The global fan is one of those stories I’m beginning to lose faith in, like the conversion funnel and the pursuit of happiness.
The global fan exists because Netflix, Amazon and Apple want it to exist. And for as along as they want it to exist, the rights holders will play along.
At Sportel last year, Marissa Banu-Lawrence of Fox Sports put it well (on a very good APAC panel hosted by Imran Yusuf of SportBusiness): Australia is hyper localised. Even within Oz you have to go state by state. Australian sports fans are nuts for NRL, AFL, rugby codes, cricket.
What do the global streamers do with this information?
The NFL’s international rights remain stubbornly below 3%, ditto the IPL.
The Premier League is a weird outlier in this regard. Just because the Prem makes a pile of cash from Thailand doesn’t mean you will too, regardless of how you fiddle with your product to fit the international market.
This next phase may well settle the big argument as to whether sport is global or local.
The globalists say it’s only the heritage local media markets that stand in the way of sport and its gazillion worldwide fanbase, a story based mainly on social media impressions.
If and when the NFL goes global-one-ticket on Amazon or Apple, that friction is removed and with it the excuse.
At that point the long tail works its magic, local meets global and the rest is geography (terrible podcast).
But the research industry better be ready for the backlash if it turns out those global fan engagement numbers are just another hallucination.
