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Sports seems to be the last bastion of TV. If you ask why a Netflix user still has TV, the answer will be "sports" in 90% of cases. I think there is a huge bund

by coldpie 11y ago

Sports seems to be the last bastion of TV. If you ask why a Netflix user still has TV, the answer will be "sports" in 90% of cases. I think there is a huge bundle of money waiting for whatever company manages to convince the rightsholders to leave the hulking behemoth of TV and move into the world of streaming. TV is still big enough that the equation hasn't shifted yet, but I think it will shift soon. I like to watch auto racing, but there's no legal way to watch live without a cable sub and an extra package or two on top of that. Usually I pirate races after the fact or watch a handful of smaller series that upload to YouTube after the race. But watching live really has its own unique quality, and I would happily pay a few bucks for the privilege.

bane 11y ago
> I think there is a huge bundle of money waiting for whatever company manages to convince the rightsholders to leave the hulking behemoth of TV and move into the world of streaming. I heard this from somebody a couple years ago, so I can't take credit for the thought. In a broadcast medium, like TV, they don't actually know how many people are watching. It's kind of a guess built up from survey companies like Nielsen, but it's ultimately a fiction and can be gamed in certain ways. For example, "90% of cable subscribers subscribe to cable for the sports channels" and "there are 100million cable subscribers, so therefore the market for sports channels is 90 million households" and "the average household is 3 people" therefore "advertising reach is potentially 270 million pairs of eyes". They can use these numbers to sell advertising at inflated prices, which makes the channel more money, etc. But on the internet, things become less "fiction" because they can be backed by much more concrete numbers like unique visitors to a site, or number of accounts who watched some particular live-stream, etc. And suddenly 270 million pairs of eyes turns to 11,000 people tuned into the live-stream and now ESPN or whoever can't really charge $50k for a 30 second placement anymore...after all no more than 33,000 people might see it, and even if access to the stream is $10/mo, the revenue from a single game's TV advertisements will overwhelm the monthly fees from all of the subscribers. The internet simply eliminates the advertising fiction the TV world operates in, and the better data quality it provides simply shows that it doesn't allow them to charge the same kind of revenue generating advertising that they used to. On top of that, there's more actors in the distribution channel that they have to revenue share with, making the number even smaller. TV broadcasters are terrified of streaming TV even though they know it's the future. The gold mines of broadcast TV are too hard to move away from even if it's rapidly going away as a medium.

by coldpie 11y ago

bane 11y ago

> I think there is a huge bundle of money waiting for whatever company manages to convince the rightsholders to leave the hulking behemoth of TV and move into the world of streaming. I heard this from somebody a couple years ago, so I can't take credit for the thought. In a broadcast medium, like TV, they don't actually know how many people are watching. It's kind of a guess built up from survey companies like Nielsen, but it's ultimately a fiction and can be gamed in certain ways. For example, "90% of cable subscribers subscribe to cable for the sports channels" and "there are 100million cable subscribers, so therefore the market for sports channels is 90 million households" and "the average household is 3 people" therefore "advertising reach is potentially 270 million pairs of eyes". They can use these numbers to sell advertising at inflated prices, which makes the channel more money, etc. But on the internet, things become less "fiction" because they can be backed by much more concrete numbers like unique visitors to a site, or number of accounts who watched some particular live-stream, etc. And suddenly 270 million pairs of eyes turns to 11,000 people tuned into the live-stream and now ESPN or whoever can't really charge $50k for a 30 second placement anymore...after all no more than 33,000 people might see it, and even if access to the stream is $10/mo, the revenue from a single game's TV advertisements will overwhelm the monthly fees from all of the subscribers. The internet simply eliminates the advertising fiction the TV world operates in, and the better data quality it provides simply shows that it doesn't allow them to charge the same kind of revenue generating advertising that they used to. On top of that, there's more actors in the distribution channel that they have to revenue share with, making the number even smaller. TV broadcasters are terrified of streaming TV even though they know it's the future. The gold mines of broadcast TV are too hard to move away from even if it's rapidly going away as a medium.