“Sky Sports buys the rights to air English Cricket exclusively for 1.1 billion pounds”
“Fox Sports Australia and Channel 7 tag team to carry Australian Cricket on their networks for a handsome sum of 1.2 billion dollars”
“Star Sports blows the competition out of the water by bidding 2,500 million dollars to carry the IPL globally for five years”
The above headlines are important to understand the professional sports landscape in Pakistan for a simple reason. Money drives development in sports, as it does in every other field, and the major revenue driver in modern-day sports is through broadcasting rights fees. Sports broadcasting rights are perhaps the only remaining TV rights which see a healthy increase year upon year (or ‘rights cycle’ upon ‘rights cycle’ if you go by industry terms). This is because live sports are the only form of entertainment left which demand viewers to tune in on a live basis; almost all other programming can be viewed at leisure and ‘binged’ on demand.
This is why large broadcasting entities spill handsome amounts and fight tooth and nail to gain advantage over their competition. High value sports products being carried exclusively on their airwaves means larger-than-life ratings for broadcasters, as well as a way to incentivise subscriptions and promote their other less attractive programming. These extraordinary ratings help the broadcasters attract lucrative commercial airtime revenue from sponsors as well as demand higher subscription fees from cable providers.
The higher the revenue and consumer subscriptions sports properties can derive for broadcasters, the higher the rights fees broadcasters are willing to shell out to the original rights holders (the sports governing bodies), and the more money these bodies then have to invest in the development and promotion of their respective sport.
Around the world, sports is big business and the greatest source for raising financial resources for its development is sports broadcasting. Pakistan, however, continues to undervalue itself and deny its sports the money required to compete on a global level
This is the primary reason why most of Pakistan’s sports industry, including the dilapidated ruins of our Olympics association, hockey, football, squash, kabbadi, etc, is in a state of perennial decline. Pakistan simply doesn’t have the same model operating, which means there is no money to invest in the development of these sports. To make matters worse — even in the one functional machinery that is cricket — the country suffers from global administrative inconsequence (i.e the ‘Big Three’ debacle), despite having the second biggest market in professional international cricket.
Corruption, administrative ineptitude and a general disregard for the importance of sports development by those in power have certainly played their fair part but, fundamentally, it is a lack of financial resources and clout that is the root cause of our sports industry being in the doldrums.
While the rest of the world has shifted from sports being a primarily government and charity-driven field to a highly professional and commercialised industry in the last 30 years, Pakistan has failed to adapt and keep up with the transition. A primary reason for this inability to adapt is because the transition globally has been fuelled by the era of commercial sports broadcasting and media — a field almost non-existent in Pakistan.
Money generated through sports broadcasting makes up the largest piece of the revenue pie for sports bodies in the current day (in international cricket the size of this piece can go up to a staggering 65-80 percent of the total revenues of boards). Broadcasting rights in essence are the major contributor towards the resources available for development and investment in sports for a governing body.
With a government that is cyclically cash-strapped and unable to invest directly in uplifting sports, the role of sports broadcasting is pivotal to helping Pakistani sports out of its current miserable state and to set it upon a path of development necessary for its revival.
Unfortunately, rather than encourage it, Pakistan’s media policies have steadfastly undermined sports broadcasting in the country.
A STATE-CONTROLLED MONOPOLY
When news media got its privatisation push in the Musharraf era, it spawned the birth of a whole host of private news channels. These channels now make up the largest chunk of the broadcasting industry revenue pie, so much so that they are substituting for the entertainment sector in our everyday households — Pakistanis are consuming news, not just as a form of information, but as their daily source of enjoyment and thrill. This space, in most other countries is taken up by a variety of sports channels.
The key to the involvement and contribution of sports broadcasters are good market conditions and healthy and fair competition amongst relevant market players. Unfortunately in Pakistan this competition — vital for driving the commercial growth of sports — just does not exist. The Pakistan sports broadcasting space is completely devoid of any major local private players with the industry suffering heavily under a state-controlled monopoly. The state broadcaster’s sports channel — PTV Sports — has overarching mandatory rights to broadcast all international cricket terrestrially, while other rules make it mandatory for the cable and satellite operators to carry the state sports network as well — thus creating an unfair environment for any competitor to exist in the same space.
Ten Sports, a locally-driven foreign subsidiary of Sony Sports, has been in a marriage of convenience with the state broadcaster for years. The partnership means an overall sports broadcasting landscape that lacks fair competition and the participation of any major players from the local private media sector. This means the broadcast rights of even Pakistan’s most-watched sport, cricket, are perpetually undervalued. The eventual loss is of the governing body and sports itself. By allowing the state broadcaster to dictate the broadcasting space, our state (probably without even realising it) is actively responsible for the suffocation of all professional sports and its development in the country.
THE CASE OF THE UNDERVALUED PSL
The situation is so bad that the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) allowed commercial media agencies to bid directly for broadcasting rights of its professional T-20 league, the Pakistan Super League (PSL). They resorted to this practice — that is practically unheard of in sports rights selling — because the lack of competitive bidding from local players meant the product would have otherwise been commercially unviable to launch.
Even then, the broadcast revenue numbers with the PSL in its second rights cycle — after an immensely successful four seasons — don’t come close to what such highly rated programming should be fetching the PCB. This leads, naturally, to underwhelming financial returns for the league and its franchises.
While it is folly to compare the IPL (Indian Premier League) to the PSL, given the sheer difference in market sizes, a closer look at the numbers after controlling for the difference in size, does help illustrate the impact a lack of proper exploitation of broadcasting revenue has on Pakistan cricket’s most commercial product.
Broadcasting rights in essence are the major contributor towards the resources available for development and investment in sports for a governing body.
For the sake of basic comparison, let’s apply a very rudimentary one is to 10 ratio between the PSL and IPL. For instance, the franchise rights sold by the PCB when they launched the PSL in 2015/16 — for an average of $18 million/franchise — were actually able to fetch a handsome amount when compared to the IPL’s sale for $90 million/franchise (equivalent to approximately nine million dollars/franchise after applying the 1:10 market size differentiator). It can be said that the original five PSL franchises sold for almost 100 percent higher value than the original IPL teams, after factoring for the difference in market size.
However in terms of revenue, the IPL currently rakes in $285 million/year (USD 28.5 million/year once the 1:10 market size differentiator is applied) from broadcasting revenues alone. This is after catering for the difference in number of matches between the two leagues — the PSL has 34 matches to the IPL’s 60. (The actual broadcasting revenue figures for all of IPL’s 60 matches are around $500 million/year.)
The PSL in comparison sold its latest broadcasting rights for approximately $12million/year, considerably short (approximately 140 percent less) of the IPL’s comparative $28.5 million. If the first broadcasting rights cycle revenue figures are taken into account for both leagues instead, as we did with the franchise fees, the difference would be around 150 percent less for the PSL.
To put it another way, after controlling for market size and number of matches, while the PSL franchise teams are piling up expenses 100 percent more than their IPL counterparts, they are making 140-150 percent less through their main source of revenue — broadcasting. If you disregard the number of matches, the difference exceeds 300 percent. This model is not sustainable in the long run.
While there are many other business factors that can be improved to better leverage PSL’s business potential, there is little doubt that the primary factor i.e. local broadcasting, is a major inhibitor and will continue to hold the league and its teams from emerging as globally impactful cricketing brands till steps are taken to reform the space.
That the PSL has been able to achieve the impact it has locally is a testament to cricket’s strength engrained in our social fabric. But it begs a host of questions. If our most commercial cricketing product is being crippled to such an extent due to the lack of sports broadcasting infrastructure, what sort of impact this inadequacy could be having on the rest of the sporting landscape? Does it even stand a chance? A quick scan of Pakistan sports should give you an answer.