November 2004 Archives

This article was originally published on PaidContent.org on November 17, 2004.

This is the third in a series of reports blogging the more interesting panel presentations at the recently concluded 6th Annual Sports Media & Technology conference.

"Expanding the Fan Base with Wireless Applications"..

-- Jay Cooperider, Associate Athletic Director at Purdue University talked about Purdue's wireless initiative to enhance the fan experience at games with real-time game statistics, player and coach biographies, area traffic and weather and on-demand video replays. Fans can even e-mail the coach during the game with feedback and the coach will use the questions on his mid-week radio and television talk shows. Cooperider said that Purdue's wireless initiative also will enhance the tailgating experience of fans, but personally I'd opt for a cheeseburger and cold beer when tailgating, instead of a PDA. Read more about Purdue's initiative in this article in Forbes: "Wireless Information Heads For The Big Game"

-- Bill Schlough, CIO of the San Francisco Giants talked about Wi-Fi hot spots in the stadium for Giants games. Is in-stadium Wi-Fi a distraction to the game? Schlough says for many fans it is not. "A lot of fans want to bring in devices with them and they want to multi task," Schlough said. He noted that in baseball there is a lot of dead time during the game, unlike in basketball, and that you can fill in that time with content via their Wi-Fi network. Call me a baseball purist, but when I'm at the game on a weekend, I want to leave the Internet behind and enjoy the game without any distractions. But I can imagine taking my laptop to a weekday game during the day, and working while taking in a game at Safeco Field... shhhhhh. Get more perspective in this Business 2.0 article "San Francisco Giants' Wi-Fi Experiment"

-- The always popular Evan Kamer, Senior Director of New Media for the NFL, suggests paying attention to how the youth market uses wireless devices, a sentiment shared by lunch time key note speaker Bob Bowman, President & CEO of MLB Advanced Media. That's sage advice. Watch younger people as they divide their time into ever smaller bits and rapidly shift between an iPod, a dozen instant messages, TV and e-mail; anything less and they're bored. Does this have implications for future wireless applications for sports fans? Oh, yeah.

-- Several panelists emphasized that the in-stadium wireless applications need to be free, at least in the near term. And they want to make money by driving people to other things they can charge for.

-- Bill Schlough added: "Our goal is that the only reason a person needs to leave their seat during the game is to go to the bathroom. And we're working on that, too." All kidding aside, Schlough mentioned that the Giants don't restrict what content fans can access in the stadium (via parental control software like Net Nanny) but if a fan surfs (ahem) adult content sites in the stadium, and that offends a person near them, then ushers will remove that person from the stadium. Baseball, apple pie and... well, never mind.

-- Barry Silberman, EVP for NBA's Charlotte Bobcats, said we generally take wireless access for granted these days, and he wants people at games to have that same freedom. He wants the fan experience to be better, and notes that it was only 10 years ago that the sports industry first embraced the Internet.

Next up: "Turning a Team Website into a Profit Center".

This article was originally published on PaidContent.org on November 17, 2004.

I recently attended the 6th Annual Sports Media & Technology conference and this is a second in a series of reports blogging some of the more interesting panel presentations.

Tuesday morning we heard a panel presentation about "Set-Top Boxes and The Future of Interactive Television".

-- Dave Clark, Director of Product Strategy at Scientific Atlanta noted that the key to interactive applications and DVR capabilities is the horsepower of the set -top box. Each year, set-top manufacturers such as Scientific Atlanta roll out more powerful set-top boxes at a lower cost. The practical constraint: cost vs. capability.

Clark described the set-top box with DVR and HD capability as having a $400-$500 cost basis. With a 160 GB hard drive needed to support high definition (which fills 10GB/hour). "You can never give people enough storage, they'll always fill it up," said Clark. The question is: will the distributors subsidize part of the cost of the box?

A trend to watch: more mobile content, video to-go to catch up with your viewing while on a plane as an example.

And how content rights and DRM are handled is a key issue, according to Clark. There's no doubt, people will increasingly want what they want, when they want it. An interesting side note to expand your thinking on this topic: check out this report by Saul Berman of IBM on a phenomenon he calls the "attention loop" that "will enable successful companies to determine the optimal match of digital content and access rights to consumer needs and demands - and to create reciprocal relationships with alliance partners, vendors and suppliers, customers and consumers."

-- Paul Nathanielsz, Senior Director, Product Marketing for Bell ExpressVu, observed that consumers view set-top boxes as consumer electronics and as a result are accustomed to the idea of upgrading hardware every few years. Nathanielsz gave examples of multi-camera hockey applications, with the user able to select from three alternative camera angles, jump back 45 seconds in a game, view stats, and more. "You've got to deliver a great show at the end of the day," Nathanielsz said.

-- John Vartanian, SVP, Technology & Operations for iN Demand, described a NASCAR in-car interactive application with 4 cameras in 7 different cars, enabling the viewer to experience a race from different angles.

These apps are very cool, but coming back to business reality, this programming is expensive to produce and distribute and consumers haven't yet shown they're willing to pay more.

In my next report, I'll cover "Expanding the Fan Base with Wireless Applications".

This article was originally published on PaidContent.org on November 17, 2004.

I recently attended the 6th Annual Sports Media & Technology conference. The folks at Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal do a fabulous job organizing and presenting this conference, and I'll blog some of the more interesting panel presentations here.

There was a lively panel discussion Tuesday morning on the topic of "Cable Programming and Distribution Issues that Affect the Way We View Sports" (who comes up with these titles, anyway?).

-- Fred Dressler, EVP for Programming at Time Warner Cable said he sees escalating rights fees for sports programming as the biggest issue within the industry, particularly in light of recent news about NFL rights fees for television ("NFL agrees to six-year extensions with Fox and CBS worth $8 billion"). "It is fascinating to me to read how FOX concedes that it lost money on the last NFL deal," Dressler said. "But it says it is going to make money on this one when it increased its cost by over 30 percent."

Escalating rights fees are certainly good if you're a sports league and can find a willing buyer. But is this sustainable?

-- David Meister, Chairman & CEO of The Tennis Channel (a 24-hour cable television network devoted to tennis) said that sports tiers on cable today don't reflect what's driven cable TV in the past: namely, the value proposition of broad consumer choice. Meister says that with tiers today, the consumer ends up paying 2-3 times more, which he described as a flawed value proposition.

There is reason to believe Meister is correct, but some consumers must wonder is it fair for MSO's to pass along escalating rights fees for sports programming to all subscribers, especially to the majority who dont watch sports programming?

In my next report, I'll cover "Set-Top Boxes and The Future of Interactive Television".