Chelsea made a hash of their first attempt to charge for a livestream of the preseason game. Hopefully they will not go down a similarly misguided route with the Women’s team this season.
A few months ago I wrote how Chelsea could get out ahead of their peers by capitalizing on the then-upcoming Women’s World Cup. Unsurprisingly, not only did they not take my advice, they did not do much more than offer the usual drivel on the club website. Perhaps we should just count our blessings that they didn’t do a special Women’s World Cup edition of “Media Watch.”
Chelsea now have a chance to carry the momentum of the Women’s World Cup into the Women’s Super League and other competitions. They have already scheduled one game at Stamford Bridge and are offering season tickets at a reasonable price, but this does not help overseas fans, who remain the largest number and biggest growth opportunity for the club. Unfortunately, they are not off to a good start this summer when it comes to serving their streaming fans.
At the beginning of the week Chelsea announced a preseason streaming package that was about as user-friendly as the procedure for resetting your GE smart light bulbs.
Viewers could buy either a single game or a package. But the package would only cover three of the seven games. You were limited to how many devices you could use, and you could only watch via the 5th Stand App. And there were different options for people in the UK and Ireland compared to the rest of the world.
The situation transitioned from “annoying” to “banter” when the 5th Stand App stream went down in the first half against Bohemians.
They then compounded their folly and disrespect by offering the rest of the game free for anyone who simply hopped on to the club website, no login necessary.
At least they didn’t tell us to turn on the app for eight seconds, off for two seconds. Turn the app on for eight seconds, off for two seconds…
As my colleague Scott mentioned in the neighbouring article, the club had pound signs in their eyes when they looked at the palpable enthusiasm around every aspect of Frank Lampard’s managerial tenure, starting with his first preseason game. Fans who otherwise might not be interested or otherwise think much of preseason are deeply interested in these games because it’s Frank Lampard. And if people are that interested in something, they’ll pay for it.
From a out-of-context business perspective this is a smart move. But Chelsea’s summer and this wave of enthusiasm have been marked by a shift away from raw financial decisions to more club-oriented decisions. Don’t be fooled by all the Blue hugs – those club-oriented decisions will work wonders for the bottom line. It’s not a softer way of doing business, just a smarter way.
And that’s what makes everything around the preseason streaming situation such a series of unforced errors. The club did not need a short-term revenue grab. That was an old Chelsea move, a fly-by-night make-a-few-pounds decision that ends up costing the club in reputation or money not too far down the road, whether it’s taking the L on a transfer, paying £9 million to the coach they fired or having snark merchants create “Sorry, something went wrong” memes as they waited for the stream to come back.
Chelsea should be playing the long game with the fans just as they are starting to with the team. It’s almost as if… playing the long game with the team facilitates playing the long game with the club, meeting… wait for it… financial and football goals together. Whoa.
Chelsea – like everyone else involved in the sport worldwide – need to play a similar fan-first long game with women’s football. Interest in the players and the sport is at one of its quadrennial peaks. But that does not mean fans are ready to make another streaming subscription a line item in their household football budget.
Depending on where they live, Chelsea fans may need three separate subscriptions to watch the first-team in four competitions. They are willing to do so because of their bond with the club formed over years, decades or a lifetime. Rather than being an entry point to the Women’s team, that commitment becomes an obstacle when the club asks them to buy something else to watch a team with which they may have only a few weeks’ familiarity with a handful of players.
Chelsea need to grow and deepen the fanbase for the Women’s team more than they need a marginal revenue stream. That stream would be a low-growth proposition, as opposed to throwing the doors open and welcoming Chelsea fans and new fans of the women’s game to Chelsea FC Women’s team.
As I said in April (hence the “against our better judgment” line):
"If Chelsea, the FA and the all-purpose powers-that-be want more for the women’s game, they need to open the door for football fans to be football fans of the women’s football teams… [W]e can only [engage as fans] if we can have perfect attendance via livestream in the USA or India or wherever we are, just as we do with the time we invest – lately against our better judgment – in the men’s team."
The business side of the club should not make it any more onerous for fans to deepen their relationship with the club. That’s for the technical side of the streaming operation, and whoever continues to sign off on “Media Watch.”