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Originally Posted by Alan Jones
Having signed up for Bigpond for 2 years, this is great news.
Hopefully on Sunday Bigpond will be in sync with the broadcast, it seemd to be about 30secs behind the tele. Although it's quite dear, in the off season I'll change down to the basic plan then upgrade again come season 07.
I guess if the V8's didn't go with Bigpond, it would have been one of the other big providers such as Optus or maybe Foxtel Digital, either we you'd still have to pay for it. Is this something you believe the organisers should provide free or charge Deeks ? Not having a go, just wondering  |
No, not at all free .. thats not the point. The point is that V8SC are cutting off their nose to spite their face here by having an exclusive deal with one provider. There are many other people (such as me) who have long term business deals with other providers and they are not going to change to BigMess for a variety of reasons. So V8SC are just saying "Well, you people can never have access to this service" - in other words "You already captive audience that we do not have to spend money marketing to, can go and get stuffed".
An extraordinary attitude to your own customer. And a dumb way to run a business - letting a service provider control a potentially lucrative stream of revenue. For how much? Is it millions per year? I doubt it but that is what they are throwing away.
Lets do the numbers - there are 6 million internet subscribers in Australia and BigMess have 1.5 (or 25% of market share). Lets assume that there are a number of motor sport fans that specifically signed up with BigMess just for this service and don't represent the general population (i.e. the 75% of non BigMess users) and that their numbers are closer to what - 50% ?
That means that V8SC are thumbing their nose at:
1. Potential customers who are already "fans" but use other internet providers - between 50% and 75% probably. Poo-poohing your own customers is a very dangerous strategy indeed.
2. All non-existing fans who use other providers.
3. Any overseas fans (Cockrane is always telling us how big V8SC's following overseas is) yet, despite all the "growing the market" rubbish, is happy to say to those fans or potential fans that they are not good enough for this additional service because they live in another country (and connot get access to BigMess). Phew, gets dumber by the second.
4. Revenues - I have done this exercise before - if every local and overseas fan with internet access was charged a subscription, V8SC would make much more money and retain full control of their product. Again assuming that V8SC fans represent the general population (50% of them have internet access), there would be approximately 500, 000 customers. Even at $10 per year, a figure way less than what I am prepared to pay (and not counting potential overseas customers - maybe another 200,000) that equates to $5 million per annum. Is V8SC making 5 million big ones per annum from Telstra? No way.
"Exclusive" deals are a thing of the past for most SMART sporting organisations, who realise that growing markets mean you cannot EXCLUDE or isolate any customers or potential customers.