At the start of 2019/2020 soccer season, the League Management company annonced it has concluded plans with NexTV to deliver live NPFL via OTT, that is deliver games directly to consumers aiming to produce $200million in 5years. Many thought it will be starting this season. This are some quotes from the LMC Chairman during an interview with ThisDay Newspapers

“Our objective is to consolidate on the progress being made in spite of all the challenges and to ensure the continuous commercialization of the league in line with international best standards.
Also, we hope to get our comprehensive transaction with Next TV up and going so we can have our games on Television across all platforms – such as mobile, cable and FTA and others."

He insisted that the current situation of ‘we against them and or if not us then no one else’ will do nothing but keep dragging the Nigerian topflight league backward.
“You don’t have to like Amaju Pinnick or Seyi Akinwunmi or even Shehu Dikko or anyone in position of leadership for that matter but just genuinely love the system and align to contribute positively for the system to grow.
“Support those in charge positively and surely the sky will be our limit. This is what happens in all the developed jurisdictions we cherish and wants to emulate.

“Everything over there is about the system and it’s growth and everyone is aligned to this fact regardless of personality, political or groups differences. So if we want to learn from international best practices and benchmark, this is the starting point and everything will fall in place,” concludes Dikko. 

For more of our #NPFL20 #KiniScoreAnalytics insights please click here and here for our podcasts in pidgin English. Most of my illustrations for this post will be EPL in the UK and NPFL in Nigeria, same goes for the currencies.

The NPFL OTT Conversation

OTT typically bypasses cable, broadcast, and satellite television platforms that traditionally act as a controller or distributor of such content. while VOD is subscription-based video-on-demand (VoD) services that offer access to film and television content (including existing series acquired from other producers, as well as original content produced specifically for the service). Examples include Iroko TV, Apple TV+, Hulu, iTunes, Netflix and Prime Video. There are basically three rights for a league: domestic live rights, highlights and all foreign rights combined. Foreign rights were worth huge sums. Domestic rights is pulling about £76/month (N36k/month) for live games in the UK for consumers to watch.Now, in the current 2019-2022 cycle, the total rights income has grown to £3.1bn a year, in which £1.4B comes from foriegn rights.

The future of football broadcasting is digital and this is good thinking from LMC, for example Amazon have paid around £90m to show 20 EPL games each season for three years on Prime Video. Of that Next TV deal, there is little doubt. The main questions are:

- How seamless will the transformation be?
- Who will be the biggest winners 
– Which companies will become major rights holders?

The Nigerian league hasn't played up to 10,000 league games since 2010, let's say LMC charges N2,375/month(£5/month) for the OTT service, meaning streaming directly to consumers (which LMC plans to do). Also let's say 2million people accross the world are interested to watch NPFL live games that's N4.8B which is about £10m per year. This shows that their is a possibility but with many questions.

Can OTT Work In Nigerian Soccer?

We think it can, but there will need a serious will-power from federal and state govt on infrastructure while LMC has to be more customer focused than govt focused. OTT sports firm DAZN has the rights currently in Canada, Japan and Spain. And Eleven Sports has them in Taiwan. Now that Amazon has become the first of the FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google) global tech Goliaths to hold live Premier League rights, in the UK, the game is really changing. So infrastructure to maintain the user expection will be one of the key drivers for adoptions and growth of consuming the NPFL via OTT.