Fans drive sports content online

Much of the sports content on traditional broadcast channels (terrestrial, cable and satellite) is very good and pulls in large audiences for major sports such as Formula1, football, rugby, cricket and tennis. But these days may be numbered.

At the heart of the changes currently taking place is the distinction between online and offline content. As each day passes this distinction gets increasingly blurred. Take BT Vision, for example. The newly-launched service in the UK will provide “near live” FA Premier League matches from the 2007/08 Season.

As broadband internet and TV converge with Internet Protocol TV, they effectively become one of the same. The expectation of the consumer is that they can watch what they want, when they want.

True, for the foreseeable short-medium term future, there’ll still be a difference between a TV broadcast and what consumers get on broadband internet. However, younger audiences do not perceive any material difference between TV and broadband internet or PC-based viewing as reliability, quality of picture and sound continues to improve.

In fact, younger consumers prefer to use the PC for consuming sports, music and other entertainment content because it’s more convenient, easier and suits their busy lifestyles.

This is borne out by a recent study by Analysys Research (2006), which shows that younger audiences are more likely to turn on a PC than a TV set in order to access broadband content, particularly in the Nordic countries where broadband site penetration is as high as nearly 60%.

In the wake of BT Vision’s launch, hardware manufacturers and media companies are likely to produce “next generation” consumer products for the ‘converged household’ where entertainment and communication devices converge to form a unique “media centre” for the consumer.

Within this “digital home” there are several pieces of equipment and the core component is a PC used as the digital media centre. The PC is the primary access point to broadband internet and the platform for managing, storing, and distributing content such as TV programmes, digital photos, digital audio and user generated content.

The digital media future involves surfing the internet for TV content, storing personal media content in a media library (photos, music, sports, films), and watching and pausing sports/entertainment TV programmes while they are being transmitted.

The digital landscape is changing so fast that in less than 12 months from now, millions of consumers will be recording different TV programmes from their “media centre” at the same time and watching them on a personalised schedule and downloading sport, movies, music and other entertainment on an on-demand or pay-per-view basis.

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