Get used to it, football fans.
The encroaching ads in the current Fifa World Cup are here to stay – and the cost set to rise – as TVNZ attempts to reclaim their status as a sports broadcaster of note.
There are two parts to this beef: one with Fifa and their perennial quest to make even more money, and the other about TVNZ’s efforts to livestream the football with tools not always up to the job.
Clearly, the World Cup is paving the way for TVNZ+, their streaming platform, to become much more of a pay vehicle, but TVNZ have to do better. Much better.
First, there was the debacle of the new app for TVNZ+ which simply did not work on many New Zealand TVs of slightly older vintage and some brands. My TV simply froze when I attempted to open the new app.
No guidelines on what to do next. I was alone, in the Sea of Indifference, my $45 for the World Cup pass worthless.
I asked for help, emailing TVNZ+. That was on May 18.
On June 10, three weeks later, I received a reply.
June 10 was the day before the tournament started on June 11.
Three weeks! Heard of customer service? Heard of the digital age? Heard of ridiculous?
They had a get-out-of-jail card. The app worked fine on my phone and I could cast to my TV.
However, I worked that out long before TVNZ got back to me and, anyway, casting is often subject to more interruptions than livestreaming.
Part two: there I was, watching the Spain game.
The Saudis had the ball – which was odd, as they weren’t playing Spain. Somehow, the coverage had flicked over, all by itself, to the Saudi v Cape Verde match.
I exited the livestream, entered again. Still the Saudis. Rebooted – still my Spain v Uruguay coverage stubbornly reverted to the wrong game.
Then, deep within the bowels of TVNZ, someone realised something was wrong. So they chucked a tranche of ads up on screen.
After a minute or two, the ads abruptly stopped and my screen was filled with pictures of Spanish players celebrating the only goal of the match.
During the ad break, Spain had scored and TVNZ missed it.
Social media blew up, of course, baying for blood at the effrontery of placing ads in live game time when they were already suffering ads during the Fifa-inspired “hydration break” in each half.
These things happen during live coverage, it must be said – but we return to customer service.
Instead of ads, where was the message: “Sorry for the break in transmission; we are working to fix it urgently”?.
Also, should we be getting ads when paying a fee for coverage and why ads during hydration breaks?
Those breaks, thanks Fifa, are actually planned ad breaks.
They were invented at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, bedevilled by hugely high temperatures. However, the stadiums were air-conned and hydration breaks were the call of the referee, or when the temperatures passed an agreed level.
“Ah,” thought the greedy suits at Fifa, “an opportunity to make even more money.”
Next time, under the label of “player welfare”, let’s insert scheduled hydration breaks and allow the broadcasters to put ads in each of the three-minute breaks in each half.
Most other broadcasters, like TVNZ, need the money to recoup their investment, so are in boots and all.
We don’t know what TVNZ paid for World Cup rights but the BBC has reported that the broadcaster in the US, Fox Sports paid $850m.
Using Fox Sports ad rates, they quoted experts estimating that, from hydration ad breaks alone, Fox was making $440m over the tournament.
That is all extra income – and the obvious corollary is that it enables Fifa, claiming greater added value, to put their prices up next time, meaning more cost for broadcasters and consumers.
So these ads are here to stay, folks, encroaching ever more on sports broadcasting.
We can’t even rely on advertisers understanding the negatives in being broadcast at a key moment, like the goal scored in the Spain-Uruguay match.
I know only too well from a life outside journalism that marketing executives are instantly on the phone to media organisations when something like that happens, screaming blue murder that their hallowed product has been shown in such a negative setting.
Media folks generally give them free ad space, known as “a makegood”. So ... even more ads.
All we can hope for is that outfits like TVNZ tidy up their act so that at least the broadcasts of the actual games are quality, on a quality platform, backed up by some kind of customer service that suggests they don’t just trouser the money and ignore us.
I mean, three weeks to answer an email?
If not, such broadcasters can probably expect reviews like this from former Sunday Times food critic and social commentator AA Gill, who once reviewed a hotel thus: “There’s no furniture and no soap. The water comes in a rusty dribble. The bath has been used to interrogate sheep.
“The towel is a bar mat. There’s a blanket, a chipped tin teapot and a carpet that looks like tar applied with a comb.”
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Source: New Zealand Herald
