Streamed Sports Still Swimming Against Current
For sports fans, streaming media promises to be Internet nirvana. Even at today's nascent stage, there have already been a number of opportunities for fans to get their video sports fix via the Internet.
But for sports programmers, leagues and operators, streaming media raises more questions than answers. What does the consumer really want? How can streamed media be mined most successfully without damaging lucrative broadcast rights? When will broadband hit critical mass? Which technology makes the most sense? How much investment is it worth?
And these's the Internet's omnipresent quandary: Where's the money?
There's one answer that everyone agrees upon: streaming media will give sports consumers more control over their viewing experience, but it's nor going to replace television, cable or satellite any time soon.
Streaming media complements the existing experience and provides leagues and networks with branding opportunities. It also provides a new outlet for some sports events without significant broadcast exposure.
In some respects, it's reminiscent of ESPN's early days, when events without any hope of a television home found a welcome mat in cable's bottomless pit.
ALREADY AN OPTION
But unlike ESPN, which televised trout fishing, bowling and other more obscure events in the early 1980s, the Internet does have access to the cream of sports programming.
The National Hockey League's on-demand streaming features lets fans of Mario Lemieux watch the retired superstar's return to the ice around the clock. And National Basketball Association fans who've dreamed of seeing every dunk in the league -- or want to see the exploits of favorite players who never seem to make SportsCenter -- can put together highlight packages of their own.
Fans of non-team sports like the National Association for Stock Car Racing (NASCAR) can eavesdrop on drivers via streaming audio, while golfers with a hitch in their swing can turn to the Golf Channel's Web site for streaming replays of golf lessons from the network.
Even ESPN is finessing plans for a second-quarter launch of a streaming, customized version of SportsCenter.
Former CBS Sports president Neal Pilson describes the potential. 'It can give you insight and pictures that basically you don't see on a television broadcast,' he said. 'You can go to practices, you can go to locker rooms, at NASCAR you can do the garage area.
'You can do spring-training games for baseball that aren't televised. There are huge opportunities to create more pictures and more coverage without competing with television rights.'
ESPN Internet Group senior vice president of programming and production Geoff Reiss predicted a very real future in which sports that can't make it on television now -- for instance, college wrestling or field hockey -- will find a home via streaming video. Affinity groups of alumni may want to see every Stanford tennis match or every Georgia women's soccer game, or clusters of sports enthusiasts may simply want to watch college wrestling or high-school football.
TECHNOLOGY HURDLES
As long as computers are the main conduit for streaming media, however, the distance to that future is more of a chasm than a gap.
'Computers are better equipped to receive this stuff but it's not the environment,' said Reiss. 'You don't say, 'Hey, want to come over and watch my Hewlett-Packard?''
Access to a high-speed Internet connection also plays a role in the consumer's desire to see streamed sports events. While streaming audio has achieved considerable dairy even at low speeds, streaming video is still fairly choppy for the average dial-up user.
NFL.com's NFL Films TV (www.nfl.com/nflfilmstv) comes the closest to a high-quality streaming experience at ISDN or lower.
'I think it's a question of two things -- where people are and what their experience is,' said FoxSports.com senior vice president Ross Levinsohn. 'The reality is until ... we get that last mile wired from the curb to home, and an on-ramp where the pipe is fat enough, the experience is going to be choppy.
'Right now, unless you've got pretty big fiber coming into your work or home, the experience is just average,' he said.
Another problem is the cost of developing specialized programming for the Internet, Levinsohn said.
'The production environment is not in place. I would expect there to be some continued economies in what it will cost [but for now] that rowing match may be really interesting but, gosh, does it warrant a production truck, four cameras, a crew? There would be almost as many people producing it as want to see it.'
Golf Channel executives don't doubt that streaming media must become part of the network's programming mix.
'We really feel that streaming video is a great way to enhance the written content on our Web site,' Golf chief operating officer David Manougian said. 'We offer it up in small, digestible chunks of streaming video.'
Those chunks include step-by-step golf instruction, features and show highlights. However, he sounded this note of caution: 'At this point in time, it's our opinion that when people want to watch our channel, they're going to go to our local system, turn on the channel and watch.'
Instead of an alternative delivery platform, the Golf Channel sees streaming as a way to enhance the network's brand and draw TV viewers. In that sense, Manougian said, streaming is nothing but positive for cable.
'From our standpoint, looking out to the immediate horizon, it affects cable by increasing viewership,' he said.
Not everyone is as eager to talk about sports streaming-media strategies. Boxing purveyors Home Box Office and Showtime Networks Inc., for example, declined to provide executives to comment for this story. Neither did officials at Madison Square Garden Network or at Oxygen Media, which plans to broadcast a range of women's sports events this year.
NHL WANTS TO STREAM
At NHL.com, game highlights are posted promptly every night but aren't streamed, something the league hopes to remedy by the playoffs.
So far, NHL Broadband is limited to league-produced television shows that are streamed after they air, and some special events, such as Lemieux's return.
A quick scan of NHL Broadband offers a glimpse of the technological tangle consumers and Web programmers face. It contains 360-degree video of NHL AllStar Game-related events from Be Here Corp. that can only be seen by users of Windows Media Player 6.4 or higher and Internet Explorer in a Windows-based PC.
Doug Perlman, senior vice president of television and media ventures, describes efforts like the streamed AllStar practice as the perfect example of something 'compelling enough to warrant fan interest but not compelling enough for television.'
What do consumers want? Brenda Spoonemore, NBA vice president of Internet services, thinks she knows.
'Fans are looking for functionality,' she said. 'Fans aren't all that interested in watching three hours of streaming media at one go right now. They want products such as 'My Highlights,' where the fan is able to determine exactly what players they want to see.
What they don't want is a lot of irrelevant add-ons, she said. 'If they're going to sit and watch for five or six minutes want exactly what they want.'
MANY POSSIBILITIES
As nifty as the streaming options offered to fans may seem now, they pale when compared to the possibilities.
For instance, once league archives are completely digitized--the direction in which the major leagues are moving -- Bob Cousy connoisseurs won't have to wait for an ESPN Classic NBA reprise to catch a favorite game. It's video-on-demand in its truest sense.
'The Internet allows you to provide customized programming that really speaks to the individual,' said NFL senior vice president of new media Chris Russo. 'Not everybody might be interested in reliving the 1968 Super Bowl, but if they are, they can get it on demand.'
Not everyone thinks sports fans will flock to archived footage.
Turner Broadcasting System Inc. president of domestic distribution Andrew Heller believes it will appeal more to news consumers than sports fans.
'People want to see [sporting events] live,' he said. 'After it's live, all of the interesting stuff typically makes it on the highlights.'
But he added that, ultimately, event replays 'may be more monetizable than anything else, because it's consumer-driven.'
ESPN's Reiss has no qualms about sports' future place on the Internet.
'It remains the kind of Holy Grail in the sense of what sports is all about,' he said. 'There isn't a sports fan our there who wouldn't rather see it than be told about it.'
And executives said fans would be willing to deal with the choppy viewing experience as long as it provides something they can't get somewhere else.
A FoxSports.com Web-only showing of last season's University of Nebraska-San Jose State University college-football game in September drew more than 200,000 viewers.
Levinsohn offered a pre-streaming example of a Webcam posted in what was then called Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. Pointed at the scoreboard, it averaged 50,000 users on average days and jumped to 100,000-plus when a game was in progress.
'The key with rights is the kind of things that Ross is talking about here,' added Fox Sports Net president Tracy Dolgin. 'The leagues have got to be very careful -- there is a pie and if they start going into that pie by slicing rights off, the people who bought [initial] TV rights aren't just going to sit there.'
Meanwhile, personalization and customization seem like the best way to make the most of a mixed bag. The NBA may be further along in this regard than other leagues.
The NBA has a long-term deal with and owns 9.5 percent of Convera Corp., a company that produces software and content tool kits including advanced search engines, video content and viewing, and security. This combination of technology makes the 'My Highlights' packages possible.
Levinsohn calls the NBA's deal with Convera 'sort of the forebear to what will happen when the mediums converge.'
WHO'S GOING TO PAY?
The biggest obstacle facing streaming media isn't bandwidth, technology or even the potential impact on broadcast rights. It's economics.
That quandary was made evident by one analyst's visceral response to the online gimmics available to fans during the NBA All-Star Game: 'Really nifty, but where's the money?'
That's no small question, and there's no easy answer.
Somehow, streaming media will to have to pay for itself -- whether as a profit center through subscriptions, an advertising vehicle, a branding tool that drives enough traffic to broadcasts to make it worth the cost, or in some way that hasn't yet become obvious.
One opportunity may be discrete fees. For instance, a DirecTV Inc. subscriber could be willing to pay an incremental amount for access to a subscription-only area, or a cable system providing broadband access could add on-demand highlights to their package. Another option would be straight subscriptions. NBA.com is using a variation of that by offering exclusive access to some streaming services for subscribers of Real Network's RealPlayer GoldPass. Real said more than 150,000 subscribers pay $9.95 a month for the service.
Ross Levinsohn insists that as a sports fan, he would pony up.
'If I can use the Web as a way to cut the time off of my entertaining experience -- five seconds using streaming media, versus waiting 25 minutes for it to come on in a pre-scheduled time in radio -- I, as a sports fan, am willing to pay a couple of bucks for that. I'll pay a sub fee for that, and you don't need a lot of people to make it work.'
Said Reiss: 'The more significant question is exactly who's going to be asking you to write that check? Is it going to be ESPN? Is it @Home, is it Time Warner, is it AOL?'
Added Heller: 'This is a very hot topic. We try and operate on the theory of we want to do stuff that's good for our partnership model. I am a huge believer [that] as you create new product and new opportunities for the consumer, it ought to be driven by people who touch the consumer.'
TURNS MODEL ON HEAD
Without putting words in Heller's mouth, it sounds like a model that moves money directly from the consumer to the programmer wouldn't be in the picture.
In effect, streaming media turns the delivery model on its head. Before this technology, programmers could deliver only through means controlled by the operator, whether it was broadcast, cable or satellite.
But the same Internet that makes it possible for anyone to be a publisher also makes it possible for programmers to deliver directly to consumers. The better the technology, the faster the bandwidth and the higher the quality of the product.
Granted, operators who control Internet access can put up barriers. And, in some cases, programmers will want to provide subscription-only services.
'No one has yet come up with a real economic model on how you sell it, how you split revenues,' Heller admitted.
Then again, where's the money?
'We have not made any decisions on business models yet,' adds the NFL's Russo. 'Certainly advertising will play a role, but there may possibly be some form of subscription.'
ESPN.com is trying to learn as much as possible about which technology makes the most sense, what fans want and how advertising might work in a streaming-media environment. The launch of My SportsCenter is the site's boldest leap into streaming.
'I think that for the next couple of years, you're going to see a lot of slow evolutionary growth instead of a revolution,' said Reiss.
Added the NHL's Pearlman: 'Even if there's not a significant business for us today we're going to be in it. Anyone who thinks they're going to sit back and wait to do anything until the numbers are there is making a mistake.'
