As is the case so often, it’s not the Goliath who leads the way on innovation but the David who takes the chance because they can.
Tuesday night, fans of the Mercer basketball team were given an opportunity that fans of some of the biggest programs in college basketball don’t get. They got the chance to watch their team play a regular season game online for free without any kind of subscription requirement. Their game against Davidson was broadcast exclusively live on the school athletic program’s Facebook page.
It’s certainly not the first time something like that has been done but it’s still rare to see a college program go with the live online broadcast for a major sport. For Mercer, it sounds like this is just the beginning for their usage of the product.
“We’re not going to halfway do it. We’re going to fully utilize Facebook and the engagement piece.”
“This is where the future of sports is going. Our goal is to be one of the trendsetters.”
That’s Mercer associate athletic director for external relations Daniel Tate and he’s not wrong. Live broadcasting online is the future of sports broadcasting. The question is, when are major tech companies going to push all-in and make it happen for the big schools and pro leagues?
So far, Google and Apple have steered clear of most opportunities in the field, which has opened the door for Facebook, Yahoo!, Amazon, Twitter, and others to step through and try to establish themselves as the forerunners. Still, each opportunity seems to remind us that we’re in the early stages of these kinds of broadcasts.
Yahoo!’s streaming of NFL games hasn’t been without snafus along the way. Twitter’s live broadcasts have left something to be desired in terms of what they bring to the table. Bleacher Report has tried to corner the market on high school broadcasts in a way to attract millennial audiences and potentially make the move up the food chain.
Amazon seems to have been the first big tech company to attempt to go all-in but they’ve gotten the cold shoulder from pro leagues as of yet. Leagues like the NBA seem to be in the testing phase, doling out coverage of the Draft instead of rocking the boat with their TV partners on game coverage.
Ultimately, it’s going to come down to the partnership between tech companies and major sports leagues on how live broadcasting takes its next steps. Like so many things in American sports, we might need to wait and see how the NFL reacts. Given the way TV ratings have dipped this season, it might be the perfect time for them to consider more of a focus on internet broadcasting, especially if they can find a partners who makes sense. Will it be Amazon? Google? Facebook? Someone else altgother? Let’s see who steps up.
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