• by Jonathan Blum , June 20, 2006

Sports franchises find online video is just the ticket

The old song said video killed the radio star. Now, with another technology-eating-technology scenario emerging, we ask: Will broadband kill the broadcast star?

In the world of sports, maybe not.

For example, CBS' March Madness On Demand ruled. The site served a record 19 million plus video streams. MMOD was so popular that it had a virtual waiting list of hundreds of thousands of users. CBS SportsLine.com had its strongest month of traffic ever in March, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. In all, 15.4 million unique visitors showed up for the event, up 94 percent from 2005.

The Masters Golf Tournament, too, was a Web video hit. Masters.org offered live, uncut video coverage of the 11th, 12th, and 13th greens, packaged as "Amen Corner Live." The numbers were heavenly: The network served more than 3.4 million video streams over four days with peak usage at more than 85,000 simultaneous users. The average viewing session exceeded two hours, longer than most rounds of real golf.

And the National Basketball Association partnered with Apple's iTunes to offer the 2006 NBA Playoffs as for-pay downloads.

But even as Web traffic for sports booms, those close to TV sports say broadband and broadcast sports are complementary to one another.

"My feeling is that something like CBS streaming live NCAA basketball tournament games did not hurt its TV ratings at all," says Steve Sternberg, executive vice president and director of audience analysis, at Magna Global Media Research.

Take the Masters as an example. In early April, as Web surfers flocked to see streaming video of Phil Mickelson winning his second green jacket, TV ratings for the Masters were solid; average overnight household ratings were 23 percent higher than the last time Mickelson won, in 2004, the network says.

The ratings for NCAA men's basketball tournament also seemed online-immune. CBS' preliminary national Nielsen ratings for the men's basketball tournament rose 53 percent from the previous year. More significantly, this year's ratings are up 6 percent from two years ago.

Churchill Downs also rode the Web wave. The venerable horseracing venue hosted a stream of the Kentucky Derby from its home page about 10 minutes after the race. Jeremy Borseth, director of channel services and Internet operations for Churchill Downs, declined to offer exact online usage numbers, but says, "I can tell you that unique downloads of the Derby race were in the 3 million range."

TV ratings for the race remained solid. NBC Sports reported an 8.4 national rating and a 20 share for the race portion of its May 6 broadcast.

"Online coverage of live sports helps to feed viewer engagement in the event, whether it's NCAA basketball or any other sport," said Joe Ferreira, vice president of programming, CBS SportsLine.

Broadband's helping hand

While there's a dearth of hard data, there's anecdotal evidence that broadband helps drive eyeballs to broadcast TV. Magna Global's Sternberg says he thinks that the Web may draw new viewers to telecasts. "I would guess that simultaneous airings of a game on TV and an online component in prime time or weekend might not hurt the reported program ratings," he adds.

Programmers are already betting on a broadband draw. ESPN is touting early success with its multimedia Full Circle marketing product, which brands the same event across many ESPN outlets, including espn.com, ESPNews, and Mobile ESPN.

For example, a Miami Heat/Chicago Bulls NBA playoff game on ESPN and espn2 had 2.4 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research, up from about 1.4 million for the equivalent 8 p.m. game the year before. This ratings performance came even as the network streamed the game on espn360 and ESPN Motion. ESPN says it delivered 600,000 video streams of the game.

"I think it's too early for any real hard numbers," Ferreira explains, adding, "But there is no question that streaming sporting events online can only help to promote a network and the potential viewership of an event."