Abstract
For young Australian sports fans, overseas competitions such as the NBA, are now the game to watch, talk about and engage with. How has this come to be? Due to advances in technology, it has never been easier to watch sports from abroad – something commercially savvy competitions are using to tap into new markets and reach new fans. And Australians, like many others from around the world, cannot get enough of them. For example, subscription rates to the NBA’s League Pass, which enables fans to stream all games live, are higher in Australia than anywhere else on the planet. It is not just the NBA either, with the United States’ National Football League (NFL) and Britain’s English Premier League (EPL) also immensely popular in Australia. This simply puts further pressure on an already saturated Australian sports market. There are about 90 professional men’s and women’s teams competing for the attention of just 24 million Australians. Compare that with the US state of California, which has around 20 professional teams in a market of 39 million people. The rising popularity and accessibility of overseas sports has led many experts such as Andrew Condon, director of Australian sports marketing company Gemba, to state, “There’s too much content relative to our size as a country.” This paper will explore this issue in depth, highlighting the popularity of overseas sports among young Australians, while addressing what this means for Australia’s local sports teams and competitions.
Presenters
Sam DuncanAssoicate Dean, Higher Education, Sport, Holmesglen Institute (Associate Dean) and Swinburne University of Technology (Adjunct Research Fellow), Victoria, Australia
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Australia, Sport, Competition, NBA, EPL, Technology, Digitization
Digital Media
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