Streaming Gives Tennis and More A Sporting Chance to Generate More Revenue
Along the way, MLB’s Advanced Media (MLBAM)—the interactive media and internet company of Major League Baseball—has mastered the technology and a few of the business models. They’ve done so to an extent that allows them to begin providing programming services to other sporting events, including those whose fan base might not overlap with the traditional MLB fan base.
In an ironic nod to ESPN, where the first score on the fledgling SportsCenter was from a women’s tennis tournament, MLBAM announced this week that they have struck a multi-year agreement to stream live matches and supporting content to The Tennis Channel's website, starting with the French Open, a Grand Slam event, in June. Not content to just feed a single rebroadcast of the television coverage of the French Open, the niche Tennis Channel site will program up to four simultaneous matches, archived matches, original content, and on-demand video content, including daily highlights.
The Tennis Channel sees itself as pushing the same envelope that ESPN did in its early days.
"Tennis is a perfect fit for broadband coverage because there are many matches other than the one on center court usually shown on television," said Victoria Quoss, executive vice president of programming and network strategy for The Tennis Channel. "Tennis Channel will help evolve the way the sport is covered by allowing fans to see more matches and have more access to the players they want to see, but also, in doing so, allow us to grow both our business and the network's brand."Interestingly, MLBAM was chosen not just for its technological prowess but also for its ability to crack the business model code: MLBAM will also assist with sponsorship and online sales efforts for the site.
"The Tennis Channel plans to bring the broadband experience to tennis audiences like never before," said Lynn Forbes, vice president, web and new media, for The Tennis Channel, "and MLBAM helps us to deliver that promise to our online viewers as well."
The Tennis Channel / MLB agreement is just one of several interesting announcements in recent weeks surrounding the streaming of sports content on the web. Another area that shows great promise—and the business models to support it—is that of HD streaming.
Extreme Streaming
Different approaches are being tried, ranging from technology companies that innovate the transmission path or compression of HD content to broadband users to those who are bypassing low-end broadband and targeting an even more niche market—those consumers who have fiber to the home—under the assumption that customers using fiber connections will be more likely to pay for premium or niche sporting content.
One such company—Marshall Media—feels strongly that the exploding growth of streaming media cannot be sustained by the existing internet infrastructure. The company is working on what it calls "an all optical media transmission (AOMT) technology which is a revolutionary architecture in all optical DWDM networking to broadcast terabytes of video nationwide within a second".
To showcase the technology, though, Marshall Media turned to a sporting event. On May 16, Marshall Media used a Motocross Quarterpipe Challenge to showcase what it calls Infinibeam HD. The event combined some of the best Freestyle Motocross riders in the world—including several previous X Games medalists—and innovative technology, as the event was broadcast live at 30 frames per second in HD (480p) via the company’s Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology.
"We adhere to a simple philosophy that people should enjoy live video over the public internet at the same level of quality that they are accustomed to receiving from their television sets," said Gary Kaufman, Marshall Media’s vice president of streaming media and network services. "We felt using this sporting event was a visually interesting way to establish our base-line quality standard, plus attract a niche audience who wanted to see some of the best in their particular sport."