Online Sports Video Does Not Kill The TV Star
Interesting interview on Paid Content today with Brenda Spoonemore, the VP-Interactive Services for NBA Entertainment, and I believe the former/still current head of the NBA online division. Some of the information she gives make it clear to me that streaming sports online is far from being the Holy Grail that it is often made out to be.
Although I’m a fan of using an ad supported model rather than a subscription model for this type of content (and I have been saying so for years), I think a closer look at these kinds of numbers suggest that a reality check is is necessary to put the kind of numbers talked about in context.
When paid content publishes NBA supplied stats that show:
From the November 1 tip-off this season through the end of February, NBA TV Broadband averaged more than 19 million videos a month totaling 1.5 million plus hours to users in nearly 200 countries.
I look at that number and do a quick comparision. Is that not the same amout of total hours viewership of lets say, 3 million people watching one Seinfeld episode in syndication? (3 million people times 30 minute show =1.5 million hours of viewing). So, what is being said here is that one whole month of streaming NBA video is the equivalent of perhaps one half hour show of syndicated TV?
While its possible that this is kind of viewship could result in a fairly nice payback and those 19 million videos views could have resulted in 19 million preroll and 19 million post roll ads being served, I still believe that this market is nothing compared to what the TV market itself continues to return in terms of viewership and advertising opportunities.
Lets take these kinds of numbers for what they are, nice, steady, but completely unspectacular when viewed in comparison to the TV market which continues to effectively put online streaming video in its place as a young upstart with a long way to go.
