In exchange for USD 36.99 a year, fans can catch the latest WTCS and World Cup races on TriathlonLive. For enthusiasts of the sport, it is the perfect place to tune in to the latest stops or even browse the events of yesteryear.
Notwithstanding that the motorbike cameras can sometimes be wobbly enough to induce second-degree carsickness, TriathlonLive is an ideal centralised hub of triathlon content. The platform is accessible worldwide and helps to cultivate a global audience.
In the wider picture, though, there is a case to be made that TriathlonLive needs to implement changes. Namely, it should be free.
A good point to start is with comparative cost. Netflix (with ads) costs USD 6.99 a month (or USD 83.88 a year). Other streaming services, such as Disney Plus, fall into similar territory. While TriathlonLive is cheaper, as an expense it is straying into the territory of the major streaming services.
One counter-argument could be that USD 36.99 a year is not the biggest hit to a household budget. For some fans and families, though, it may be an expense too far and one that they are not willing to take on. Although triathlon is an expensive sport in general, not every aspect necessarily requires a cost attached to it.
Another problem with paid subscriptions is that they create expectations. Over the course of the recent season, a number of complaints were voiced in the comment section of TriathlonLive. Each usually arose as a consequence of having paid for a product. When people have paid for something, they expect a certain level of service, whether in the guise of camera quality, subtitling for multiple languages, or avoiding cuts in the live feed.
By contrast, a free product would get a little more leeway when moments of difficulty occur.
One important factor to note is that TriathlonLive subscriptions raise revenue for the sport. If ten thousand people subscribe each year, the organisation will generate a healthy stream of revenue. Such money has helped World Triathlon to return a profit in 2020 and 2021 and can go towards prize money and growing the sport. Yet there may be more to the picture than meets the eye.
Here, it may be helpful to borrow from economics. The “Laffer Curve” has been popularised, particularly since the Ronald Reagan was the American president, as a means of describing levels of tax. (Objection! Relevance?)
The Laffer Curve states that tax income for governments fluctuates as a result of changes to tax rates. As tax rates increase, the income goes up. However there is a point at which the tax rate gets too high and then tax income drops (often believed to be because high earners seek to hide their earnings).
Whether you subscribe to the Laffer Curve or agree with its many critics, the concept can be applied to TriathlonLive.
Raising the price of watching triathlon will generate revenue up to a point. Raising it beyond a certain level, though, will prove more costly. In the case of TriathlonLive, the risk is that people will not subscribe or watch the races.
We cannot say for sure what the tipping point is for TriathlonLive. That is also one of the issues with the Laffer Curve; it looks great on paper but is less helpful in actually making decisions. On balance, though, the cost of lost viewers is more detrimental in the bigger picture than lost revenue.
Fundamentally, the goal should be to broaden triathlon’s viewing numbers rather than prioritise extracting revenue from the viewers. Over time, as the viewing numbers increase, a small fee for watching could be sustained. For the time being, triathlon is too niche to do so.
Viewing is only one part of a bigger picture of participation. Nevertheless, direct correlations have been made between participation and whether a sport is free to watch. Cricket in the UK is a perfect example of this, having suffered a participation decline of 20% since moving behind a paywall.
Hiding triathlon behind a paywall only guarantees that it remains a niche product. People will not pay for something that they do not fully know, which encapsulates virtually every single “casual fan” in the world.
If triathlon is to think long-term, then, one solution may be to remove the paywall barrier to watching its best athletes.
