What are the video sharing sites going to do with unlicensed league footage posted by fans? According to a piece I just read on paidcontent.org, they will take it all down.
Yep, there’s a wrestling match going on right now between content owners and media distribution channels (Business Week). It’s a battle between the old media “command and control” model and the newer Web-baed “open and free” model. This struggle is magnified by the fact that consumers are deeply in the mix. Consumers are the ones violating copyright laws by lifting TV footage and posting it to the Web.
The “YouTubes” of the world want to be the innocent middle men collecting Web traffic, and the rights holders (TV networks et al) are caught in the middle. On the one hand, they can’t afford to have their content “stolen” and freely distributed. On the other hand, the “free” Web distribution can lead to more eyeballs back on TV. So how do you play it? Especially when the law suits are starting to hit (mashable.com).
The networks pay dearly for sports content, so it’s their right to protect it.
The NFL has a myriad of content distribution deals that extend beyond TV. Last year they did a huge deal with Sprint which gives the wireless company rights to put game highlights on their phones. This year they did a streaming deal with Yahoo!. All this is in addition to the gigantic, yet more traditional, deals the NFL has done with the big broadcast networks and ESPN. And oh by the way, the NFL now has its own cable network and will begin this season to broadcast its own games live on its own channel. So who knows where the video rights for live action will end up?
Even as the big boys battle over game footage, we at the team level are creating new video content all the time and we’re just starting to experiment with giving this content life on the Web. And in addition to the stuff we create, fans are beginning to create their own video content, some of which has already made it to our site.
Enter Zack Legend, Colts Fan
Zack is a Colts season ticket holder who was already filing weekly “game reports” from the tailgate lots. He does this on his own, just for fun. When we discovered him, we invited him to share his video with us and he gladly did. In fact, he has shared 2 videos with us each week and they’re quite entertaining (if you like off the wall, Letterman style humor). He still has his myspace page, and he still posts on YouTube, but he shares his video with us and we gladly run it. It costs us nothing to produce, adds value to the site, and gives Zack the exposure he wants. Yes there are some potential pitfalls to this arrangement, but so far so good.
Check out Zack’s videos on our site.
Along with Zack we’ve also experimented with a local theater group, Indy Fringe Festival. They’ve sent actors to interview fans pre-game and we’ve posted these videos to our site. These videos are available for viewing at www.colts.com/indyfringe.
And let’s not forget our award-winning production team
That’s right. Lead by TV vet, Brian Woodrum, the Colts video production department has been turning heads. They are responsible for all video production in the games (inside the stadium) as well as on our local TV shows and beyond.
So far this year they’ve produced a wonderful documentary video on our cheerleaders which ran on local TV and was repurposed for the Web. Cheerleader content is hot. In fact, the video crew is headed to Southeast Asia next month with cheerleaders as they go to visit our troops stationed over there. They’ll be filing daily video updates for Colts.com.
Inside our weekly TV shows each week the production team has begun to develop some creative segments which we think might have a life beyond television. One such segement is “NFL Rules, with Angel & Wade.” I can’t explain Angel & Wade. You have to see it for yourself. Go to www.colts.com and click on multimedia, then select “Colts TV / commercials” from the drop down list and you’ll see several segments of Angel & Wade. Have fun.
Meanwhile, in addition to the regular video segements we produce just for TV and the Web each week, we are also producing daily video content for one of our wireless sponsors to distribute on cell phones. The wireless companies are hungry for original content and are challenging us to provide it. This is a growing trend and one that will be interesting to watch over the next few months.
Live streaming may be the next big thing
All the video I’ve described above is pre-recorded and edited before posting, but we think there’s an appetite for live video too. We’ve got hundreds of thousands of fans hitting our site on game days. These fans are watching and surfing at the same time - so we’re looking to find ways to engage them with video.
Along these lines we’ve begun planning ways to create live feeds from cameras all around the stadium (inside and out) and givng fans the ability to channel surf to find the “action” they want to watch. I’ve heard from other teams that given the low viewership on segments they’ve broadcast, it may not be worth the effort to stream live, at least not yet. Still, if we create the right content and fans know it’s coming, I think live video via colts.com will have its day in the sun, especially if sponsors can see the value.
Show me the money
At present all the video on Colts.com plays through our multi-media player. This helps us to keep our presentation consistent and gives us a way to maximize views so that we can sell pre-roll ads. This year we sold our pre-roll inventory at a flat fee for the entire season to a select few sponsors. In the future, we expect to move to a CPM model, just as we’ve begun to do with banner ads.
Big sponsors are hungry for places to run their video spots. We hope in the future that we can work with sponsors to move away from the interuptive pre-rolls, and begin to use sponsors more like product placements - or integrate the sponsor message into the video content. This would afford us the opportunity to experiment further with creative content development, and it would move the sponsors message closer to the heart of the Colts fan.
All this is above and beyond live game footage and game highlights. Mind numbing, isn’t it?
