New Media Properties: How they are causing sports entities to shift the way they do business

Newer media properties and technologies, such as digital, broadband and wireless mobile devices differ than traditional media properties in that athletes, teams, leagues and owners have very limited control over the content that is easily made available to the general public. Since these new technologies have taken an increasingly prominent place in the sports media landscape, it’s become a major issue for sports entities and it is causing them to shift the way that they traditionally do business.

Sports entities take notice of these rapid changes and try to evolve their business models around these new platforms. The NFL ended its association with Sprint, for instance, and signed an exclusive 4 year agreement with Verizon (valued at $720 million), starting with the 2010 season. This deal gives fans access to live footage of every game, something previously available only through a satellite package. The agreement also allows live streaming of Sunday Night Football and Thursday Night Football and includes game highlights, on demand video analysis and love radio broadcasts of every regular season and playoff game etc. Other leagues and Auto Racing have made their way into the wireless device world as well and have closed exclusive cellular deals. Sprint closed a deal with NASCAR and users are now able to access live race audio, real-time data, breaking news and information, video on demand and instant alerts about race results, qualifying, season stats etc.

All of these technological advances sound like they are benefiting the fans but what about the sports business itself. Increasing popularity of these types of technology platforms will without a doubt generate more revenue-enhancing deals in the sports industry for the next 10 or so years to come. This will also have a major effect in the way that sports information is dispersed, released and streamed to the general public. Like Michael Champagne mentions in the video, these new media technologies will forever change and enhance the way that sports fans view and interact with their sports. Bright House Networks realizes that without being physically connected to the internet, TV or computer; mobile users may become the primary audience in the next generation. To move towards this more than likely trend, researchers and developers are playing around with some new cool devices that take advantage of this concept. They are developing ideas around rental devices (wireless) that gives the user the ability to listen to live sporting events at home with multiple camera angles (player views, audience view, bird eye views) and the ability to socially interact with other networks using platforms like twitter and facebook.

There is, however, one major issue with the new shift in technology and the way future sports fans digest their content and it’s with media and sponsorship rights. When fans at home are now able to capture images of individuals in the stands and other advertising material an issue arises of who owns the rights to these images. Public domain rights are going to be a hard thing to hash out with teams, stadiums, advertisers, media rights holders and fans all in the same territory. The use of wireless devices like iPad’s and mobile phones have created complex sponsorship and media rights issues that could affect and are affecting hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue that leagues, sponsors and rights holders need to work though. One major question around this issue is; is a tablet just another TV in the home? And if so should it cost any more for your cable provider to stream programming to it? There is currently a major struggle going on between distributors and content owners because everyone wants to get directly to the viewer. It comes as no surprise to me that these issues are arising with the world of broadband, the internet, social networking and wireless devices being so vast and ultimately uncontrollable. For big sports properties and everyone else in between, the future holds a major headache to construct an economic deal around digital and mobile rights that make sense for everyone in the end.