Last week-end I watched the Euroleague final four on the TV. For those of you that do not know, Euroleague is the European Basketball Championship.
Euroleague matches are typically licensed to an operator in a country that holds the exclusive rights for broadcasting it. At the same time, Euroleague keeps the rights to broadcast the matches in real-time and offers a VoD service for the matches at www.euroleague.net. What I found quite interesting last week-end was the fact that the euroleague final four games were broadcasted not by one but two channels. Something which, to the best of my knowledge, was new for Greece.
It was not just two broadcasters competing by serving different content at the same time of the day. It was practically the same content, the same match, with different added-value per case . Two separate crews of reporters and speakers covering the event. It was practically two network/service providers serving the same content in different package.
Quality became the major differentiating point to choose one program over the other. It was not simply that you had to choose between watching the game and watching other channels (for the most part discussions about the elections). A viewer could choose based on the quality of the transmission, and there was a big difference. The quality of the speakers, the reporters in the court, the commentators and guests, it all counted. It worth noting that I didn’t watch all the games on one channel only.
It seems that service providers (which in the aforementioned case were also the network providers) realize that the quality of service becomes a major decision point for the consumer. Content was the king. But it won’t be for long. Quality of service and the value that it adds to the content is going to change that.
For the record, Olympiakos won the cup after 15 years. Two great wins against the biggest names of the season Barcelona and CSLA Moscow landed the trophy to Greece for the second consecutive year.
