Flying Cars. Teleportation. The end of network television.

So…which one of these is most likely?  I’m not sure, myself, but it seems like network television may be in the process of taking another major hit.  This time?  Its in the form of the web-based live sports broadcast.  The sport? cricket.

YouTube has announced an exclusive deal to broadcast live online the entire cricket season of the upstart Indian Premier League this year. “[This is] the largest and most extensive live streaming that we’ve ever done, I think that’s ever been done on the internet before,” Shailesh Rao, Managing Director, Google India said yesterday. The season will be shown everywhere around the world except inside the United States. (via NYT)

As the article goes on to mention, there have been some other events broadcast live on You Tube previously (i.e. U.S. presidential inauguration), but they were one time special events.  Broadcasting the Indian Premier League could be the beginning of a huge shift from the network broadcasting of sports to the seemingly more versatile internet.  The hurdle of making money has already been cleared (namely advertising during videos), the infrastructure (YouTube, and others) is already in place, and most importantly the larger scaled infrastructure that surrounds network television (networks having their shows broadcast by affiliate networks to the consumer; a top down approach) is in danger of being replaced by the ever growing world of user based content.

Sure, if you are the NFL or MLB you’d much rather have the top-down approach; there’s much more money to be made.  But, if the network television model erodes such that its no longer the premium model or format choice (see: NBC network programming over the last 6 months or various entities attempts to create web-based only television shows) then how can the sports networks justify continuing the current course of action?  A factory could make more money producing a plastic pipe over a copper pipe…but if no one is using copper pipes, why would they keep making them?

The live broadcast of the Indian Premier League may be media’s first step towards those “plastic pipes”.

It’s always fun to see when the various sports leagues form together like the Justice League, isn’t it? Their personal Legion of Doom? Technology Companies (Microsoft, Google, hello!). Their gripe? White Space. Details from the Washington Post,

In a filing, the leagues asked Federal Communications Commission require the technology companies that want to sell wireless white space devices to prove that their devices won’t interfere with wireless microphones, which already operate in white spaces…

Ken Kerschbaumer, executive director of the Sports Video Group, said the devices could knock out wireless communications systems like headsets used by coaches, microphones used by referees, and microphones used by journalists.

The FCC is currently testing white space devices to ensure that sports leagues and the general public at large don’t run into snags down the road. I assume that the idea of white space device usage will be throughly tested before anything is released to the general public, but you have to understand why the sports leagues are adamant about protecting their investment. What’s going to happen the first time a white space device fails and interferes with some signal during a football game? Or when a crew chief is talking to a race car driver during a NASCAR race. In theory, tech companies are dealing with a technology that could damage sports revenue or maybe even cause bodily injury.

…or maybe these are just the rantings of a sports fan who’d much rather be able to watch the Super Bowl without interruption instead of making sure those in rural areas have high speed internet access.

Washington Post: Another jab at ‘White Spaces’

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