Jimmy Traina lead his daily column at SI.com yesterday with some thoughts on the news that Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson will meet in a one-on-one round of golf over the Tanksgiving weekend. He wasn’t concerned about whether it would be good TV or who would win. Traina was more intrigued by the fact that the match will be available on pay-per-view.
Golf fans can pay to watch the event through their cable or satellite provider or they can stream it on the B/R Live app. The price hasn’t been announced but Traina doesn’t expect it to be insignificant, writing “I highly doubt it’s going to be 99 cents.” And he expects a full on publicity push as we get closer to the event, noting that the hypehas already started with Phil Mickelson joining Twitter to coincide with this week’s announcement.
They’re going to sell this one-on-one battle as a big deal, when in reality, it’s just a useless exhibition. It’s not a major. It’s not a real tournament. However, it stars the most iconic golfer of all time, so you’re being tricked into thinking you’re getting something good. The reality is, it’s just a TV special.
Traina is convinced that it won’t just be the folks at Bleacher Report or cable and satellite providers rooting for the event to succeed. He says that the whole sports media world wants to see the event generate big profits. “If you pay for it, sports media companies are going to be overjoyed because then they know they have an audience who will actually hand over their money to watch stuff like this,” and Traina is worried about where that might lead.
The danger here (and I use that word loosely, because this really isn’t that important in the grand scheme of life) is that this will open the floodgates for sports media outlets to eventually experiment with putting good things on pay-per-view. It’s not going to stop with Tiger-Phil if that’s a success. And I’m not saying you’re going to see an NFL playoff game or the NBA Draft or a college football playoff game on pay-per-view next year or the year after, but if you don’t think the leagues and networks, especially ESPN which just launched a streaming network, have that idea in the back of their heads for down the road, you’re not paying attention.
ESPN+ already has exclusive rights to a number of lower tier college football and basketball games. That service, and others like it, typically offer a lot of content for a lower monthly price ($4.99 in ESPN+’s case). Major boxing and MMA cards can get expensive. The Mayweather/McGregor fight, for instance, cost $99.95 to watch in HD. Would the Tiger and Phil extravaganza be priced similarly? If so, what would that mean football fans would have to pay to watch an NFL playoff game should that league switch to a pay-per-view model in the future?
Count Traina amongst the few sports media professionals encouraging fans to save their money.
At some point the sports fan, as a consumer, has to say no. We get dumped on constantly. Games ending past midnight on the East Coast. A billion commercials during every sporting event. Offensive ticket prices. More offensive concession prices. Even more offensive prices for parking.
Now we’re going to be tested to see which sporting events we’re willing to pay for. If you shell out the money for Tiger-Phil, you’ll be giving sports media companies incentive to take advantage of you again. And again. And again. Just say no.
