The fan’s eye view on Welsh rugby
Wales Business — By Catrin Howkins on February 22, 2010 7:00 am
Sing when you're winning ... then talk about it online
THERE is now evidence to support the theory that millions of global consumers are willing to pay for online content. But not for everything. Consumers are three times as likely to pay for online music than for a blog. Nielsen recently conducted a global survey in 54 countries to examine attitudes about paying for online content and to determine which content types consumers were most willing to support financially. The findings show that many consumers are willing to pay for online content, but attitudes vary greatly by geography, demographics and content type. As you might expect.
And as we suspected. As rugby fans began preparing for the start of the RBS Six Nations earlier this month, we launched a new online Welsh rugby TV channel, selecting the former Wales cap and Cardiff Blues player Gareth Thomas as its presenter.
Although it’s based in South Wales, the subscription service welshrugby.tv was created to deliver insight on the real stories in Welsh rugby to Welsh rugby supporters across the world. It provides visitors with a unique combination of rugby news, professional and creative video content, analysis and opinion. The site will produce a behind-the-scenes look at all aspects of Welsh rugby, including the current Six Nations campaign, the summer tour and the Autumn internationals, the regions, club and community rugby and player profiles. Thomas will be joined by a range of top flight and local club players, giving their views and insight into the raw truth of how things really are for those involved in the game.
The idea originated from discussions between Webcast Global and Red Shoes, which came to us with the aim of creating on online archive of their own sports multimedia content.
Further discussions led to the germ of an idea, to create a dedicated sports video channel online – for rugby, in this case, as it is one of the nation’s favourite pastimes and an area of particular experience and knowledge for Richard Owen, a Director of Red Shoes. But the most pressing question was how we would fund the venture.
The Nielsen research demonstrated that consumers show a higher propensity to pay for music, movies, games and professionally produced video than for podcasts, blogs or consumer-generated video. This of course validates the notion that consumers globally still place more value on content produced by “professionals” than from other consumers. UK consumers spent an average of 25 minutes per day using the internet in May 2009, up from nine minutes in May 2004, and for broadband, as availability reaches near-universal levels, the focus of service providers has now shifted to the speed of the broadband connection. The industry is working on offering consumers super fast broadband, while the Government’s Digital Britain report included the objective of delivering minimum broadband speeds of 2Mbit/s by 2012.
We then looked at exactly what was available and how rugby was viewed or covered in the UK across all media (print, TV, radio, online), what rugby fans were keen to have that wasn’t currently being delivered by existing platforms and, of course, we looked at other sports with monetised content online to find out what works, such as Man Utd TV. Attitudes to media consumption haven’t changed radically over the last few years, but one notable exception has been in the use of the internet, which rose by three percentage points to 15%, a statistically significant change, to become the second media activity that would be missed the most (TV is the first).
We were also aware of the false conviction that users do not use the internet to view specific video content. This accepted fact is changing very quickly as more attractive content is made available online, whether it is via the BBC iPlayer and similar sites, or through the newly launched seesaw.com portal. Users are already comfortable using YouTube for clips and trailers and the total number of videos viewed online in the UK in April 2009 grew by 47% on the previous year, to 4.7 billion videos, according to comScore figures from July last year. Online video is growing exponentially, currently exceeding over a billion video views a day worldwide, and the TV and film industries are adjusting their business models to incorporate online content. And as they do, the quality and quantity of content available online will grow.
Our predictions are that the future of monetization of video content online will include a much broader range of revenue models than those in existence today, and that good and useful content will always find buyers and supporters. Combine that with the strong figures about the interest in rugby in Wales, an audit of what was currently available across all media in Wales, and an understanding of what content the fans would be interested in paying for, has resulted in the development of welshrugby.tv.
When we first approached Alfie, he was at pains to point out to us that “Without doubt, Welsh rugby supporters are the most knowledgeable, passionate and committed fans worldwide. As I know from my own experience, rugby in Wales is far more than a game, it’s a part of who we are.”
With that in mind, as well as the weekly Welsh Rugby Show and the latest international and regional level news, welshrugby.tv will host blogs, supporters’ forums and, through the Clubzone section on the site, it will offer rugby clubs across Wales the opportunity to post information on their club and upload their own videos.
Welsh rugby fans have been telling us that they want to get the bare truth and become involved with rugby in Wales at all levels and we’re aiming to deliver a dedicated Welsh rugby channel on the web, with a full schedule of both live and on-demand, pre-recorded programmes.
Times move on. Rugby fans have always closely followed the game, through TV, radio and printed media. welshrugby.tv allows supporters to bring all that together, as well as adding their own content. We think it all adds up to the complete rugby experience.
- You can click here to see Alfie telling us why he’s involved, and what he thinks welshrugby.tv should be delivering.
Tags: broadcasting, rugby, social media
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10 Comments
With respect, you are hardly proposing to serve an untapped market here. Welsh rugby fans currently have more content than they can possibly consume. If you ONLY took the BBC’s, S4Cs, and Western Mail’s weekly online and offline rugby coverage added together, then you’d find that even the most commited Welsh rugby fan would find it difficult to summon the dedication to get through it all. And remember that – in the entire scheme of things – this is highly, highly niche content delivered pretty much for free.
Speaking as a dedicated Welsh rugby nut, I love the challenge of trying to get through it all, but even I can see that a lot of it is paper-thin. If we are honest, exactly what the hell is there to talk about in terms of Welsh rugby anyway – let alone that isn’t already covered, and for free? It has to be free and trashy because we know and accept that there’s only so much focus you can put on 100 players working in a corridor 60 miles long and 10 miles wide.
Just because people ‘consume’ loads of Welsh rugby content, it doesn’t mean they’ll pay for it. Future monetisation revenue models (ways of making money) for this kind of video content will need to be erring toward the free side of ‘cheap’. Good luck!
With respect, Dev, I disagree. What is being proposed here is far more than just media output. It’s providing a venue for each and every rugby club and player in Wales to have web presence in one place. So it doesn’t matter if you play for the Ospreys or a tiny village’ second XV, you all get a say. It plays to the powers of new media by allowing visitors to shape their own content while offering traditional coverage that is not just aggregated from larger media organisations.
Also, do we really want only a small handful of businesses providing our media? What happened to proliferation?
And I’d put £20 a year towards the cheaper end of subscription.
“As I know from my own experience, rugby in Wales is far more than a game, it’s a part of who we are.”
as witnessed by the fact that everything on sale in Tesco for St Davids’ Day has the 3 Feathers or some reference to rugby on it. Is that what we’re reduced to, not a nation, a country, but (in effect) a supporters club? Is that what defines our identity? Jeez what a horrific thought..
(Good luck with the service btw! Need more independent media outlets in Wales as Duncan rightly says.)
Nice idea, and good luck.
I like my rugby viewing and commentary to be in Welsh, so personally as a “passive” rugby fan I won’t be going further than S4C.
Also: C’MON LLANGEFNI!
“rugby in Wales is far more than a game, it’s a part of who we are.”
What utter nonsense, football is and has always been the sport of the working-class majority in Wales
Rugby is the chosen sport of the establishment, encouraged amongst the masses as being the sole acceptable outlet for Welsh Nationalism.
The near empty stadiums for Mangers league games prove that outside of the 6Nations window, interest in domestic Rugby is minimal and far less enthusiastic than you would find in the West country, the East Midlands or Ireland.
Glen, you’re talking nonsense. Sorry.
Rugby is the preserve of the Welsh working class far more so than football. Have you ever driven through Llanelli, Ammanford or Maesteg on a Thursday evening? It’s rugby you’ll see dominating the playing fields – not a football in sight. Real working class areas where rugby is the only game in town.
England is where Rugby is the game for the middle class, played as it is almost exclusively in public schools, but not here in Wales. I think your perspective is skewed with a South Easterly bias, yes there is a lot of working class support for football there but you have to think of Wales as a nation and not just Cardiff, and elsewhere football plays second fiddle.
I will agree that Magners league attendances are poor – but there are reasons for this which have nothing to do with the working class’ affiliation with the game:
All Magners league games are televised/The standard of Magners league games are poor/Games are often on at awkward times to suit television companies
Let’s compare this with the Welsh footballing context – Cardiff, Swansea e.t.c
Their league attendances are so healthy because not all of their matches are available on TV. There is a marked drop off in attendance when they are televised.
Swansea and Cardiff play at a very high level week in week out so their attendances will be much larger – compare their attendances when in Division 2 and you see a big difference. Heineken cup attendances for the rugby are very healthy showing that the quality of game has a big impact on support.
Also football has more and more of a prawn sandwich brigade attending games – this is not an assault on football i love the sport but it is an assault on Glen’s claims that it is the game of the Welsh working class.
Let’s look at the international context to sum up my argument:
Cardiff on an international Rugby day is rammed – over a 100,00 people descend on the city to enjoy the day – a combination of all backgrounds but with a strong majority of working class, all there to support the boys and enjoy.
Cardiff on an international Football day is empty – one man and his dog in the stands.
Clear evidence that Rugby is the game the Welsh working class obsess over
James,
I’m sure you will find there are at least 3x more people playing football than Rugby in Maesteg, Ammanford, Llanelli or any other town in Wales you care to mention (There are more registered footballers in Cardiff alone than there are Rugby players in the whole of Wales).
As for the people in silly hats who flood into Cardiff for internationals with the sole intention of getting drunk as possible, the actual game is an irrelevance and most of them wouldn’t know a ruck from a maul.
The truth is without the extremely generous fees the WRU receive from their good friends at BBC Wales for covering a competition no one is interested in, the professional regional teams would cease to exist.
The recent Bristol C-Cardiff FA cup game shown on S4c attracted an audience of over half a million – that’s approximately 10x more than watch live Rugby on the channel
This guy says it all :-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=99V-bDg6YjM&feature=related
Good video, well argued. I seem to remember, from my dim and distant path as a news editor, a stat that there are three football players for every rugby player in Wales. Whereas rugby tends to be focused on what was the South Wales coalfield (as far east as Gwent and as far west as Carmathenshire), football is evenly played across all of Wales, and remains far more popular in the north than rugby ever has been.
Part of this is to do with migration and, yes, the English. Football advanced along the North Wales coast as it became populated with people from the North West, whereas it was West Country tin miners, headed north in search of work in the recently-opened mines, that brought rugby to Wales. And part of it is that football simply appeals to more people across the world than any other sport, and Wales is no different in that respect.
However, we are beginning to go slightly off the point here, gents. The piece is really about whether a small Welsh business can identify a niche and live alongside the goliaths of the game. This, I think, is quite important. I love Google and it’s products, and plan to be one of the first to its new Chrome OS system. But do we want it and just a few companies like it completely dominating online output? How do we find out if homegrown alternatives will survive? This is why we commissioned this piece – to explore that concept.
Having said that, if anyone out there is prepared to write a combative piece in defence of their sport, let me know.
As an aside, I think Simon’s comment, about the provision of Welsh language output, is an interesting point to throw into the mix.
Duncan, I would leave a longer response but I’ve got about loads of articles about Welsh rugby to catch up on plus all the stuff over the weekend that I Sky+’d…
Seriously though – I wish the venture well. However, anything I spend on Welsh rugby will go on tickets.
Hi,
I am RAM from Cardiff. I would like to know much about the rugby fans. I am doing a project making a business plan on TRAVEL AGENTS for RUGBY FANS. I would like to know the market analysis – like are the fans interested in going with the teams when they play away? If so, whom do they approach for travelling tickets? Can anyone please post me if you can get related links?