Kieran Maguire: New Tottenham plan may be doomed to fail – ‘good luck selling this to fans’
The new Tottenham streaming service may be doomed to fail if Man United’s equivalent is anything to go off.
That is the view of finance guru Kieran Maguire, speaking exclusively to Football Insider about Spurs’ new OTT media offering.
The Londoners announced on Tuesday (5 July) that they had teamed up with Endeavour Streaming to launch SPURSPLAY.
The on-demand service will broadcast pre-season friendlies as well as youth and women’s fixtures, with thousands of hours of archive footage also included.
But Maguire used the example of Man United’s platform, MUTV, to explain why SPURSPLAY service will not necessarily be a gimme in so far as revenue is concerned.
“We have to be cautious with this,” he told Football Insider’s Adam Williams.
“If you look at Man United TV, they lose money because production costs and the cost of acquiring the rights actually exceed the revenues generated.
“At a time when belts are being tightened and people are making purchase decisions, good luck trying to sell something like this to fans. For a lot of the archive stuff, it only looks good the first time around.
“The likes of United are finding attracting and retaining sponsors very challenging when they don’t really have a unique challenge.
“The proposals under Super League and Project Big Picture to allow clubs to sell their own rights would have been a complete game-changer, but that hasn’t materialised.”
Spurs earned £184.4million in media revenue in 2020-21, the last financial year on record.
They will broadcast their first match, a friendly against a K League XI in South Korea, on SPURSPLAY next Wednesday (13 July).
In other news, expert forecasts Jamie Donley in line for Tottenham promotion after “amazing” development.