Online sports broadcasts challenge TV

If you are a sports junkie, hang on to your beach volleyball and your mouse; things are heating up around the world as to where you may view your next sporting event.

Europe has taken the lead in sports on the Internet, which means sports from around the world, non-stop. Much of the related recent business activity has been generated by the Internet problems at the Olympics in Sydney.

Websites around the world tried to provide audio and/or video of the Sydney games. A few days into the games, the IOC shut down the websites saying they were detracting from the rights bought for huge sums by the television networks. The networks, NBC in the U.S., complained that the sites were stealing the rights they had purchased.

Dick Pound, the IOC vice president in charge of TV rights, will head a media conference in December in Lausanne to review Olympic Internet rights and how they fit with TV contracts. “What we found,” Pound said, “was that the number of individuals who used the net for some portion of their Olympic coverage was only 25 million or so, compared with the 3.7 billion audience we attracted on TV.”

Of course, for Internet businesses, 25 million is a pretty big number. Jean-Paul de la Funte, a co-founder of Media Content, a European sports media rights agency, said, “These two are not in significant conflict because they involve different forms of consumption. Watching sport on the Internet is a lean forward, interactive, participatory form of consumption. TV is a lean back, crack open a beer type consumption.”

Media Content has formed a joint venture with SDCi, which specializes in online software trading systems. They want to become the world’s largest supplier of sports on line. Media Content has also joined with Sportel, an organizer of world wide sports’ broadcast rights, creating a complete package group that deals with the rights, the software and the marketing of sporting events anywhere in the world.

A recent estimate says worldwide sports rights carry a $14 billion tag. Some of those dollars come from unusual places. Sportsworld Media, another global sports marketing company, just acquired the rights for the Association of Surf Professionals for $12.75 million.

Sportsworld wants to make surfing a global competition and they will market the TV and Internet rights. They already have deals with 50 other free sports associations such as windsurfing and triathlons and feel such sports can be marketed to the youth audience.

The constant need for any marketing group in this field is to expand their market. Media Content believes it can do so in Asia, China in particular. They are establishing an Asian office for this purpose. What might they offer the Chinese people? Well, Media Content already assists the World Wrestling Federation in distributing its show to Europe. No part of the world is safe!

Like the Olympics, the English Premier Soccer League and the Rugby League World Cup are trying to figure out what to do with Internet rights for their events. The above-mentioned companies have lots of ideas and see lots of dollars if they can sell those plans.

The U.S. is not out of this loop, not with the events and dollars available. U.S. companies may be one step behind on the world scene, but are dealing with Internet rights for all the major sports, and most of the minor ones.

Just when you thought saturation in sports coverage was here, along comes another British invasion to fill your Christmas laptop with rugby and surfing, together with the Beatles’ greatest hits.

Happy Thanksgiving and remember, don’t take chances, eat the pie first.

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and CBS sportscaster.