Log Me On to The Ballgame
The old trick, of course, was to hide the radio in your jeans and snake the wire up inside your shirt to the ear that faced away from the blackboard. Then, as the lecture went on—U.S. history, perhaps; maybe the Nullification Crisis of the 1830s—you could catch the first game of the NCAA basketball tournament, mentally taking notes not on Calhoun, John C., but Calhoun, Jim.
Now students (and office workers) no longer have to resort to the hidden-radio trick to follow those midday, weekday NCAA tournament games, thanks to CBSSports.com's NCAA March Madness On Demand, which allows users to stream—for free—any tournament game of their choosing, live, to the laptop on which they're supposed to be taking notes or compiling spreadsheets. CBS has thoughtfully included a "boss button" (or teacher button) on its video player, which instantly switches one's screen to a phony PowerPoint presentation. That button was clicked 3.3 million times during the 2010 tournament's first four days, more than half a million more than during the entire '09 tournament. Over that hectic opening weekend this year, more than 6 million unique visitors watched more than 8.7 million hours of live hoops online, a 35% increase from 2009.
If 2010 did not represent the year in which watching live sports online entered the mainstream ("It's a great auxiliary way to watch sporting events, but I don't think it's going to surpass television as the best way to watch," says Sean McManus, the president of CBS News and CBS Sports), it was the year in which the practice was swept up by the mainstream's first currents. The industry leader is ESPN3.com, which currently is available in 65 million households and allows viewers to toggle among up to 20 live events in more than a dozen sports—including, most significantly in 2010, the World Cup, during which some 7.4 million unique visitors watched more than 942 million minutes of action from South Africa. "It was really a watershed event for us," says John Kosner, general manager of ESPN Digital Media, who recalls walking around New York City's Upper West Side and seeing small business owners glued to midday games on their laptops. NBC Sports streamed, among other events, the Winter Olympics (more than 400 hours of live action) and every Sunday Night Football game. Subscribers to DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket can add the To-Go option and watch every game on their computers or mobile devices for $49.95. Subscribers to MLB.tv can do similarly with major league baseball games for a base price of $99.95.
Of course, if, say, fans of the Premier League club Manchester City (or of NFL teams whose local broadcasts have been blacked out) look hard enough—and are tech-savvy enough—they can view every one of their team's games via pirated streams, although those often originate from dubious sources and are of poor quality. "[Piracy is] certainly a problem," says ESPN's Kosner. "The way you solve that is to get a product out that has ubiquitous distribution and is better than what you can get pirated."
Industry expert John Ourand, of SportsBusiness Journal, is certain that while business considerations mean that ubiquity might be years away—cable operators and network affiliates, for example, are somewhat resistant to options that siphon off revenue—one day in the not too distant future, fans will be able to watch any sporting contest, anywhere, on the mobile devices they carry in their pockets, and the experience will be fully customizable. "I believe it's just a matter of time," he says. Then the only challenge for otherwise diligent students will be how to keep from getting too distracted as they follow their brackets.
SI 2010 DIGITAL INDEX
ALREADY FORGOTTEN
IMPACT
MEMORABLE
CLASSY
STYLE
CRASS
BUZZ BISSINGER'S INCREASINGLY HOSTILE—OFTEN ALARMINGLY SO—TWITTER FEED
ATHLETE TWITTER COP-OUT OF THE YEAR: "SOMEONE HACKED MY ACCOUNT"
A FIRST ON TWITTER, MAYBE ANYWHERE: BILLS WR STEVE JOHNSON BLAMES GOD FOR HIS TD DROP VS. STEELERS
THE EIGHT FEET OF SPACE NEEDED TO PLAY XBOX'S MOTION SYSTEM, KINECT (TRY FINDING THAT IN NYC)
... ALMOST AS BAD: "MY BROTHER WROTE THAT"
TMZ.COM ENTERS THE ONLINE SPORTS FRAY; AWKWARDNESS ENSUES
PHOTOSHOP FUN WITH RYDER CUP SENSATION CIGAR GUY
YOUTUBE VIDEOS OF ATHLETES DOING THE DOUGIE: MUCH COOLER THE FIRST 5,000 TIMES
THUUZ.COM: LOOK IT UP
FLASHBACK TO '93: NBA JAM RETURNS
TAUNTR'S TRIPPY WEB CARTOON TIMMY & BUS, FEATURING TIM LINCECUM AND A TALKING VW
MLB TV ON THE IPAD
JOSE CANSECO VS. THE WORLD ON TWITTER
FIFA SOCCER 11, RAPIDLY BECOMING THE NEW MADDEN NFL
JOHN DALY VS. THE SAINTS: "YOUR DANG WHO DAT NATION JUST BROKE MY TWITTER"
ESPN.COM OMBUDSMAN DON OHLMEYER'S DEFT ANALYSIS OF A TRICKY YEAR AT THE NETWORK
NEXT MEDIA ANIMATION, THE TAIWANESE WEBSITE WITH A CG TAKE ON JUST ABOUT EVERY SPORTS SCANDAL
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY SI IMAGING: NBC (FOOTBALL); SCREEN GRAB/ESPN (BASKETBALL)
DESKTOP ARENAS The lineup of live sports action on tap online is growing by leaps and bounds (and rebounds).
PHOTO
SGRANITZ/WIREIMAGE.COM (BISSINGER)
PHOTO
DON PENNY (XBOX)
PHOTO
MARK PAIN/MAIL ON SUNDAY/ZUMA PRESS, INC. (CIGAR GUY)
PHOTO
COURTESY OF EA SPORTS (NBA JAM)
PHOTO
AL TIELEMANS (BASEBALL ACTION)
PHOTO
EA SPORTS (FIFA)
PHOTO
NMA.TV (WAYNE ROONEY)
PHOTO
ROBERT BECK (DALY)
PHOTO
KEVORK DJANSEZIAN/GETTY IMAGES (CANSECO)
PHOTO
TAUNTRA.COM (TIMMY & BUS)
PHOTO
GREG NELSON (WALL)
PHOTO
TWITTER.COM (TWITTER BIRD)
PHOTO
KARL WALTER/GETTY IMAGES (STEVE JOHNSON)
TWO PHOTOS