Good quality streaming is the ticket.
Hell, I am not even sure how to get my TV to work on free to air but I sure as hell have my computer hooked up to my TV.
This is what the ARU need to do to innovate. Sell their product to Pay TV/free TV as they do now for the big bucks and build their own streaming service which will have new games(potentially delayed to not upset Pay TV/Free TV) but most importantly archived games. Build a following with a pricing similar to maybe the Netflix monthly fee where the enticement is various pundit show, old matches on demand, doco's talking about old matches. etc. If you charge around $12 a month(small enough that it isn't cost prohibitive) and have 10,000 people subscribe, that's $1.5 million in the coffers for a very small amount of people, for what essentially would have a very low cost base besides the pundit shows, as once the older games are archived it's done.
Make that available world wide and look at ARU's revenue go up. All you would need to do is talk Foxtel into potentially a leasing of old matches and pundit shows, track down old archived matches, whatever we can afford and then make an original show every week or so to keep things ticking along and you have yourself the future.
Don't underestimate nostalgia or the wish to know 'what came before'. Think of a young kid who hears his dad talk about the time we got our first win at home, how the hell is that kid ever going to watch that game? Perhaps his old man could simply put it on the tele from the ARU/Foxtel on Demand Rugby Streaming Service (name needs work) and have a watch. Next thing you know the kid is watching the first season matches and feeling the excitement we all felt back then. His interest is engaged and he is ready for the next game.
That's why On Demand streaming is the answer, not Free TV/Pay TV.