Imagine you could build your ideal sports television channel. Every single sporting competition is available, production resources are infinite, and money is no object.
Perhaps you’d begin the day with some international cricket and move onto the Premier League in the afternoon before seeing in the small hours with the National Football League (NFL). Maybe Formula One is more your thing? And if there’s a major event on like the Fifa World Cup, then you’d definitely want that covered.
In a sports media market that is more fragmented than ever and in which the cost of rights is spiralling, such an exercise requires a certain suspension of belief. But for IMG and Panasonic Avionics, the described scenario is no mere fantasy.
For more than a decade, they have operated Sport 24, the world’s first live in-flight sports channel, serving up the world’s biggest sporting events – including the ongoing Fifa World Cup in Qatar – at all hours of the day to a global audience at 40,000 feet in the air.
Almost 1,000 aircraft can now receive the channel. But how did the idea come to be and what’s next for the world’s only mainstream in-flight live sports service? SportsPro spoke to those behind Sport 24 to find out.
Sport 24 has partnerships with the Premier League, NFL, and Formula One (Image credit: Sport 24)
Getting off the ground
Richard Wise, senior vice president at IMG, describes Sport 24 as his “baby”. He first had the idea for an in-flight live sports channel in the mid-1990s while working in the media agency’s sales division, liaising with the company’s airline clients. The role coincided with a period during which in-flight entertainment systems were being upgraded with personal screens and multiple feeds of content, rather than each passenger having to watch the same movie as everyone else.
“I’ve always travelled, whether it’s family holidays or for work, and I just could not understand why you could not watch live sport when you’re travelling,” Wise tells SportsPro.
“On the plane you could watch movies, TV shows and even sports documentaries, but not live sport. We were obviously quite involved in the selling of these documentaries and highlights [to the airlines] so we wondered why can’t we deliver live sport? So I just started looking into it.”
It quickly became apparent that the two obvious challenges were rights and technology.
“By the early 2000s the idea was more developed, and I started talking to rights holders to see if we could create what we now know as ‘international in-flight rights’ that are separate from existing deals,” Wise continues.
“The model for in-flight entertainment had been established by the movie industry and we already provided highlights and documentaries. At the start of the Sport 24 project we spoke to rights holders and said we can create a new revenue stream for them. These are international rights that don’t infringe on existing agreements – it’s an entirely new category and totally complementary. We’re introducing people to new sports. How many Germans travelling on Lufthansa watch cricket regularly?”
In the early years, rights holders might have reviewed their existing broadcast arrangements with a fine toothcomb to ensure there was no conflict or breach, but now these in-flight rights have been explicitly carved out so there is no ambiguity. Wise argues that because IMG already had pre-existing relationships with many of the rights holders it wanted to sign up to the project, there was much less scepticism than there might have been if it was a new entrant proposing the idea of live sport in the air.
“We were already working with these companies – we didn’t just suddenly turn up – so [rights holders] trusted us to deliver a quality service,” Wise says. “We said we were going to offer an in-flight live sports channel and we did it.”
Taking to the skies
Addressing the technological challenge was not insignificant, as anyone who used an early iteration of in-flight WiFi will tell you.
“The technology to get on board was more challenging,” Wise says. “It’s a very expensive thing to do because you need to have satellites lit up around the world globally at all times. Not only that, you’re sending a signal to a plane travelling at hundreds of miles an hour and you need to have protected connectivity to share the stream.”
There were several attempts at in-flight connectivity and live television in the early 2000s, most notably ‘Connexion by Boeing’. That particular venture was dissolved in 2006 after it failed to meet initial expectations, but others, including Panasonic Avionics, took the mantle.
“I did a panel session outlining my vision for a live in-flight sports channel but [explained it’s too difficult], and Panasonic came up to me and said, ‘we’re working on this too, let’s join forces’,” Wise recalls. “It took a while because this is not an easy thing to do, but we launched in 2012.”
“On the plane you could watch movies, TV shows and even sports documentaries, but not live sport. We were obviously quite involved in the selling of these documentaries and highlights to the airlines, so we wondered why can’t we deliver live sport?”
Richard Wise, Senior Vice President, IMG
Panasonic sees live sport as a major differentiator for its platform and is eager to stress it is an active rather than a passive partner in the Sport 24 venture.
“We provide the technical solution, software, the ground infrastructure and the satellite network that allows the channels to be broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a week in a secure and high-quality format,” says Dominic Green, Panasonic’s senior director of digital product management. “The security piece is incredibly important given the threat of piracy.
“We have a very close relationship and are a co-investor when it comes to content. Without us, Sport 24 probably wouldn’t exist.
“We’re the only provider to have a 24-hour global live television service. Some of our competitors dabble with TV but this is generally on a localised basis. If you want live sport you only really have one option, which is us.”
While Panasonic offers airlines a range of services, including live news channels, the highest value content is its live sport. Green says in-flight viewership of some events is even higher than many recently released movies.
The greatest technical challenge, unsurprisingly, is keeping the channel on the air.
“It’s about investing in technology and providing the resources and systems to maintain the quality and consistency of the service,” adds Green. “Unlike ground TV providers, we are providing a service across a multi-satellite footprint.
“We’ve had to invest in switching so customers don’t have drop outs when the aircraft moves from beam to beam. We do this effectively and we never hear of challenges with the service in-flight unless there’s been a major issue affecting satellites in general, like weather-related incidents.”
Never miss a kick of the World Cup action in Qatar with Sport 24 ⚽️
Don’t let travelling keep you away from cheering on your favourite football stars#MySport24 #WorldCup2022 pic.twitter.com/p0mDQIutVu
— SPORT 24 (@sport24live) October 25, 2022
Making it work
The first major event to be shown on Sport 24 is a source of debate within the team, but Wise believes it was the final of the 2012 Australian Open. Since then, the portfolio of programming has expanded to include the majority of the world’s premier sporting tournaments.
With no major competitor, strong relationships, and a relative greenfield media landscape to navigate, Sport 24 was able to pick and choose which properties it wanted. While broadcasters often scramble to fill their channels and over-the-top (OTT) platforms with content, Sport 24 had only a single linear channel. This required a more curated approach.
“We get the best sport and we chase the sun,” says Wise. “We start in Australia where the biggest sport is the National Rugby League (NRL), so we have that. Then we move to Asia, so we have a partnership with the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). In Europe we have the Premier League and the Uefa Champions League. When we get to America we have the NFL, the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the National Hockey League. Soccer is number one, but we also have the golfing majors and tennis Grand Slams, which are huge.
“Then we have to schedule all this, which is no easy task. We do have a limited capacity, which is why we introduced Sport 24 Extra in 2016. It’s mostly a pop-up channel that helps out at weekends when we have big events happening at the same time.”
“If there was demand for it, I wouldn’t rule out a third channel in the future given we’ve just added major cricket events which require more time,” Green adds.
Both IMG and Panasonic are convinced the channel is a compelling proposition but admit awareness isn’t quite as high after a decade on air. In an effort to address that, there are plans to expand social media marketing and work with airline customers to promote the service.
Both partners believe some passengers would actively seek out a carrier if they knew they could watch live sport from their seat. The logic is that because sport is such an emotive subject, passengers might establish a negative association with the airline if there is a technical issue, which leaves them unwilling to promote it too much.
“We’re working on [driving awareness],” Wise says. “Sport 24 is an amazing proposition but some passengers get on board and don’t know it’s there. We’re getting more involved on social media and working with the airlines so they can identify opportunities. If they know you’re a Manchester United fan and there’s a game on when you’re due to fly, then can make you aware that they have Sport 24. They can integrate information on their website or [in the future], send you a notification while on the plane.”
Expansion is also on the cards. Sport 24 might offer a unique service that serves potentially millions of consumers, but it is ultimately a B2B business and there are a finite number of aircraft in operation.
Airlines pay a monthly subscription for each plane that takes the channel, supplemented by advertising revenues. To increase the installed base – and number of eyeballs watching – Panasonic now makes Sport 24 available to any airline, even if they use a different connectivity platform such as Inmarsat, Intelsat or Viasat.
While this is obviously a significant commercial opportunity, it would also solve the issue of a customer being able to watch Sport 24 on their outbound flight only to be disappointed when flying back – even if they’re on the same airline.
The OTT of the skies
Much of Panasonic’s technological efforts focus around making transmissions more efficient, while there are plans to offer programming in high definition.
“The biggest development for us are new codecs that allow us to improve the quality of picture and use bandwidth more efficiently, reducing cost,” says Green, explaining the aim is to use new technology to deliver the same service more efficiently at higher quality.
But IMG and Panasonic already have an idea of where they want to take Sport 24 next – over the top. While there is no technological reason why Sport 24 couldn’t add another channel if requested, the costs associated with adding another 50 would be prohibitive.
Providing passengers with an OTT application that they could access on their device would dramatically enhance the number of aircraft that could be served, offer passengers a greater choice of events, and be more convenient for those who prefer to use their own smartphone or tablet.
“There is still so much we can do,” says Wise. “The vision is becoming ‘The OTT of the skies’. There’s loads of great content but only so much that can be done [with two linear channels]. We want to give fans more choice.
“We’re ready to go, we’ve got the technology via Endeavor Streaming. Panasonic want it too but there’s always a cost element – bandwidth is expensive – and something like this would need to be approved for security reasons [by regulators].”
Panasonic has already done work to prove it’s feasible. So, ironically, the bigger challenge with OTT might not be technology – it’s licensing.
“The licences we have are for global in-flight broadcasts on linear television channels,” says Green. “So as soon as we start getting into other formats, whether it’s streaming, on-demand, or anything like that, we need to make sure the rights are clear. One thing we don’t want to do is reduce the amount of sport and quality of sport that we provide today.”
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