How can football, which was smashed to pieces by the Internet when the European Cup was cold, not die in 2024？

There is no doubt that the European Cup is one of the most watched football matches in the world, and because of the strong teams, some fans think that the overall viewing of the European Cup is better than the World Cup. In the past, although the European Cup was not as hot as the last World Cup, it was no problem to become a hot word in social circles.

For this European Cup, which was postponed due to the epidemic, many football fans have noticed a change-it is much colder than before.Not only did it fail to become a social hot word, but at the end of the group stage, it was not Hick’s half-court volley that spread the most widely, but Cristiano Ronaldo called on everyone to drink water instead of coke before the game, which had to be said to be a little black humor.

Do you know where to watch the European Cup?

There are many reasons for the decrease in the degree of damage in this European Cup, but many fans believe that the "culprit" is pervasive copyright protection.

In the era of live TV broadcast, the European Cup and most sports competitions can be watched by CCTV and major local TV stations. The TV station has a wide coverage, no need to pay, and it is convenient to watch, which has a great impetus to the cultivation of new fans. From the post-1960s to the post-1990s, the images of the European Cup in the memory of fans of all generations are often accompanied by Huang Jianxiang’s screaming exhaustion, He Wei’s poetic walk, Zhan Jun’s encyclopedic interpretation and other different styles.

The first time I watched the European Cup was in 2012. Three friends and I went to the bar street in Sanlitun, Beijing in the final of that year. Although I was asked if I wanted someone to accompany me to the wine as a junior high school student, I was at a loss for a while, but the rich football atmosphere that permeated Sanlitun quickly made this accident disappear.

Almost every bar’s TV was tuned to CCTV 5. A few hours before the game, people played billiards, played cards and chatted, killing time in small groups. When the game started, all activities stopped on time, and the bar was filled with jubilation in an instant, just like throwing two big firecrackers. As the players entered the stadium, the scene immediately burst, and the cheers of the waves were constantly mixed with the shouts of beer. No matter the real fans or fake fans, everyone’s faces were full of happiness of "participation".

That night, everything in Sanlitun belonged to football.

In 2014, the World Cup in Brazil. Even my high school head teacher who doesn’t watch the ball will remind the whole class the day before the World Cup: even if you watch the ball, remember to adjust your schedule.

In that year, CCTV was still the main force of the World Cup broadcast. When there was no competition, programs such as "Feast of the Giants" would be broadcast, and the competition would be resumed and prospected. By the way, the history and customs of the host city would also be introduced.

At this moment, football, like music, has become a universal language and medium. While showing its infinite charm, we high school students can start to look around the world without any translation, wander around the world and appreciate different foreign cultures.

Football in the era of live TV broadcast is sexy and enchanting. Some people smell it, and more importantly, it is free.

The huge coverage and influence of public television make football penetrate into the hearts of every fan, and the high-density information bombing makes people who are not interested in football unconsciously integrate into the atmosphere of football during the competition.

However, everything has two sides. Just like TV stations let crosstalk enter the room, it also limits its grounding side. On the one hand, TV station greatly promoted the development of football, but on the other hand, football also had a deep dependence on TV station.

Since the first broadcast of the World Cup by CCTV in 1978, domestic audiences have become accustomed to watching high-quality live football matches on TV for free.

In foreign countries, the United States, for example, has paid to watch sports games for more than 80 years. With the continuous improvement of the commercial value of sports competitions, the copyright fee for live broadcast is also rising, and even a giant like CCTV can hardly maintain a free broadcast mode that is almost equivalent to charity.

The payment of domestic sports broadcast was put on the agenda in 2007.

In 2007, Tiansheng Sports purchased the broadcasting rights of Premier League in Chinese mainland for three years, trying to promote the broadcasting mode from abroad to China.

At that time, Tiansheng created a separate pay channel instead of distributing the broadcasting rights to CCTV, which greatly reduced the influence of the Premier League in China. Old fans should remember that for a long time, because of the copyright restrictions, not only the games, but also the information programs such as Sports News and World Football could not see any news about the Premier League, and the Premier League completely disappeared from public television.

Later, the fans also knew: Tiansheng Sports, which was too radical in concept, was devastated, and the copyright of the Premier League returned to CCTV in 2015 after several changes of hands.

Tiansheng Sports failed because of the high pricing (188 yuan a month, 1880 yuan a year) and the lack of convenient means of payment. More importantly, it wanted to reverse the user habit of watching the game for free that has been cultivated by domestic TV stations for a long time in a blink of an eye, which obviously ignored the law of gradual development, and even had a strong "challenge" meaning to some extent. The failure was naturally foreseeable.

For the Premier League, the lack of a national platform like CCTV has greatly affected its promotion in China. In sharp contrast, the Bundesliga, in 2019, the official of the Bundesliga said that during the 23 years of being broadcast by CCTV, the number of Bundesliga fans in China continued to grow, and from 2015 to 2018, the Bundesliga became the most influential league on social media in China for four consecutive years.

With the development of network technology, the payment of sports broadcast is gradually on the right track in China. According to the statistics of iResearch, in 2016, 51.5% of the users had consumed sports events, and 32.5% of them had paid online to watch the games. In 2019, PP Sports, which held the copyrights of several events at that time, announced that the number of paying users had exceeded 6 million.

If we only look at the development of webcasting, it seems that it can be described as thriving, but it depends on converting the fans accumulated in previous decades into paying users at one time, but for attracting new fans, the result is tantamount to disaster.

In the past, whenever the World Cup and the European Cup were such a big game, people who were interested in into the pit football could watch the game by turning on the TV. Even in the 2018 World Cup in the era of webcasting, fans who choose to watch on TV still account for 82.3%. However, in this year’s European Cup, the copyright of the competition is more complicated: the right to broadcast the competition was exclusively purchased by Mi Gu Video, and then the right to live TV was sold to CCTV, and the right to live webcast was distributed to iQiyi.

However, the three platforms have their own problems: Migu Video, as the exclusive copyright party, invited commentator Zhan Jun and commentator Zhang Lu, who are loved by football fans, but the most critical broadcast signal was a disaster, and the serious jam made it impossible for fans to watch the game normally.

Iqiyi can only watch 720P without being a member. If it is a member, it needs to manually skip the advertisement, and the webpage can’t switch the explanation signal.

As for CCTV, it is true that it is still the first choice for viewers to watch the European Cup on TV, but the attraction of TV itself is declining. CCTV5 can’t cover all the games, and even there are cases where other games are temporarily broadcast, while CCTV5+ can’t be received by everyone.

In terms of network communication, the central video web page does not have the right to broadcast this European Cup, and it needs to download the central video App separately to watch it. However, according to netizens, the central video on the iPad also appeared to be unable to watch because of copyright reasons.

From the chaotic copyright situation of the European Cup, it can be clearly seen that the threshold for non-fans to contact football through the European Cup is much higher than in previous years.

Although the copyright issue has made it difficult to break the social circle of this European Cup, it can only be solved by spending money. When our ability to pay and habits are up, the problem will naturally be solved. Only the next question is the real enemy of the European Cup and even football itself.

Do you know that the European Cup is being held?

This is a question I asked a few friends who don’t watch football after the start of the European Cup, and their answer was "I don’t know".

Not to mention too far, this situation is almost unimaginable in the 2016 European Cup.

The progress of internet technology is naturally a good thing for society, but the progress is often accompanied by sacrifice. Just as the development of e-commerce has transformed the real economy collectively, football has also become the "front wave" under the rapid development of the Internet.

If we want to summarize the development trend of entertainment content in the internet age, "short, flat and fast" should be the most accurate. The development of the Internet has accelerated the pace of the whole society from life to entertainment in an all-round way. Faced with a variety of entertainment content, it is difficult for users to concentrate for a long time, which is also the core reason why short videos generally pursue to attract people within 30 seconds or even 15 seconds.

Why did TV shopping attract people to vomit in the past? Because it is grandiose, but also because it often introduces a commodity for half an hour and is too far away from the audience.

After more than ten years, the live broadcast with goods, which is more exaggerated than TV shopping, has become a new economic outlet. Because of its faster pace, a three-hour live broadcast to promote 20 kinds of goods has become commonplace, and it can interact with the audience at any time, bringing a closer shopping experience.

From this perspective, football can be said to be anti-Internet.

In the era of short and fast, a 90-minute football match is really too long, and not every game will have fierce fighting and confrontation, and a 0-0 draw is not uncommon. What’s even more ridiculous is that many viewers can’t even watch the highlights of the game for about 10 minutes now, because for them, ten minutes is too long. You can watch a movie in five minutes, so why accept a ten-minute ball game?

In League of Legends, a game favored by many young people, confrontation may occur at any time. No matter whether soldiers, monsters or enemy heroes are killed, the results will be presented in various ways such as economy, development and head-to-head ratio. All actions on the field can be quickly quantified, which perfectly conforms to the characteristics of short, flat and fast Internet.

Nowadays, the push mechanism of "thousands of people and thousands of faces" on the Internet is also one of the reasons why it is difficult for football to acquire new audiences.

Weibo, Tik Tok, bilibili and other information flow platforms will push relevant content according to users’ interest points. If the system determines that users are not interested in a certain field, it will not push any relevant content.

Over time, users will pay more and more attention to what they were originally interested in, and there will be less and less opportunities to accept new things.

On the one hand, there is an increasingly high information cocoon room, and on the other hand, there is a high-frequency bombing of various contents. Under such a double attack, even in the World Cup year, non-fans in the future can completely "turn a deaf ear to football matches".

The spread of football depends on the atmosphere to a great extent, from small school dormitories to live games, it can infect passers-by with the "sense of participation" of the group.

I myself became a fan through a friend’s football game, and some friends became fans in my middle school and college days. The happiness brought by discussing and playing football together is far more important than the victory or defeat of the home team.

Now, friends who used to play football and chat with each other are busy with their work. Due to the epidemic, it is difficult for the audience of football matches around the world to enter the stadium, which has a very adverse impact on the spread of football. The improvement of the threshold for watching the game and the personalized push mechanism have gradually closed the circle of fans, causing the fans to be out of touch at the age level.

These problems are also clear to UEFA and the organizers of various events, and they are also trying to embrace the trend.

The official of this European Cup opened accounts in TikTok and Tiktok to provide fans with a new watching experience. However, as a domestic copyright party, the video of Mi Gu has almost locked the transmission channel of the European Cup on all major platforms in China. No matter whether it is Tik Tok or bilibili, Weibo, it is difficult to see any video content of this European Cup in time except official accounts, and even the news of the news website can only be accompanied by moving pictures in the reply.

It is naturally a legitimate right for copyright owners to safeguard copyright, but football relies on the spontaneous dissemination and secondary creation of the audience to a great extent. Such strict copyright restrictions are definitely not in line with the long-term interests of football itself.

The change of entertainment mode, the barriers of push mechanism and the restrictions of broadcasters have jointly caused the current situation of football audience becoming more and more solidified. No wonder Wang Tao, a former CCTV commentator, said:"This European Cup is going to die. I’m not saying that the European Cup itself is going to die, but that its communication and influence in China are going to die. This may be the most deserted European Cup in history. Why? Can’t break the circle. "

Is football sinking because of the internet?

As a sport with hundreds of years of cultural accumulation, football will not sink easily, but it is time to make a change.

The European Super League, which was suddenly established and dissolved in April this year, is an example. Although its "iron hat king" system deviated from the competitive spirit of football and attracted the opposition of fans, it was actually a reform attempt of top football clubs under the pressure of the "Internet wave".

UEFA’s blind expansion in club and national team competitions will indeed increase the number of "chicken ribs" and reduce the overall enjoyment. More "Eurosuper"-style reform calls will definitely come one after another in the future.

For the current football industry, the urgent task is to expand the audience. Take the e-sports competition LPL, which is popular among young people in China, as an example. It has many similarities with previous football: the project is popular, a large number of young audiences, the audience is willing to discuss and re-create, and it relies on broadcasting and other audience consumption for profit.

Different from football, LPL provides free high-definition live broadcast on multiple platforms. A significant advantage of this is that it can quickly expand the audience and make the heat higher. Only with the heat can there be more audiences, and the income such as advertising can come naturally.

On the other hand, football, from clubs to broadcasters, all want to "make the cake bigger", but few people are willing to make profits for the audience. The idea of the club to make the cake bigger is to organize strong teams to compete together, but it does not take into account the possible aesthetic fatigue and the team’s lack of progress. Broadcasters, on the other hand, blindly insert advertisements and make a big fuss about the membership system.

Take PPTV as an example. The "team loyalty package" launched in 2018 only includes the right to watch the league matches of a team, but if you want to watch the Champions League games, you need to buy the "European Football Connect". In this way, users need to pay extra for many games that they don’t plan to watch at all. This is undoubtedly a bit exhausted, so later PPTV officials quietly canceled this option.

The particularity of football matches makes it impossible to provide completely free live broadcast like e-sports, but it is not difficult to let the "die-hard package" include all the events of a team in a season. Sports members of major platforms often include the offseason time, and in many cases, it is not as cost-effective as buying on a monthly basis.

If the platform can take this into account, the rights to watch the game will be appropriately postponed, so that users don’t have to spend their time fighting with themselves, which will definitely help cultivate users’ payment habits.

Football is a sport that relies heavily on audience discussion and spontaneous communication. In the Internet age, discussion on social media has replaced the previous face-to-face communication, and the viral spread of short videos is the best way to expand its influence.

It can be said that the copyright owners of this year’s European Cup are chasing and intercepting the audience’s creative content on the Internet, which is tantamount to self-destruction of the Great Wall-if our broadcasters want to keep the football business going, they should have longer-term considerations and plans instead of staring at bonus hunter with a speculative attitude.

Even if we don’t start from the interests of football, broadcasters are chasing and intercepting. Because of the collapse of the mass base, even in this competition, it is difficult to become bigger and stronger in revenue, and it is extremely difficult to estimate the capital preservation.

The so-called blocking is not as good as dredging, and guiding the creators to carry out related secondary creation is the only way to help football spread widely.

In this respect, LPL is still the leader, and its LPL Creation Competition has won 220 million readings and 100,000 discussions in Weibo. In addition, there is also a "Players’ Creation Hall" section on the official website to encourage players to be creative. All these measures are worth learning from the organizers and broadcasters of football matches.

Watching the game service is also a part that needs to be improved. At that time, there was only one charging scheme in svip, and the annual fee was as high as 590 yuan, including all its competitions. This compulsory packaging and selling method was undoubtedly quick success and instant benefit. However, compared with the broadcast of some sports events today, many fans will begin to miss it, because at least its broadcast fluency and clarity are unparalleled so far.

Today, football is still the largest sport in the world. It can make the British and German soldiers lay down their weapons in World War I, it can make the two sides shake hands in the civil war in C? te d ‘Ivoire, and it can make the whole China boil for the national team to enter the World Cup, which has never been done by any other sports.

Because he was the first to feel the impact from the Internet, President of Real Madrid and President of European Super League Florentino once said, "Football will die in 2024". Today, starting from the European Cup, we talk about the maladjustment of football in the Internet era, which is nothing more than not wanting football to really die in the Internet era.

By the way, besides the European Cup, the America’s Cup is being held on the other side of the world. You probably don’t know about this, do you?

To keep football alive, in this increasingly rapid iterative era, we need a 90-minute battle.

Author: Bao Kang

Editor: Jiang Wen

This article first appeared on WeChat WeChat official account: Electronic Technology. The content of the article belongs to the author’s personal opinion and does not represent Hexun.com’s position. Investors should operate accordingly, at their own risk.