MLB's digital rights and ESPN streaming baseball games live on mobile devices
I was catching up with my podcast listening on the drive home from work tonight. I listened to an ESPN.com time-shifted digital audio presentation from last week about the business side of sports (really good podcasts ESPN puts out,
despite my earlier assertion). One of the key concepts discussed was how ESPN was finalizing an arrangement involving digital rights with Major League Baseball - alluding that the network would soon be able to stream entire games over mobile clients, specifically wireless phones. This is an improvement over the network's previous idea to
preload video on mobiles for higher quality.
This blew me away. The ambition and bravado of such a concept is expected from The Worldwide Leader in Sports, but still surprising. I'm guessing that this would invoke a polar response from a passerby - either exhibiting in a fair-weather observer a very
"Wow! That's totally cool!" or
"What are they…nuts?" reaction. The very notion of expecting users to watch an entire baseball game (or even parts of it) in somewhat captive fashion on a device with a limited screen size and even more limited bandwidth is as preposterous as it is logical. But in my opinion, nonetheless still really neat.
Despite living on bandwidth-challenged Guam, where by virtue of geography I can’t go to the ballpark to catch a game anyway, I do find myself spending more and more time watching wireless broadcasts like press conferences, stand-up comedy bits, and music videos on my mobile unit via
MobiTV (which is working on
streaming of live games, too). This summer's season is historic:
MLB.tv has done wonders with providing live streaming of entire games to the desktop, and many swear by it.
I realize that there's a certain degree of securing a contract in we'd-just-better-do-it-to-prevent-our-rivals-from-doing-it fashion, and that's fine. But can streaming live sporting events realistically be a quasi-killer app? And at least something significantly profitable? By 2013, will the cost-effective availability of truly massive amounts of pipe, efficient streaming video compression rates, affordable consumer technology and growing dependence on mobile devices and their subsequent applications really make applications of this ilk non-niche? I think so.
When you think about it, of the four major professional sports in America, our national pastime is the only real athletic competition we could feasibly stream today. Basketball, football and hockey are too intense and would lag too much to be worth it, collapsing the respective league's presence in the mobile market faster than did the XFL on NBC. Baseball's painfully slow pace makes it the perfect candidate for such a live-action webcast (it's not like batters exactly sprint at top speed around the bases after jacking a homerun). Why do you think - content aside - streaming newscasts always have always done so well? It's high-quality production value created in part by limited movement.
I can't see myself watching an entire nine innings, but having the ability to jump in at any given time is a nice advantage to the platform. It'll kick ass during the playoffs, or when Barry Bonds steps up to the plate to break Hank Aaron's homer record. There undoubtedly will be geeks out there who actually spend three hours glued to their mobile screen, incessantly commenting on the coolness factor of seeing a live game on their phone, fans more of the platform than the actual sport. And I don't know about you, but under long-term use my Motorola V710's battery gets HOT!
My point isn't to piss on ESPN's parade. Quite the opposite, in fact - it's to help promote it and shed light on what a landmark achievement this is going to be for broadcast technology. It's totally a step in the right direction, even though many of us may not immediately warm up to the concept. I wish ESPN luck, and I can't wait to try the new service, eventually.
Even though streaming quality levels will undoubtedly continue to improve to the point of near-TV quality within the next five years, it'll never be the same as seeing a masterful pitcher go to work over the course of a game. Even the best encoded video stream can't capture the beauty and magic movement of a well-placed slider from a savvy, methodic hurler like Barry Zito, Greg Maddux, Mike Mussina and Tom Glavine; not to mention the impossibility of trying to properly display hellfire deliveries like those of Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens and Dontrelle Willis, whose velocity we have a hard enough time keeping up with on real-time HDTV via satellite.
The progression of platforms from print to radio to TV is indicative of technology's impact improving the quality of life. I think product developments of ESPN's may result in an overall reduced experience, but the sheer "cool" factor of it will keep it above water, I believe.