MLB Games Streamed to Skeptical Korea Fans Show Global Shift
(Bloomberg) -- For the thousands of baseball fans in South Korea who failed to get tickets to see superstar Shohei Ohtani’s Los Angeles Dodgers debut this week, $3.75 was the price tag to watch the Seoul event live online. That may seem cheap in months ahead as companies bet that fans will follow the global trend of paying more to view their favorite sports events.
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To watch the sold-out Dodgers season opener against the San Diego Padres, viewers needed to have an account with e-commerce giant Coupang Inc., whose monthly membership fee is 4,990 won ($3.75). But to watch baseball for the rest of the season, Korean viewers will need to use other streaming services whose monthly charges are more than double that.
That may not seem like an exorbitant price tag, but it’s still an added financial burden for Korean sports fans who had gotten used to watching events on digital platforms for free in past seasons. Still, as demand grows worldwide to view sports online, paid services will become the norm and Korean firms may face competition from some of the biggest technology and entertainment firms.
“There’s a global transition happening right now from traditional linear media to digital streaming media,” Chris Marinak, MLB’s chief operations and strategy officer, said in an interview. “I think the key to reaching people is to get on the platforms that they use the most and that’s different from market to market.”
There’s still no dominant sports broadcaster or streamer that serves all of Asia, and that means that there will be fierce competition over digital streaming rights among local players in the next few years. The sports media market in Asia is projected to grow to $8.9 billion by 2026, from $6.7 billion in 2021, according to Media Partners Asia.
Globally, the industry’s biggest companies are seeking to expand in this area. Netflix Inc. signed a $5 billion deal for World Wrestling Entertainment’s content, and plans to add more live sports events such as the planned boxing bout between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul. Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN, Fox Corp. and Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. are also trying to form new sports streaming services.
Read more: Hollywood’s Streaming Malaise Infects South Korea: Screentime
Korean streaming platforms have been struggling to add paid subscribers in the country with just more than 50 million people. Following the example of US players, local platforms are reallocating their budgets from scripted series and films to live streaming of domestic and international sports league, according to Kim Hyun-yong, analyst at Hyundai Motor Securities.
For MLB games, the rest of the 2024 season will be aired on Korean sports streaming platform Spotv Now, at a cost of least $9 a month that also offers other international sports leagues games. Otherwise there’s MLB.TV at $29.99 monthly. For enthusiasts of Korean baseball, streaming platform Tving has exclusive streaming rights, and monthly subscriptions start around $10, or $4 with ads.
Coupang’s extensive offering of big events like National Football League’s Super Bowl and the Asian Football Confederation’s champions league has fueled a jump in viewers: active users on Coupang Play rose 66% to about 8 million from a year earlier, the second-largest after Netflix in Korea.
CJ ENM Co.’s Tving, which reported more than $100 million in losses last year, is hoping to boost its paid subscribers to about 5 million and turn around its business in the second half of this year, Tving Chief Executive Officer Choi Ju-hee said on a recent earnings call.
Spotv, smaller than Coupang and Tving in terms of users, is targeting markets outside of Korea. Eclat Media Group Co., a holding company of Spotv and its streaming platform, clinched a deal with MLB to bring US baseball games to Southeast Asia for the next few years. It’s also exclusively streaming major sports games including MLB and Premier League football in Japan through partnerships with local platforms U-NEXT and Abema and expects to double the business this year thanks to the Ohtani phenomenon.
“We have to expand our platform broadly in Asia to hedge risks as we can’t have the same growth rates with same content in different markets,” Mitchell Hong, a founder and Chief Executive Officer of Eclat Media, told Bloomberg.
--With assistance from Jenny Lee.
(Adds table on streaming service prices.)
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