LONDON: From Tunisia to Saudi Arabia, Arab football fans are glued to their screens this month — small ones as well as the big.
For the billions watching the World Cup, an increasing number will be following the action not on a big-screen television, but on a computer screen, tablet or smartphone.
The explosive global growth of smartphone ownership — coupled with the proliferation of high-speed mobile networks — has made the consumption of live sports an increasingly personalized experience.
The untethering of the viewing of live sports from the living room-based TV, dominated by the likes of OSN, Sky and terrestrial broadcasters, has created opportunities for newer entrants, with some of the world’s largest tech firms keen to muscle in.
This is increasingly so in the Gulf and Middle East, as rising smartphone ownership, young and digitally-savvy populations, and the rising penetration of social media make the region ripe for alternative sport-viewing trends.
Earlier this month Amazon made headlines when it acquired the rights to stream 20 English Premier League games per season until 2021. The deal followed on the heels of Facebook announcing a three-year deal to stream 25 Major League Baseball games in March and Twitter announcing a deal to broadcast 25 Major League Soccer games per season for three years.
“Amazon’s recent deal with the EPL highlights the draw of sports live streaming globally,” Khalid Alaraifi, a senior official with a Saudi Arabia-based sports marketing firm, told Arab News.
“I believe that there’s big opportunities in the market, especially here in the Gulf.”
Twitter got the ball rolling in the region last year, with a partnership with Sela Sport to live stream the 2017 Arab Club Championship in Egypt, marking the first live stream of a global football tournament fully on Twitter.
Twitter last week launched #YallaGoal, its first live sports show, to be broadcast bi-weekly during the World Cup.
The business case for live-sports broadcasting is very different for social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, compared with Amazon’s strategy.
“For Twitter it’s not necessarily about increasing users, it’s more about increasing the amount of time they spend on the site,” said Julian Aquilina, a London-based research analyst with Enders Analysis.
Increasing user engagement can be used to increase advertising spend.
Kinda Ibrahim, Twitter’s director of media partnerships for the MENA region, told Arab News that a series of video ads, played alongside the livestream and highlights packages of last year’s Arab Club Championship on Twitter, generated 2 million views during the semifinals and final stages of the tournament.
In addition to generating additional advertising revenues, live-streaming rights could also be used to increase users in under-penetrated markets, said Aquilina.
Facebook last year bid $600 million for the streaming rights of this year’s IPL T20 cricket tournament in India — which attracted a total viewership of around 1.4 billion people — but lost out to a $2.6 billion bid for broadcast and streaming rights from Rupert Murdoch’s Star Network.
“India has been a difficult market for Facebook to break into, they don’t have same kind of engagement there as they do elsewhere,” said Aquilina.
“By bidding for the IPL rights they were trying to attract people on to platform, as well as increasing time spent on site.”
The move by Amazon into live-sport streaming, by contrast, is geared toward driving subscriptions to its Amazon Prime service, rather than chasing higher user engagement as a means of boosting advertising spend, said Aquilina.
The securing of EPL rights this month followed similar deals struck last year by Amazon to stream tennis games from the ATP tour, and a series of mid-week NFL games.
“Their strategy is to encourage people who don’t subscribe to Amazon Prime to try out the service, and to make it even stickier for people already on board,” said Aquilina.
Crucially, the offering of live-sports provides a key differentiator to rival Netflix, according to Simon Murray, principal analyst with Digital TV Research.
“Netflix have repeatedly said they don’t want to get into live sports, so others like Amazon can offer something unique,” he told Arab News.
The entry of Amazon into the Middle East — following last year’s acquisition of e-commerce firm Souq — raises the prospect of the retail giant offering live sports events to its customers in the region.
Amazon’s integration of Souq remains in its early stages, however.
Amazon Prime video launched in the Gulf in 2016, but the service hasn’t been significantly promoted, said Abbas Jaffar Ali, editor of TechRadar Middle East.
“Once Souq is fully integrated into Amazon toward the end of this year, we’ll start seeing Amazon promote their brands more actively,” he said.
Murray highlighted that while Amazon’s securing of EPL is a watershed moment, observers were baffled that it had not secured more than 20 games per season.
“Everyone was expecting more interest in the EPL rights from streaming players and that this would push up the fees,” he said.
“That didn’t happen because the streaming services ultimately didn’t want to get too involved ... What we’re seeing right now is streaming services gently testing the waters,” said Aquilina.
“I think we’re still a very long way to go before any of these players pick up proper big sets of rights.”