Game on: Why watching sport on television is about to shift forever

For youngsters, waiting until Saturday evening to watch Premier League action is already old hat. Now with a new US team of streaming giants combining their talents, Chris Blackhurst looks at how life for the armchair sports fan is about to change forever

Kansas City Chiefs during the 2023 Super Bowl (Getty)

My 18-year-old son, Archie, wants – and gets – his sport from everywhere. He has no regard for the particular programme, the presenters – although he does quite like Gary Neville. Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, Danny Murphy, on the other hand, talk sense but they’re speaking to his dad, not to him.

I do have time for them because I remember them in their football-playing pomp. BBC One’s Match of the Day as a show, Archie can take or leave. It’s the action he’s after.

If it’s a big match he might watch it live, if not he will catch the highlights well before they appear on the plodding BBC. Clips on social media, YouTube, dodgy foreign streaming services – you name it, he will have found a way.

At home, his old man would have stuck faithfully to BBC, ITV, Sky and their scheduling. But Archie, he wants it now, on the move, wherever he is and he’s not bothered who supplies it.

Archie is the future. While the TV executives want me to keep tuning in, the charts they pore over, the ones that dictate where their industry is heading, tell them they must somehow woo Archie, that he’s more to offer long-term.

That’s easier said than done if you work for an old-fashioned TV content provider. You’ve paid a fortune for the ability to show live sports and you’ve also got these other comedies and dramas in your locker that have cost the earth.

Advertisers are champing at the bit for youth and renewal and volume, and all the time your audience is ageing and declining.

It’s reasoning like this that lies behind the shock move of arch-rivals Fox, Disney and Warner to come together to offer a single streaming, so far unnamed, sports service.

They’re American, so the content will be heavily drawn, initially, from the major US professional leagues and college conferences. The English Premier League will not feature, not on this service, not yet. But football’s biggest, most prestigious international competition, the Fifa World Cup, is included.

Golf’s PGA is also there, along with mixed martial arts promotion UFC.

The idea is to reach their Archies, as the threesome put it, “outside of the traditional TV bundle”. They want to persuade them to watch the sports the networks have spent fortunes to secure for their traditional TV bundles while not forcing them to stick with the traditional TV bundle.

In reality, it’s another step towards “cord-cutting”, another move from the family gathered around watching the match on the box in the corner plugged into the wall.

Only sports and live events such as award shows can offer the steady ratings and younger demographic advertisers are seeking. Archie and his pals will watch the latter because they want the immediacy of the news, the incidents and the wardrobe malfunctions.

The three-way tie-up is acknowledging that conventional television viewing – as those of us older folks regard it – is receding, that younger people have different viewing habits and the stations must move accordingly, or lose them entirely.

Sport bonds and brings folk together. It’s common to all – rich, poor, old, young. And it’s truly international

It’s good news for sports rights. If traditional broadcasters are going to still show sports, they must compete with Apple, Amazon and Google and, buoyed by their enhanced offer, Fox, Discovery and Warner.

When the Glazers were considering bids for Manchester United, a figure of $10bn was mooted.

To those outside football, it seemed a ludicrous amount. Even some in the game found it hard to fathom. But for those on the inside, with a more visionary, tech-bent viewpoint, it was not so far-fetched.

What they were basing it on was that TV rights and the way we view sports are still in their relative infancy. Increasingly, sports is seen by corporate marketeers as a great unifier, the only one left. What commands the biggest rate card by far? The breaks in the Super Bowl, naturally.

News bulletins are often grim, and people switch off – does anyone really want to advertise their chocolate bar in a break between footage of the war in Gaza? It’s also frequently political and in this day and age, increasingly polarising.

Comedy and features likewise are tricky, appealing to some but not others, to different age groups and wealth demographics.

No, sport bonds and brings folk together. It’s common to all – rich, poor, old, young. And it’s truly international. You can be anywhere in the world and the taxi driver will ask where you’re from and what team you support.

Within that firmament, football – or soccer – is the global king. At present, the NFL may command larger sums, but American football is not a worldwide phenomenon, it does not have huge transnational appeal, not of the sort enjoyed by soccer. And within football, Manchester United is top. No other club is bigger in terms of fanbase and reach.

After they bought the club, the US-based Glazer family instigated a research exercise into just how popular United was. It came up with 333 million followers. That was 19 years ago; today, it’s claimed one billion people in all corners of the planet will cite United as “their” team.

That total may be difficult to justify, it’s one in eight of everyone everywhere. But those around the club are sticking to it.

Allied to United’s popularity was the knowledge that how we view sports, including football, is set to transform still further. Augmented reality or AR technology will see players wear micro-cameras. They’ve been tested and the results are encouraging – the players don’t notice the wearables are there.

The pictures will go to pairs of goggles worn by viewers. For 90 minutes, they can be Harry Kane or Bukayo Saka (or the referee if they’re that way inclined) and see the game through their eyes. They will pay for it, naturally. As the most popular club, United is in a prime position to cash in, hence $10bn.

We’re not there yet. But make no mistake, it’s coming – the old way of TV watching is shifting forever. If the cord is not cut already, it will be, just ask Fox, Disney, Warner, the Glazers... and Archie.

Chris Blackhurst is the author of ‘The World’s Biggest Cash Machine: Manchester United, the Glazers, and the Struggle for Football’s Soul’ (Macmillan)