Away from the money-bags breakaway Premier League, the online rights landscape is just as spicy in the lower leagues. The main digital provider is Football League Interactive (FLi), which, with its partner sports rights management group Perform, provides 79 clubs — 64 League clubs, nine EPL and eight non-league teams — with their own branded paid-for VOD platform on a white label basis.
Perform’s joint CEO Oli Slipper revealed to paidContent:UK that the platform, largely unchanged since it launched as “World” in 2001, is being entirely relaunched as “Player” to catch up with the times and increased online competition from the BBC. So, whereas it used to be Albion World and QPR World, it’s now Albion Player and QPR Player — a deliberate nod to the BBC’s iPlayer, Sky Player and ITV (LSE: ITV) Player. From £3.99 a month, subscribers now get a 1Mb Flash video — opposed to the old 600k Windows Media Player stream — so Mac users are allowed in for the first time and Slipper says subscriptions are “significantly up year on year”.
— BBC competition: Slipper told me it was the new online Football League rights won by the iPlayer-toting BBC that spurred Perform to improve its platform: “In reaction to that, we thought it was important to outline the benefits of the paid-for service over all the free content elsewhere.” The BBC can now show free online VOD highlights from every single FL match, as well as extended TV highlights every Saturday night and six live TV games a year.
— Time-shift challenge: But Perform and FLi have an advantage: Auntie’s VOD highlights can only go live on midnight the day after any given match (the BBC’s explanation is here) whereas Perform’s clips can be posted 24 hours after the final whistle. The BBC had something of an inauspicious and highly surreal start to its Football League TV highlights show on Saturday.
— Audio advantage: The real ace in Perform’s hand is live online audio commentary for each club, which Slipper says is “by far” the biggest driver of subscriptions. Due to the bizarre way footy rights are structured, BBC local radio stations can only broadcast live match commentary via FM and DAB. So you have to live in the area your club is based to hear live matches on radio but the clubs’ own broadcasts are available anywhere in the world to paying subscribers — a real draw for uprooted supporters and homesick ex-pats. Clubs, such as Preston North End, are partnering with local FM radio stations to produce coverage.

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