In 2024, Italian soccer’s top-flight Serie A agreed a new distribution deal with digital content platform and OTT service OneFootball across the UK and Ireland.
Dubbed “The Home of Serie A”, OneFootball is the exclusive broadcaster of eight of the 10 Serie A fixtures per gameweek, as well as two more that it shares with linear broadcaster TNT Sports. Alongside this, the platform hosts highlights from each game among other select video content from around the league.
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The partnership between Serie A and OneFootball is not a simple media rights licensing agreement, but a wide-ranging collaboration indicative of OneFootball’s multi-faceted offering that links the league with the existing OneFootball install base. Where Ligue 1 has launched its own Ligue 1 Pass direct-to-consumer (DTC) offering in the territory, a completely new service, OneFootball has an existing user base with consumer data that the league can access also.
This, combined with the speed of launch for OneFootball's distribution in new markets, has seen multiple soccer leagues avail the platform of its services in regions where acquiring traditional pay-TV distribution may have been too difficult, or the added reach too negligible.
Speaking at a jointly organized activation around the partnership, OneFootball OTT general manager Yannick Ramcke and chief operating officer Maurits Schön go into detail about how the partnership helps both parties and how DTC solutions can help to shape where sports broadcasting heads in the future.
With more leagues seeking to grow international reach through revenue generation, how does OneFootball help sports properties?
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By GlobalDataYannick Ramcke: “[Sports properties] normally have the trade-off between reach and revenue. What we are doing and facilitating is that more leagues are facing challenging market environments, so the opportunity cost for them to [go direct-to-consumer] has come down, so they're more willing to take a short-term hit on the revenues to do baby steps when it comes to direct-to-consumer (DTC) ambitions.
“But technically speaking, many leagues don't have [DTC solutions] ready to go and can turn it on from one season to the next. What we are doing is helping them both technically and in terms of access to our install base and segmented customer base.
“Leagues can launch their research team on the back of OneFootball. It’s a technical platform [with a] user base, and we allow leagues to run a DTC business on top of OneFootball that goes all the way through customer data sharing. When someone purchases Serie A pass via OneFootball, [the league] directly, via API, gets access to that customer base, because this is otherwise just a licensing agreement.
“This is a league-operated product with all the tools to package, customize, and configure their offer on OneFootball.
“The UK was a market where [Serie A] traditionally had some attractive deals, where they are used to making money, and this was a good opportunity for them. They didn't have a big deal on the table, they did a small one with TNT Sports. Now, how far can they get if they go back to DTC? How do consumer revenues compare to the licensing revenues that they can make?
Then it will be a case-by-case or market-by-market decision. Certainly, this might not be the short-term revenue-maximizing approach, but it's a strategic decision that connects with the fan and builds up a database, a customer base, and other revenue streams like merchandising, tickets, and so on as you build up the brand.
“OneFootball is more than OTT. It's ideally all in one experience, not only on matchday, but also each day in between.”
What is the benchmark for success in the Serie A partnership?
YR: “Ultimately it’s a two-sided effort. Yes, we bring a user base to the table, but to market and promote the league offering, the league is in the driver's seat. What we need to be held accountable for is converting the existing [OneFootball] user base.
For each match, we have a conversion rate that we try to hit, and then it's a lot about user acquisition because the league and the clubs are all using the different channels that they have, or their customer relationship management (CRM) and they build up a funnel onto the OneFootball platform. Once people are on the OneFootball platform, it's our job to convert.
“For example, we do 40% of category sales during the match, because we keep triggering them, we have push notifications, we have contextual and timely discovery, and then it takes 10 seconds to purchase [the relevant paid pass]. So the job of the league and the teams is to create a funnel onto the platform. Once the fans are on the platform it is our job [to convert them].”
How different are the dialogues you have with leagues, clubs, and federations?
YR: “Everyone has a unique perspective on how they want to run their business, but ultimately it's like 80% overlapping. You can find common denominators. The biggest difference is between federations and broadcasters or media companies.
“For example, if you think about it like a club, normally all their media rights are centralized on the league level so they have very little that they can work with to accelerate, for example, the club TV offering. So for them, VOD is [the most] important. Their time to shine is friendly matches, which are the one part of the schedule that they can self-market and promote. But then between summer and winter break, especially for a subscription strategy business, they are struggling to come up with constant value.
“You can provide the toolbox where they then self-serve according to strategic objectives and also the individual situation that they are in. They can pick and choose what makes sense for them to do. Is it pay-per-view? Season pass? A subscription? Live only? Video-on-demand?
“These are the small details between broadcasters and rightsholders, but whether it's a club, a league, or a federation, they have all the same challenges and assets that they bring to the table.”
There is a lot of scaremongering over how media rights values may change over the next decade. How will the industry dynamics between linear and OTT change and how well placed is OneFootball and the streaming industry in general to pick up where cord-cutting may see linear outlets drop?
YR: “It will be a co-existence for the foreseeable future. The big difference compared to 5-10 years ago is that no distribution system, whether linear, OTT, or anything in between, has a monopoly on the audience, they are too fragmented, and one size does not fit all.
“Five years ago, we launched the OTT DTC vertical at OneFootball and we approached the big guys in the industry – Sky, DAZN, and so on – with the new proposition and said "let's tailor-make something for the new generation of soccer fans. They don't want to subscribe to a mighty sports bundle subscription, they want to pay, but they don't want to pay for all the bells and whistles that they're not interested in."
“We pitched pay-per-view, we pitched team and league season passes, but five years ago, the pressure on the industry was not to the extent that it is today, meaning the openness and willingness to actually explore those things has multiplied in the last 2-3 years.
“So, we may have been a couple of years too early five years ago. Right now, we see in the accelerated momentum in the business that this is quite an opportune time. And because [media giants] have to, they are starting to embrace alternative models that are not superseding or replacing their core subscription businesses, but complementing them.
“And what we have also seen is, as soon as we can prove [to broadcasters] quantitatively with data that [growth] is incremental, their willingness to cooperate is like a completely different ball game because normally, broadcasters think about a downside at an upside. ‘How does it impact my existing business? Is it a zero-sum game?’
“OneFootball can be, for a certain segment of the market, the ideal solution for broadcasters to connect with that audience and monetize that audience. But there's also another segment of the market, maybe the segment that has more disposable income at this point in time where OneFootball might not be the go-to platform for broadcasters to connect with that segment, therefore they have other [cooperative agreements] in the marketplace. We have found quite a good business-to-business positioning that is embraced on the business-to-consumer side of things.”
Maurits Schön: “Maybe we were a little too early [to the DTC market], but on the other hand, this gave us the time to, especially on the tech side, develop something that is now plug-and-play ready. So we are now able to onboard a rights holder, be it a broadcaster, club, or league, within less than 24 hours, to bring a live product behind the paywall to a user base in a country or region of choice.
“This is a big advantage for us now that we are able to move fast and facilitate any kind of content and any kind of commercial model to help our partners and anyone who is interested in going down that route, while obviously, we have built a user base in that we know very well and that we can address in the right way, which is also difficult for rights holders.
“As Yannick said, there's not one solution anymore to fit the whole market. In the market segment where we are strong, we have found the right way of communication to also address [our customers], and then even though it's a league or club or operated product, we can consult in a way to make sure that the right commercial models and pricing, for example, are chosen to address that segment of the market.”
