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College Sports on the Internet

Newspaper current event by Brandon on 18 August 2006, tagged as gamessports, internetnetworking, and business

Television contracts result in millions of dollars flowing into college sports, but only to a small fraction of the Division I schools, not to mention the smaller divisions. This poses a challenge to recruiting coaches who are constantly asked by parents about the ability to watch their child play.

Due to the large increase in the percentage of Americans with broadband Internet access (up from 21% to 62% in the last four years), some colleges and conferences are taking matters into their own hands and posting their games on the Internet. Northern Arizona University, part of the Big Sky Conference, for example, used their existing in-stadium replay infrastructure in conjunction with radio audio and continually updated statistics to offer webcasts of all of their home football games last year. This year, the entire nine-school conference is following suit, planning to webcast all football, basketball and volleyball games, using technology from SportsCast Network.

Other organizations are getting into the act, also. The NCAA showed some of its Division II and III basketball championships online last year and the Division III semifinal games last March had 49,000 people log on. Thirty-nine Western Athletic Conference footbal games will be webcast this year. ESPN also has created a new online channel, ESPN 360, which will show 30 football games this coming season.

The services are funded by advertising and subscription fees, and games are archived and downloadable for portable media player viewing. Given the popularity (and, some would say, superiority) of collegiate athletics, might this trend catch fire and push the already developing webcast phenomenon into the mainstream?

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Limitations by Brandon :: NR9

I wrote to the webmaster of the official athletics site of my alma mater to see what they thought about webcasting sporting events. I received a prompt reply from Drew Martin, the Director of Internet and Special Projects for the Texas A&M Athletics Department:

Texas A&M was a leader in this area for the past 5 years. We have broadcast hundreds of soccer, volleyball, baseball and basketball games. Football and men's basketball are protected through Big 12 Conference television contracts, so we are unable to show those, even when not televised. We do, however, show the football postgame press conferences from Kyle Field live.

Look for a robust streaming solution coming to AggieAthletics.com very soon. I think you will be pleased that Texas A&M has once again raised the bar in this industry.

I wonder how long television can step on the toes of Internet broadcasting? My guess is that eventually television networks won't be able to put up enough money to counter the monetary and intangible incentives of a popular webcast. As mentioned in the news post, the feature is attractive not only to fans, but to the parents of recruits who want to watch their kids play.

Posted 22 August 2006, Hide, Reply