Consumption of Sport

Running head: CONSUMPTION OF SPORT IN A NEW MEDIA WORLD 1

Consumption of Sport in a New Media World: The Growth of Digital Content

Evan Brown

Western Kentucky University

CONSUMPTION OF SPORT IN A NEW MEDIA WORLD 2

Abstract

This paper discusses the current and future of new media influence on the consumption of

sports. The traditional medium of television, while staying a dominant force in the industry, is

slowly giving way to supplemental content through digital channels.

While digital production is far from a standalone platform in today’s climate, the age

range of many digital media consumers points to a growing market share. We examine the

current role of digital mediums, and the future potential of this new media as it relates to sport.

Keywords: Digital Media, Advertising, Sports, Consumerism


Buzzzzzzzzzz. Buzzzzzzzzzz. I woke to a vibrating alarm on my phone. It was a fall

Saturday, and it was game day. One hundred or more college football teams in the Football Bowl

Subdivision (“FBS”), the highest level of collegiate football, kicked off throughout the day,

chasing their own slice of glory. Several hundred more teams had similar days, albeit with much

less coverage.

The day started on ESPN with the granddaddy of all sports-talk shows, College Game

Day. Beginning at 8:00 a.m., my father and I were parked in front of the television. The three

hour show is broadcast live from a campus hosting one of the biggest games of the week. The

iconic backdrop of dedicated students showing their spirit and the candid, off-beat commentary

was the start to my game day.

Immediately after Game Day, five or six cable stations aired the 11:00 a.m. kickoffs. My

day immediately rolled into the 2:30 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. games, swelling to ten or more games as

the broadcast networks join the coverage. Finally, my day closed with the primetime showdowns

beginning between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.

Unless my father’s alma mater was playing nearby, this was our Saturday. We grill

burgers and hot dogs or get takeout for lunch, taking our attention away for only a few moments.

Dinner is prepared during the break between the afternoon and primetime games.

In recent years, my Saturday landscape has changed. Now, at least ten of the 11:00 a.m.

are on the air, and the number grows in the afternoon, with staggered start times to ensure a game

is always in play. West coast games even kick off at 9:00 p.m. or later. College football now runs

non-stop from 8:00 a.m. until the early morning hours. The explosion of cable sports networks


and digital platforms allow an ever-growing number of simultaneously televised games. This

growth in both media and sport has caught the attention of many industries. Weber (2014) says:

As the global sports and new media industries continue to grow in popularity and

economic importance, their dynamic inter-relationship is also becoming increasingly

sophisticated. Indeed, for a considerable time now, the rapid developments within the

media–sport nexus have necessitated a thorough and up-to-date examination of its

current, uncertain state.

Sport media consumption has absolutely burgeoned. The amount of available live-sport

content is at an all-time high. In addition, the value of live sports rights has multiplied

significantly. Every recent negotiation for a major professional sports league’s broadcast rights

has been an all-time league high. NBC and Fox have added blockbuster deals with the English

Premier League (“EPL”) and German Bundesliga soccer leagues respectively.

Why? What is it about sports that makes it so valuable? At any level, sports can be a

major point in society. In a small town, businesses will likely shut their doors early for a big high

school game on a Friday night. Cities across the country have stadiums whose capacities exceed

their respective populations. With billions of dollars in TV rights, in addition to the money spent

in attendance and licensed merchandise, it can all seem like an expensive exercise in vanity. An

explanation of the meaning behind sport is difficult to produce. Chatterjee (2012) describes it as:

Spectators always play an important role in defining the most important features of

sporting culture. Watching a match involves a momentary withdrawal from the real

world. The spectator’s participation has the ability to convert the game into a spectacle

rather than simply a contest between active participants, meaning that the significance of


defeat on the field can reverberate far beyond the confines of the pitch or stadium. As

witnesses, the spectators carry the story of the setback with them into the community, not

simply as a tale to be told but as an experience to be related and relived, animated by

traces of the passion and energy that fired them at the spectacle.

This intense love for sport has made it a pan cultural activity. An Ivy League student

playing touch football on the quad, an inner-city kid playing pick-up in the park, a suburban dad

throwing a baseball with his son, and an orphan playing street soccer in the favelas of Rio de

Janeiro are all brought together by sports. With such an immense affinity for athletics, this

culture is certain to merge with consumerism, another pillar of modern society. Consumerism is

a product of early and repetitive socialization, to the point of being a responsibility of citizens.

Jackson (2015) says:

With respect to identity and the transformation of citizenship, Henry Giroux (2000: 19)

asserts that: ‘As culture becomes increasingly commercialized, the only type of

citizenship that adult society offers to children is that of consumerism’. One only needs to

consider the comments of James McNeal, a pioneer consultant on children’s marketing,

for confirmation of Giroux’s concerns: ‘The consumer embryo begins to develop during

the first year of existence. Children begin their journey in infancy, and they certainly

deserve consideration as consumers at that time’ (cited in Barbaro et al., 2008). This may

help explain why it is so difficult to challenge consumer capitalism’s colonization of

culture and to envision any alternatives. Unfortunately, concurrent with the

transformation of identity from citizen to consumer, experts continue to caution of the

consequences of ignoring issues of sustainability. While a plethora of documentaries,

books and conferences alert us to the threat of climate change, Sut Jhally’s documentary


Advertising and the End of the World (1998), which advanced his earlier paper

Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse (2000), was the first to make clear links

between capitalism’s overproduction and overconsumption, advertising and the

inevitability of resource scarcity, conflict and potential environmental disaster, all of

which threaten humanity.

This unilateral convergence of passion and consumerism has created the multi-billion

dollar industry. The Green Bay Packers no longer package cheese until game day. The Arsenal F.

C. players no longer manufacture munitions during their week. Fans no longer read the scores in

the Sunday papers, they watch several games and highlights of the rest. All this money flows

from advertising, and the more content out there, the higher the advertising sales to go along with

it.

In the case of NBCSports’ production of EPL soccer, most games are available in the

United States on a broadcast or cable network, with the remaining content on Premier League

Extra Time, a digital video on demand platform. The Extra Time Platform is included in cable

subscriptions to NBCSports. This is just one example of content expansion into the digital space.

According to Weaver (2013):

Since 1998, the spectrum of digital technology has exploded. Scrolling through our

channel guides, we can access 500+ stations. And the amount of content needed to keep

those channels filled has grown exponentially.

Now, in 2013, we also have the evolution of multi-platform viewing options (iPads,

smartphones) and the possibility of “TV everywhere.” Using “cord cutting” and “time

shifting,” viewers determine when and where they will consume content.

[email protected], 11/23/15,

Add a bit more to the transition from definition of sport to digital


Not only can you watch a live game on your smartphone while traveling on a train or

waiting for a bus—you can “second screen” the event (watch it on a large screen and

interact with other fans on your laptop via social-media sites or network-driven portals).

These options provide access and content not found on the live feed—they have a

“behind-the-scenes” feel, as if you were gaining insider access.

In addition to NBC’s Extra Time platform, ESPN offers the WatchESPN online platform.

This digital offering carries hundreds of collegiate and professional sports, including many

events outside the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, PGA. Thousands of hours of content can be streamed

to a laptop or mobile device in high-definition picture. ESPN’s platform also offers “TV on the

go” streaming for their six cable networks to consumers who log in and confirm their

subscription to the network.

Sports media, just like other types of popular media, even news media, is controlled in

large part by a small number of corporations. These media conglomerates (Disney/ABC/ESPN is

one of the largest) control the traditional media, and therefore the information being passed on

that media. Bradley (2013) says:

TWO FORCES, working in grudging symbiosis, control the media: content producers

and content distributors. If information travels along a highway, then the distributors own

the road, and the providers make the stuff that rides on it. Neither has value without the

other. But control both the road and its travelers, and a company might master its own

destiny. That was the theory, at least, in the 1990s, when TCI CEO John Malone's

"converging alliances" ruled the day and the Baby Bells—the remnants of AT&T's

breakup—merged like mad. Telecom execs known as "infobahn warriors" formed

unlikely alliances for the sole purpose of controlling that highway and its travelers.


It is this type of media control that has allowed the industry to become what it is. By

controlling the rights for the most watched games, media giants were raking in millions. The

addition of live content in more time slots (smaller schools playing college football on Tuesday-

Friday) proved to be a profitable model for both team and broadcaster.

Networks must recoup the billions of dollars spent for live sport rights fees, this was less

of a problem five to ten years ago when TV had a monopoly on live video broadcasts. However,

increasingly tech-savvy consumers, especially males in the 18-49 age range making up the

majority of sports consumers, are cutting the cord on expensive cable and satellite packages,

opting to use inexpensive digital streaming services, legal or otherwise. This reduction in

subscribers cost ESPN roughly $6.10 per person, based on numbers from a report in Forbes

(Pomerantz 2015). Bercovici (2013) examines the competition raised by internet TV companies:

Over all this looms the specter of so-called cord-cutting--the practice of canceling cable

or satellite service and relying entirely on the Internet for your video needs. For now it's a

marginal phenomenon, representing less than 5% of the market, according to studies by

Magid and the Convergence Consulting Group. But it's prevalent enough--an over-the-

Internet service called Aereo lets users without a pay TV subscription, or even a TV set,

record network television shows and stream them to a variety of devices--that the number

of pay-TV households nationwide has shrunk for the first time in the modern media era.

With cord-cutting dramatically more common among under-30 consumers, the trend will

accelerate.

It gets worse: Internet services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon are producing original

premium content that holds up against anything HBO or PBS is putting out. Netflix's

House of Cards, nominated for this year's Emmy Award for best dramatic series, was a


game changer. "The seal has been broken," says Larry Tanz, CEO of Vuguru, an Internet

video studio owned by former Disney chief Michael Eisner. "It's the first time the fact of

what network it was on doesn't matter to people." If Netflix were a channel, the 87

minutes per day that the average subscriber spends streaming the service would make it

one of the most-watched cable networks.

A recent report from Yahoo Finance found that cord cutting has really started “cutting”

into subscribers at ESPN. According to Logan (2015), “ESPN networks now have 92 million

subscribers, according to THR. It was 95 million last year and 99 million in 2013.” Just over

seven percent of ESPN’s 2013 subscription fees are simply lost revenue, moving forward.

Considering the $6.51 fee per subscriber, that is $45,570,000 in lost revenue per year for the

flagship channel alone. ESPN is paired with ESPN2 in most packages, as well as offering several

other networks on various cable tiers.

This will also have ramifications in advertising sales. Fewer subscribers will inevitably

lead to lower ratings, thus inhibiting their advertising rates. In addition to the falling revenues of

cable TV, digital revenue is growing. Dart (2015) discusses the growth in digital revenue:

In the early years of new media the challenge was how to make a profit, with many

Internet start-ups bursting in the “dot.com bubble” of 2000. This profit-challenge was

resolved with the exploitation of personal data, the development of sponsored links and

online advertising with data mining activity fueling the expansion of the Internet. Fuchs

(2011) cites Dallas Smythe (1981/2006) who identified how in traditional media the

advertisement model operated, “because audience power is produced, sold, purchased

and consumed, it commands a price and is a commodity.” New media typically allow free

access to websites to attract traffic (i.e., users and their friends), which in turn boosts


advertising revenue at the same time as collecting personal data on its users. This user

data (e.g., tracking who your friends are, what sites you visit and what you buy), has

become a valuable commodity which is sold to advertisers who use it to market

personalized services and products. Social media platforms generate profit from

advertising and exploiting the users’ labor (i.e., the time and intellectual labor which is

manifest in their posts, tweets, photos, video clips, etc.). For Fuchs (2011), the difference

between the traditional mass media model of audience commodity and that involving the

Internet is that the latter sees the audience as also being the content producers. As a

consequence of increased blurring between production and consumption, online users

have become both the producers and consumers (audiences), leading Toffler (1980, p.

267) to label them prosumers.

Explosive growth in digital media is offering an out to consumers who want content, but

have become frustrated with conventional offerings. Logan (2015) affirms this:

The cable industry at large has suffered a kind of exodus over the past few years, as TV

streaming and over-the-top services multiply and consumers find ways to either trim

down their cable subscriptions or, in some cases, cut them altogether.

Currently, digital services from all major cable sports networks are offered as part of paid

cable subscriptions. A la carte purchasing options do not exist, so users are required to maintain a

cable subscription including simulcasts of cable channels as well as digital only content. CBS

Sports does offer live streaming of select college football games, those on their flagship

broadcast station, as well as March Madness On Demand (“MMOD”), a live stream of all 63

NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament games. In a Sports Illustrated article, Lemire (2009)

broke down the numbers for MMOD:


The feature streams live video of all games from the NCAA men's tournament, and the

4.8 million total unique viewers over the 10 days of games in 2008 was a jump of nearly

three million from '07.

And with this year's tournament coverage starting on March 19 CBS president Leslie

Moonves said ad revenue is "on track to break last year's revenue" of $23 million. That

was up from $4 million in 2006 and from $10 million in '07. Most MMOD viewers

belong to advertising's most coveted demographic: 25- to 54-year-old male college

graduates with household incomes exceeding $75,000.

The CBS strategy has been to make digital media a revenue producer, particularly in

sports. In 1999-when the network negotiated a $6.2 billion, 11-year extension of its deal

with the NCAA, which includes men's basketball (the extension began in 2003)-CBS

Sports president Sean McManus insisted that Internet rights be included. Even last year,

when the network laid off more than 160 news employees and saw its net income fall

52%, CBS Sports was investing in its online infrastructure. Now CBS has partnered with

Microsoft Silverlight-the media player that handled NBC's streaming online Olympic

coverage-to enhance the quality of its video; Silverlight supports nearly triple the video

resolution of Windows Media Player.

The rise in MMOD viewers has not cut into NCAA tournament TV ratings for CBS, in

part because most of the online usage occurs during typical workday hours. MMOD is

"all additive, not cannibalistic," says CBSSports.com general manager Jason Kint.

The success of CBS’s tournament coverage is proof that free, online streaming can be

both popular and successful. The growth rate is also astounding, with unique viewership rising

164% from 2007 to 2008 and revenue rising by $23 million over the same period (Lemire 2008).


Professional sports leagues around the world are also looking at potential ways to add

digital revenue to their lucrative broadcast rights. Research by Hutchins (2012) supported this

assertion:

“Two recent major announcements underline an important transformation in how popular

sports content is transmitted and consumed. The first was the National Football League’s

(NFL) decision to stream Super Bowl XLVI, staged in Indianapolis on 5 February 2012,

live to mobile phones for the first-time ever. Available only in the United States, the

game was accessible via the NFL Mobile app on the Verizon network. This innovation in

media sport consumption built on the regular season Sunday Night Football games made

available through the same mobile app (Sweney, 2011). The second announcement was

the Australian Football League’s (AFL) widely publicized undertaking to show all AFL

games between 2012 and 2016 live on mobile phone handsets and tablet computers

serviced by the market dominant telecommunications carrier, Telstra. This unprecedented

move by the nation’s wealthiest football code attracted the attention of the international

sports business press both for its record breaking value (AUD$1.253 billion) and a

multiplatform strategy that traversed broadcast, Internet, video game console, and mobile

rights (Cutler, 2011). These announcements indicate that mobile media is now a serious

feature of the commercial sports coverage rights market, with significant relationships

between telecommunications operators, mobile media services, and elite level spectator

sport also evident in the United Kingdom and Europe (Boyle, 2004; Boyle & Haynes,

2004; Evens, Lefever, Valcke, Schuurman, & De Marez, 2011).

A major proponent for more live digital content is also in the mobile sector. Increasingly,

we are people on the move. We are no longer chained to a desk for work or to a couch for video


content. We can access news, weather, movies, and TV shows all on the go from a variety of

devices over WiFi or cellular networks. However, live sporting events tend to be the exception.

O’Reilly and Rahinal (2006) found:

“MMDs [multi-media devices] are a new breed of consumer information and

entertainment platforms, which include personal digital assistants (PDAs) and cellular

phones. Coined by Apple, PDAs were originally used to support clerical tasks such as

note-taking, contact list maintenance and diary-keeping (Daniels, 1994) but they are now

evolving into multimedia-oriented devices. Although TV is not widely consumed on

PDAs, recent developments in the field may allow for digital TV to be broadcast on these

small devices (see Royal Philips Electronics, 2005). Conversely, a more rapid

convergence with TV has taken place in the cellular industry. Many common televised

products such as news, sports clips and weather forecasts can be broadcast to a customer

anywhere. Broadcast partners in this service include ESPN, CNN, Fox Sports, the

Weather Channel and NBC. Recently, Bell Canada and Rogers Wireless advertised their

mobile video coverage of the 2006 NHL Stanley Cup playoffs and the 2006 FIFA World

Cup respectively. Worldwide revenues for FIFA in the latter case were in the tens of

millions and distribution spanned 100 countries (Masters, 2006). In North American

professional sports, Mobile ESPN provides customers with exclusive baseball, football,

ice hockey and basketball video content on the Sprint network.”

As much as digital sports content has grown, it still is no match for the traditional

broadcast media. The current digital delivery remains secondary, delivering content in addition

to broadcasts or when broadcast channels reach capacity. Broadcast advertising revenue


motivates networks to tie sports fans to their cable subscription in order to see big games,

according to Law, Harvey, & Kemp (2002):

These equity interests certainly enhance access to content material for expanding delivery

mechanisms. However, broadcast rights continue to play the dominant role in acquiring

sport products. The importance of the right to broadcast American football (NFL) is

underscored by the $395 million dollar increase over the previous contract (Landreth,

2000) and that the league now has the right to renegotiate its eight-year contract after

only five years. Further, 71 of the 76 teams in the American big four leagues have

agreements with Fox Sports Regional Networks (Andrews, 2001) for local broadcast.

Exclusive broadcasting rights are held for the Super Bowl, NHL games, the MLB World

Series, as well as the World Cup of Cricket and English Premiership Football. News

Corp’s acquisition of Twentieth Century Fox in the 1980s has enabled the company to

employ its own film and television content onto its worldwide platforms.

There is cause for optimism, as other segments of media continue to make broad switches

to digital content. Music, cultural influence, even dramatic production inches more and more

away from broadcast and cable. Bradley (2013) says:

Viewers are faster moving than media companies, and have proved incredibly disloyal to

the most seemingly entrenched platforms—even television. In 2009 the Kaiser Family

Foundation found that 8- to 18-year-olds were spending less time in front of a TV—the

first decrease in viewing since its study of youth TV habits began in the 1990s. The

report pointed out that children weren't watching less television; they just weren't using a

traditional set-top box. Instead of huddling in front of a glowing screen in the family

living room, they were streaming their favorite show on Netflix, commercial-free.


Nielsen's findings are starker still: Traditional TV viewing by 18- to 24-year-olds has

dropped for six consecutive quarters, and teens (12- to 17-year-olds) watched the least

traditional TV among every age group surveyed.

In the teens' case it is pretty clear where they are going, and where things are headed:

YouTube. The Google-owned company has supplanted Viacom-owned MTV as the go-to

destination for music and pop culture ephemera (cellphone videos, for example), much of

it user-generated and all of it free. But an abundance of free videos is a double-edged

sword if none of it is exclusive, so YouTube is spending $350 million on original

programming for its online video channels. Amazon also launched Amazon Studios and

partnered with Warner Bros. for a similar purpose—original content delivered on demand

through its website or its Kindle devices. The model is extremely low cost, comparatively

(the Writers Guild of America minimum for a 30-minute show on broadcast is more than

$20,000 an episode): If an entire show is greenlighted its writer receives $10,000; if it is

distributed the creator gets $55,000. Google and Amazon are Internet-born behemoths,

with market capitalizations that dwarf most (see chart), and they are dipping a toe into the

media pool. What might happen if they choose to dive in?

Digital media has huge potential for more growth. When speaking about digital media,

Bradley (2013) sees a new metaphor tacking place:

Information no longer travels on a metaphorical road but through a very real series of

tubes, delivered not simply to TVs but to phones, tablets, computers, and videogame

consoles. Media can be consumed in more ways than ever before, but the delivery system

is startlingly homogeneous: It's the Internet. One company, Aereo, even picks up

broadcast signals using a bay of rabbit-ear antennas and then moves that data through the


Internet. The way information is distributed is so similar that content is now the market

differentiator. A hit show or a sports broadcast is leverage when providers negotiate with

distributors.

With digital, there is a great potential for more owned media, cutting out the middle man

will lead to a good return for schools and leagues. Digital does not have to completely match the

gross numbers of traditional media, just the return for the university. If leagues can leverage

subscriptions and ad sales in an owned medium to match their returns from a media

conglomerate, they have a better bargaining position in rights negotiations.

The biggest challenge for digital is the inability to protect their content. Subscription

passwords are easily shared. Multinational broadcasts are licensed to various regional and

national distributers, the digital portions of this content are protected via “geo-fencing”, a

technique of blocking IP addresses and other digital signatures outside a geographic area. The

circumventing of geo-fences in outlined by Burroughs and Rugg (2014):

NBC's coverage polarized them, with a number of viewers participating in an unexpected

phenomenon: using VPN (virtual private network) services to change the "address" of

their computer from America to the United Kingdom, allowing American viewers to

circumvent NBC's coverage and access the live (and more comprehensive) Internet

streaming coverage of the BBC. Soon, how-to-guides were being spread widely across

the Internet (including popular mainstream Web sites such as Lifehacker).

While the news coverage continued to center mainly on NBC's production choices and

the anger they inspired in viewers, it was the audience's ability to access the BBC's

coverage at all that was the real story. These acts of protest evinced significant shifts in


the underlying relationship among Internet and television broadcasting models, media

corporations, and mediated sporting rights.

NBC had attempted to tape delay events of the 2012 London Olympics putting them into

primetime coverage, and increasing ratings points. The consumer backlash was massive, leading

to the example above. Burroughs and Rugg (2014) continue:

This digital omnipresence stands in stark contrast to the logics of Internet broadcasting

that encourage a geographical based approach to regulating distribution and access to

online streaming content. As we have explained the dominant broadcasting model has

been mapped onto the current state of digital space and infrastructure to reinforce the

primacy of the nation-state. Still VPNs push back on the idea that physical location

within the Internet exists in such a way that it can be used as a regulatory or defining

agent and remind us that the geographic mapping of the Internet is a construction. As

Mike Crang (2000) explains, spatial metaphors have become the vehicle through which

networks are culturally understood and enacted, where the "imagining of electronic space

is vital to creating it" (p. 302). Yet, along with a more palatable understanding of the

basic workings of the Internet comes a naturalizing of the Internet as a spatially faithful

digital reproduction of the world in which we live.

This new era of digital content has opened access to international broadcasts, never

before available. This can hinder the ratings of TV content, further injuring the bottom line.

The future for sports media is still quite murky. Evidence suggests that our current

trajectory is not sustainable. Is digital platforms really our best options though? Especially team

or conference owned subscription services? This raises questions about fans of the away team?

How do they obtain viewership without cost prohibitive subscriptions?


Also there is the issue of exposure over revenue. The reason for many universities

subsidizing their athletic teams is for the massive amount of PR exposure. Pittsburgh and

formerly Utah State AD Scott Barnes was once quoted by the New York Times, Longman

(2009), "Athletics are the front porch of the university. It’s not the most important room in the

house, but it is the most visible."

Basically, Athletics is the curb appeal for a university. For many prospective students, a

passing interest in a university can be generated by the success of an athletic team. This interest

is fleshed out by researching the institution, leading them to a school they might not have looked

at otherwise.

The well documented “Flutie Effect” at Boston College (BC) is just one example of

athletic exposure raising the profile of the academic side of campus. BC became famous for a

miracle Hail Mary pass thrown by QB Doug Flutie, clinching a win over the University of

Miami in the 1980’s. BC went on to have increases in applications for enrollment in the

following years.

In a world of fragmented media, is there an opportunity to reach new consumers? Can

you reach disconnected alumni, prospective students, or parents of students when they have to

exclusively buy into your content? If the financial side ever matched the current levels of

traditional media, I honestly doubt the exposure can ever compete. There is no draw for “casual

fans” or general sports fans to purchase a UTEP Miner Digital Network subscription for $5.99/

month.

This is an unacceptable tradeoff for many institutions in the upper echelons of college

athletics. This would also pose a problem for professional leagues seeking to grow their national


and international brands. The NFL is heavily involved in London, playing several games there

recently, and several more scheduled for the coming years. How would the NFL Digital Network

($19.99/ mo.) reach a whole nation of people just being introduced to the American code of

football?

This is possibly the biggest question facing teams and leagues, and the biggest barrier to

completely digital distributions. For now hybrid TV/ Digital is the norm, and is likely going to be

for years to come. What will be interesting will be if the streaming services were to get into live

content. Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu already have wide distribution of their content. These

services are producing great original dramas that are finding success. If they were to get into live

content, it would deliver a body blow to cable.

Many would-be cord cutters are tethered to cable for sports content. Ability to watch

events live via streaming would give many more people the option to discontinue their cable.

Currently, Netflix would not be able to financially compete for rights to the largest and most

successful conferences in collegiate athletics. Their lower distribution and pricing vs the cost of

content, makes this impractical on the surface.

The one possibility for ramping up the revenue in live events would be targeting ads.

Much in the same way banner ads on websites target you based on data gleaned from you,

Netflix could offer targeted ads during commercial breaks. The ability to tailor a video

advertisement to a viewer in a highly scientific way comes at a higher cost per thousand than

traditional TV ads, which can only be targeted to broad demographics based on viewership.


Live sports garner ratings from a highly desirable market, this combined with the

tailoring of ads to specific users based on other interests, browsing history, etc. could lead to

some of the most expensive costs per impressions the industry has ever seen.

While mainstream TV broadcasts currently top viewership and revenue charts, the trend

will continue towards digital. The online population continues to grow, as more consumers

transition to the smaller screens, potential advertising and subscription revenues will increase,

eventually giving way to more content as production and distribution becomes more financially

sound.

In the early years, digital was thought to be a fading fad, but the same was said for radio

and TV. All that’s required to make digital commonplace is for the public to buy into the new

phenomenon. Phonographs and music were social indicators of wealth, and now radio and/or

online music is in every home and car. Smartphones and MP3 players are in most pockets. At

one time, the industry thought television sets would never belong to the public, and yet the

perception has changed drastically as many people own more than one. Digital is this

generation’s revolution. This is the development of an all new platform. Society and culture has,

and will continue to, mold it, monetize it, and grow it. It will be the standard, until a new

generation makes the next bigger and better thing.


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Consumption of Sport

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