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Big-name EPL clubs this season have had their matches appear on the NBC Sports Gold streaming platform only sparingly" this season to date, "that’s going to change" with this week's slate of games, according to Jonathan Tannenwald of PHILLY.com. Games involving Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool "will be on the paid subscription platform." NBC Sports Group Exec VP & GM of Digital Media Rick Cordella said of putting the big games behind a paywall, "We have conviction that this is the right business model around the Premier League, and the other sports we’ve added to NBC Sports Gold. The media world is continuing to shift, and TV ratings aren’t what they used to be, and certainly subscriber levels haven’t been as high as they’ve been in the past. So (we’re) trying to figure out, how do we remunerate the rights we paid for? Direct-to-consumer (subscription video) with NBC Sports Gold is going to be an important part of that." Cordella added, "We’re trying to capture the 10 to 15 percent of hardcore fans of their Premier League team on the NBC Sports Gold platform. But the vast majority of games are still available via linear service." Tannenwald notes criticism of NBC Sports Gold was "amplified" when a glitch during EPL games in September "caused the streaming platform’s back end to crash," leading NBC to apologize and offer rebates. Cordella said that there "haven’t been problems since then." He added that NBC Sports Gold’s subscriber base is "'well into the six figures' as a combined total for all of its offerings." Cordella "did not break out how many subscribers there are for each sport package." But he said that the EPL "'makes up a pretty good portion' of sales" (
PHILLY.com, 11/28).
