Free-to-air bonanza boon for fans, sport and marketers
A weekend of wall-to-wall live sport on free-to-air television will serve as a boon for brands, terrestrial broadcasters and fans, experts have said.
This weekend will see a monumental volume of sport across the five main free-to-air channels – BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, Channel 4 and 5 – as well as ITV4 – as sports look to get in front of eyeballs rather than chase paywall cash.
“Free-to-air might not be sport’s default home any more, but it has become a premium shop window,” Professor Rob Wilson told CityAM. “In a fragmented media market, reach is back as a strategic weapon, especially for sports fighting for relevance, sponsors and casual fans.”
Added MSQ Sport + Entertainment’s Steve Martin: “It’s brilliant there’s a shift to free-to-air. It’s a bit of a holy grail for a lot of the sports marketing industries to still have big live broadcast moments on free-to-air. The numbers don’t lie because of the sheer scale of it, and the exposure a brand gets can be hugely significant as a result.
“But it’s not just about that. It’s how that blends in with what you do digitally, socially, and from an events and experiences point of view. That’s where the whole mix comes together.”
At 3pm on Saturday there will be a complete sporting whitewash of the main free-to-air channels. Both BBC1 and BBC2 will be showing the middle Saturday of the Wimbledon Championships, while ITV1 will be airing rugby’s new Nations Championship match between Fiji and Wales in Cardiff.
Channel 4 will broadcast its only live Formula 1 of the season, with British Grand Prix qualifying from Silverstone taking up its afternoon slot, while 5 will be showing the men’s International Twenty20 match between England and India in Manchester.
Free-to-air dominance
Racing from Sandown, where the highly-rated Coral Eclipse Stakes is the star showing, will be on ITV4.
Beyond that, throughout the day ITV1 will be showing Colombia’s World Cup match against Ghana, and a huge number of Nations Championship matches – including New Zealand vs France and Australia vs Ireland. Channel 4 will broadcast the British Grand Prix sprint race from 11am and both BBC 1 and ITV1 will have more World Cup football in the evening.
Channel 5 will also be showing highlights from the opening week of cycling’s Tour de France, while ITV4 will show Nations Championship rugby – including England’s match against South Africa – and will conclude its Saturday schedule with All Elite Wrestling.
Wilson added: “Sport is perhaps starting to remember that the more eye balls it can get on screens, the better it will do in the long run by growing new audiences rather than cutting them off behind a paywall wall. The real story here is that being visible is the new battleground.”
Martin concluded: “Having big live moments on free-to-air is where we all want to be and there’s been almost a snobbishness towards broadcast in that nobody watches TV, which is not true.
“You certainly see from Wimbledon and what’s happening at the World Cup and when the Nations Championship is going, there’s still a big desire to have TV in the middle of it all.