Spark Sport comes of age
The launch of the new Premier League season next weekend will not only mark a milestone for Spark Sport, but also bring about a football bonanza for fans of the game in New Zealand.
Up until now, Spark Sport had been the home for fairly niche sports, such as hockey, Formula One and the World Rally Championships as well as some other bits and pieces.
That’s all been well and good if you’re passionate about those sports, but maybe not enough to tempt the average sports fan to fork out $20 a month.
However, the arrival of Premiership football and WTA tennis this month, followed by the Rugby World Cup in September marks the coming of age for the fledgling sports broadcaster.
‘‘Our plan was that we needed three big content blocks to kick off 2019 for Spark Sport,’’ says Jeff Latch, head of Spark Sport.
‘‘One was Formula One, the second was the English Premier League and the third was the World Cup.
‘‘Those were our three targets and we were really pleased when we got all three.
‘‘The Premier League for us now is a massive opportunity and what’s exciting about it is that other than we’re taking all 380 matches live, it’s also all the supporting content New Zealanders have never seen before, which we’re going to be making available.
‘‘There’s also a scheduling difference with the Premier League this year, so there will be more Friday night games, which is fantastic, because they’re Saturday morning here, which is more convenient for people.’’
The Premier League was previously available through BeIN Sport in New Zealand and could be watched online or through the Sky TV decoder.
It also showed a number of other high profile leagues, including Spain’s LaLiga, the Bundesliga from Germany, Ligue 1 from France as well as the English Football League.
These will all move to Sky Sport 7 and be available as part of the usual Sky Sport subscription, joining the Champions League, the Italian Serie A and Australian A League, which were already on Sky.
It certainly all adds up to this being the best season yet for New Zealanders who follow football.
But it will also be a great year ahead for tennis fans, with Spark Sport picking up WTA tennis.
Starting with next week’s tournament in Toronto, Spark Sport will show 15 women’s tournaments over the rest of the year, followed by the World Tour Finals in Shenzhen.
Curiously, women’s tennis was ignored by Sky Sport and the only time New Zealanders got to see the likes of Simona Halep, Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka play was at the four grand slams.
‘‘We think women’s sport in New Zealand hasn’t had as much exposure as men’s sport, so we identified this as an opportunity for us,’’ Latch said.
‘‘We were really keen to acquire women’s tennis and if you look at the top players in women’s tennis now, there is a good group that’s equal in talent, so you get a lot of fantastic matches.
‘‘With men’s tennis, when you get to the semis and finals, it’s great, but there is still a big gap between the top players and the next group, so you get a lot of one-sided matches.
‘‘Women’s tennis hasn’t got a great deal of exposure and we think we can change that.
‘‘The first tournament will be on August 9 [in Toronto], the day before the Premier League launches, so it will be all go.’’
The deal with the WTA is only for international tournaments, so the ASB Classic will continue to be shown on Sky Sport.
However, next year is the final one of the current contract between Tennis Auckland and Sky Sport and it wouldn’t be a surprise if Spark Sport goes after the country’s two premier tennis tournaments.
Latch refutes the recent comment from Sky TV’s Martin Stewart that anyone who outbids them for sports rights is going to go broke, but even not taking into consideration the Rugby World Cup, Spark Sport will from next week move into a position where it’s worth considering for any sports fan.
‘‘You can pick up individual fan bases for Formula One, Premier League, women’s tennis, WRC or hockey,’’ Latch said.
‘‘But when you start to overlap all of them, suddenly you’ve got a proposition that has real value for a much bigger group of people.
‘‘All our research showed that most people who are into sport will watch five to seven different sports,’’ he added.
‘‘So if you want to have a service that appeals to them, you need to make sure you have a breadth of sporting content on the platform, which is what we’re delivering now.’’
It’s become apparent over the last couple of months that Sky Sport has raised its game to take on Spark Sport and although there were concerns that New Zealanders would end up paying twice for what they already had before, the real winners in this for now, do appear to be sports fans.