Thursday, September 22, 2016

Streaming Sports

We're coming up on the second week of the NFL streaming Thursday Night Football on Twitter, which, by all accounts, was a rousing success during its initial run last week.  And, of course, the broadcast of last year's Bills-Jaguars game was exclusively on Yahoo.

Last Friday, the day after the game, I had a conversation with somebody about the Twitter stream, and he loved it.  He's one of the many people that no longer has cable and was thankful he had the opportunity to watch the game.  He even argued that this is the wave of the future.  That eventually you'll only be able to watch games on your computer and cable will no longer be a thing.  

I quickly dismissed that argument as asinine.  For starters, cable companies are smart.  In order to watch most online programming, you need to first enter your cable login...which means you can't watch it unless you have a cable subscription.  And with cable you don't need to deal with buffering or the screen freezing or anything like that.  And, I think I'm like most people here, but if given the option of watching a game on TV or on my computer, I'm picking the TV.  Even with Netflix and Hulu and Amazon producing original programming that you can only watch online, that doesn't mean TV as we've always known it is going anywhere.

That doesn't mean I dismiss live streaming of sports.  Quite the opposite actually.  Webcasting has completely changed the game.  In a good way.  It's not going anywhere, and I don't think anyone wants it to--including the TV networks.  They use streaming to their benefit.  It allows them to do different things and show so many more events than they'd ever be able to show if they only had 24 hours of programming a day available to them.  None of this is a bad thing.

Take ESPN3.  That has completely changed the way people watch college sports.  They show so many football and basketball games, a lot of which are exclusive.  Some schools and conferences have even signed deals with ESPN3 to have all of their home events streamed, and that includes soccer, baseball, softball, etc., as well as conference championship track and swimming meets, among others.  Most Division I schools (and some at the lower levels) stream their home games themselves if they aren't on TV or ESPN3, and virtually every league has a conference-wide streaming platform.

None of this would be possible without a platform to stream these events on, and it's something that fans have come to expect.  In addition to all these events, ESPN3 gives ESPN the ability to broadcast multiple events at once...or to show things live before editing them for future broadcast.  They can also utilize different camera angles or have dedicated cameras for certain teams or individual players.  You can't do that if you only have the standard game broadcast, which has to be the traditional, neutral coverage.

Likewise, NBC has taken its usual amount of Olympic criticism for its coverage from Rio.  But one thing they can't be criticized for is the ability to watch whatever event you want whenever you want.  They streamed every event live on NBCOlympics.com, and they were all made available On Demand, as well (I was actually watching some of the Olympic track & field earlier this evening).

Fans have only had this option since 2012, but it has completely changed Olympic viewing.  If you're a fan of badminton, you don't have to hope NBC shows it on one of its networks.  You can watch it online as it's happening.  In the past, badminton fans would've been lucky to see any coverage at all.  Which isn't entirely NBC's fault.  They simply don't have enough broadcast hours to show these niche sports at the expense of the marquee events that are going to draw better ratings.

It's so much more than that, though.  Thanks to the internet, you can watch virtually any event you can think of, from virtually anywhere in the world.  I got to watch the European Championships in track & field on the European Athletics website, and NBC Sports Live Extra has all kinds of Olympic sports programming that they picked up after Universal Sports Network went under.  You can also purchase a subscription to watch sports like cycling or figure skating or skiing online.  Sports that don't have enough of an audience to justify TV airtime, yet are still worthwhile enough viewing to show them somewhere.  Without the online option, these sports wouldn't be seen at all.

And I haven't even touched on things like MLB.tv, which lets you watch any out-of-market game you want.  If you live in St. Louis and you're a Red Sox fan, you can just pull up the NESN broadcast and watch the Red Sox game.  I took full advantage of that to watch the Yankees when I was in San Francisco earlier this year.  (In the interest of full disclosure, my MLB.tv subscription is free because I'm a T-Mobile customer, but that's not the only reason why I think it's great.)  The NHL's streaming platform, meanwhile, is so successful, that MLB recently bought it for $1.2 billion.

All of this, of course, gives you the option of watching the game not just on your TV.  You can watch it on your computer, your iPad, your phone, whatever.  Live streaming doesn't mark the beginning of the end of televised sports (after all, live streaming, if you think about it, essentially IS a TV broadcast).  Rather, live streaming has enhanced televised sports.  And that relationship will only grow stronger in the future.

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