BT 90 EXCLUSIVE: NISA Commissioner John Prutch on the launching of digital streaming platform NISA + and potential future broadcast deals for the league
NISA+ has launched and will stream every NISA match in 2024.
NISA has launched it’s own streaming platform - NISA +
In it’s existence NISA has drifted from beIN Sports linear to beIN Sports Connect to MyCujoo to Eleven Sports to FIFA +. Now the league has a dedicated home of its own but is eyeing using this as an opportunity to build the infrastructure for a major broadcast deal in the future. USL successfully did this, building its own production infrastructure at studios in Fort Lauderdale stating in 2016 and eventually making its way onto ESPN and historically tomorrow, CBS over-the-air.
NISA smartly appears to be following a charted path with the launch of NISA+. It’s important to note NISA+ will also feature archives of previous matches.
Commissioner Prutch mentions the possibility of broadcast deals in the future and having a built-in production and streaming service almost certainly makes that potential far more viable.
Below we have the Commissioner’s quotes on the new service and analysis from me on his quotes.
KK: So the question about that specifically is you guys had FIFA + and and you had Eleven and My Cujoo. What what is going to be different about NISA+ for the fan experience? Wasn’t it easy enough to find NISA matches on those very prominent and known platforms?
JP: For me logging in and watching the game on those two were easy but there's a couple reasons why we did this. A couple years ago we did a deal with beIN Sports for game of the week and we were their only US property and they had La Liga and Ligue Un from France and each week we were one or two (in viewers). It was either us or La Liga. Our viewers stayed twice as long. That told us the holy cow there's something here right and so how do we take advantage of that? Well, It took us some time did to really evaluate where we were right and What we wanted to be when we grew up From a media rights and broadcast perspective. And so myCujoo was as you know, an alternative then we were using and then FIFA+. That platform gave gave us was some insight into our worldwide audience and there is a significant number of people around the world that watch our games.
Then about and we started evaluating OTT platforms and then last summer we decided okay let's go do this and so ISM was formed is controlled by some investors that are close to NISA. And that platform was created for probably three reasons.
One was we needed to capture more data than what we were getting. Uh, on our fan base, um, we also needed to.
Two was to make sure that we were increasing the standards of our broadcast to the point where we could bring in a major media rights deal with a major broadcaster.
And the third one was we wanted to make it easy for our fans to see any game in our history that they wanted to see.
So we are now phase one is done and we're going live with it. Phase two is the historical part that'll be completed here shortly. So let's say if you're a fan of LA and you want to say, Oh, you know, I'd like to see the game that LA Force versus Michigan Stars from 2021 on this date, you just go to LA Force carousel and boom, it's right there and you can watch the game. The ease of use is going to be remarkable. Our fans are going to love it. It's so much easier to find the game, to find anything in the carousel and also gives you everything you ever wanted to know about that club.
And so we had conversations in the off season with a major broadcaster who is interested in working with us. We weren't ready. And so we put it off a year. We'll see what happens. But so this year, it's about, launching it, increasing our standards and and getting more network content, more information, more intelligence upon our who's watching. And so that's the reason we did it. We're actually very excited about the product. And so we'll see where it takes us.
KK Analysis: NISA’s numbers on BeIN were in fact quite good, I am told by a source at that network - but often times those matches involved clubs that have since left NISA, particularly Detroit City FC whose matches in the USL Championship tend to get the highest numbers in that league as well (DCFC viewership numbers both locally and nationally aren’t that different than most MLS teams, in fact in some cases they are better). It’s not an accident Detroit City despite finishing 8th in the Eastern Conference last season has the most national TV dates this season of any USL club.
Still, NISA does have strategically located clubs and perhaps can get someone who is in the league currently to develop a similar local footprint for its clubs to where they can be relevant in broadcast media.
Additionally, I think there might be some loss by not being on FIFA + this year but long-term the strategy makes sense. As I said above this is very similar to what USL did at the outset in 2016 when NASL was on more mainstream platforms (beIN, Eleven Sports and CBS Sports Network) and USL was reduced to very occasional matches on ESPN3. They built it and it worked.
We will have much more from our conversation with NISA Commissioner John Prutch including building local relevance for their clubs, looking into cup competitions, governance matters, building out the open system and issues around competition structure next week.
DCFC also has the best local broadcast deal in the country.