BigPond (Telstra) signs up for 6 years.......

[retro]

**here**

Telstra also announced that its BigPond unit had signed a new six year media rights deal for online coverage of the V8 Supercars competition.

[mabs_nsx]

I have to work today and tomorow so I can't watch ch10's delayed coverage so I am watching it live on Bigpond and taping ch10's coverage and watching it when I get home. I will be using both Bigpond and the TV for the race.

Thanks to bigpond. I think this is great news.

I wish I could go to Bathurst.

[deeks6]

GROAN…..

No idea what they are throwing away in potential revenue not to mention alienating non-Bigpond users.

Stupid - thought Cockrane was a bit smarter than that.

[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

[Nado]

I'm guess part of the 30sec delay is because of the buffering?

[deeks6]

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.

[Alan Jones]

Great post Deeks, thanks for clarifying your position. Personally I wasn't prepared to sign with Bigpond until the last couple of months due to the deal they offered, which over the 2 years worked out well worth the bucks for me.
I agree with your comments that it doesn't give the majority a choice and it'll be hard to give this up in 18 months time. I'm lucky I guess as I don't download much apart from the unmetered content at Big pond , and don't pay for FOX as well, so the choice wasn't so hard.

[lookleft]

A few things Deeks.

1. You don't know how many customers BigPond have signed up because they want to see the coverage. Maybe the trend is enough to justify a new 6 year deal, maybe it's a chance to advertise to a specific demographic without having to be tied to sponsoring a particular car. Some companies don't like to be associated with the kind of coverage motorsport can bring - especially their logo all over a crashed car but do need to reach thata audience some way. The current BigPond deal is a promo of the tech ability etc..

2. VESA look at the bottom line, never thought of the Average Joe before so why now? This would have been THE best deal on the table.

3. We are assuming the model will be the same over the next 6 years.... For a company like BigPond (Telstra) content is as valuable as the basic service. They may choose to on sell a subscription (although I would suspect the cost would scare most!). Bigpond = Telstra = Next G (new 3G service) - need content to get people onto your 3G network. I would guess this has more to it than just selling ADSL.

From the article.
"BigPond managing director Justin Milne said users of Telstra's new Next G network would be able to access the AFL content via BigPond on mobiles, PCs, laptops and other devices." Replace AFL with V8...

4. From the same article AFL are averaging $12m a year so your $5m may not be that far off. based on your example of 500,000 V8 fans who would pay the $10 (which I seriously doubt - there is only 30 odd regular posters here!). The reality is that there are not that many people that have more that a passing "oh, it is on tele" interest.

5. In the end it may not be such a bad deal. Just checked Nascar.com and it's $69.96US for pretty much the same content (more volume) that BigPond offer. You could subscribe to BigPond for the base ADSL service for A$29.95 to get a username/password and just think of it as subscribing to VESA!! Last I checked you can watch from any ISP just need the account.

In summary, it's not V8SC cutting off their nose to spite their face by having an exclusive deal with one provider. It's VESA doing what they have always done and that is take the biggest pile of money they can. TC doesn't care if 1 person EVER looks at the stuff, money is in the bank and they have a blue chip company associated with their "brand". That is a good business deal.