Professional Tennis Apparently Too Good For YouTube

from the struggling-to-understand dept

It really is bizarre trying to understand the reasoning behind certain organizations and their hatred of YouTube. The Motion Picture Academy still takes the cake for assuming that fewer clips will mean more interest in next year's show, but now it appears that the organizers of various professional tennis tournaments have been scouring YouTube and demanding various clips get taken down. Nowhere is it explained how having people promote your matches for you could possibly be bad for business -- but apparently that's what the tennis bosses have decided. As one of the people who had his free promotional clips taken down noted: ""Clearly, they were determined to wipe out any information or material that could prove tennis still exists as a sport or, God forbid, could bring in new fans." Meanwhile, the good news is it looks like the golf world isn't quite as closed off. The latest announcement is that, for the Masters, there will be additional video coverage on the web that won't be shown on TV. Of course, it's still limited and streaming-only, but it seems better than pretending that online video can't exist.
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  1. identicon
    dorpus, 2 Mar 2007 @ 11:24am

    Uggg Uggg

    The sport that used to be a gentleman's sport, where it was about how you played as opposed to who won. Now it's all about steroidal hulks violently slamming the ball.

    Won't youtube be a boon for more obscure, but more fun to watch sports? So many of those that network TV lacked the imagination to cover.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Adam, 2 Mar 2007 @ 12:26pm

    (old) people are

    just afraid of the internet for some reason

    i think its because the big tubes scare them...lol

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. icon
    Vincent Clement (profile), 2 Mar 2007 @ 12:32pm

    Exactly how does having these clips on YouTube hurt the USTA or Tennis Australia? It's free advertising. There are no costs in hosting the clips to the USTA or Tennis Australia.

    Maybe, if the USTA pulled it's head out of it's ass, it could team up with Google and add value to the clips. Um, I don't know, like links to future tournaments where fans could buy tickets or links to sites that sell tennis gear and memorabilia and so on?

    My gut tells me that the USTA and Tennis Australia are being advised by others, like the media companies. All these companies are pulling their content off YouTube not because it is hurting their bottom line, but because they want to hurt Google's bottom line (even if being on YouTube is a positive thing).

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    AC, 2 Mar 2007 @ 12:42pm

    Re: Uggg Uggg

    All right, who's posting coherent, on-topic comments using dorpus' name?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    rishi, 2 Mar 2007 @ 12:53pm

    why it hapens

    I think the recent publicity of google paying people to host videos on YouTube is coiming home to roost. More and more areas are demanding their cut in the hope that they would get something.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    rishi, 2 Mar 2007 @ 1:28pm

    why it hapens

    I think the recent publicity of google paying people to host videos on YouTube is coiming home to roost. More and more areas are demanding their cut in the hope that they would get something.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Sanguine Dream, 2 Mar 2007 @ 1:50pm

    It's all about curosity and hype...

    These big media companies like Viacom think that between the publicity they gain pulling the clips thier own marketing hype they can get more fans.

    They aren't wanting to pull down clips because of copyright infringment. They want them pulled down in order to get attention. I'll bet if no one reported that they wanted their clips pulled down they would beat down YouTube's door for some free publicity.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    Wifezilla, 2 Mar 2007 @ 1:57pm

    Get a clue

    There is a dancer in my area that can't say enough good things about YouTube. Why? Because he went from being an obscure youngster to a bit of a local celebrity with plenty of bookings and people asking him to teach workshops (which students will gladly pay for).

    He credits YOUTUBE for his success. Of course, he has talent to spare, but talent alone gets you nothing. Marketing is what makes the difference and YouTube is doing it for him....FOR FREE.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. identicon
    James, 2 Mar 2007 @ 2:31pm

    Hello MPAA?

    This is Wimbledon, could you please pass the crack you've been smoking. Thank you.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. identicon
    Don Osborne, 2 Mar 2007 @ 2:53pm

    Tennis BUMS

    All you have to do is look at channel 96 here in Vegas and you'll know how much interest there is in watching a couple of spoiled brats whining.

    We see them every day and all they do is bitch about the weather, the courts and anything else. We have this tennis tournament here every year at this time and it's a blessing when they pack up and go. Traffic is calm and the park goes back to normal with normal people. They seem to be part of the hip hop culture but cleaner. They at least look human.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. identicon
    Don Osborne, 2 Mar 2007 @ 2:54pm

    Tennis BUMS

    All you have to do is look at channel 96 here in Vegas and you'll know how much interest there is in watching a couple of spoiled brats whining.

    We see them every day and all they do is bitch about the weather, the courts and anything else. We have this tennis tournament here every year at this time and it's a blessing when they pack up and go. Traffic is calm and the park goes back to normal with normal people. They seem to be part of the hip hop culture but cleaner. They at least look human.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. identicon
    HeresTomWithTheWeather, 2 Mar 2007 @ 6:07pm

    In Defense of the Tennis Tournament Folks...

    I don't know the reason they are taking the clips down but one reason would certainly be justified. The video quality and motion on YouTube does not serve sports like tennis and ice hockey at all. I encoded streaming video in near realtime at the Compaq Grand Slam Cup in Munich in 1996. Although we were using the best codecs available for our set of bitrates (comparable to YouTube), tennis just doesn't transfer well at these bitrates.

    I watch hockey fights on YouTube and those clips are effective promotion for hockey but you just don't get much of that in tennis.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  13. identicon
    |333173|3|_||3, 2 Mar 2007 @ 9:29pm

    Tennis fights

    MAybe someone should clone Lleyton Hewwit twice to get a massive tantrum on court, then Tennis would get fights.

    AC, dorpus does have good and bad days, and this seems to be a good one, but I thimk he has possibly gone intelligent. That does happen to people, even in one case the forum idiot of a significant Adelaide forum (forums.cyberprune.com) going intelligent and becomming an admin 2 weeks later, and he stayed intelligent for the life of the forums. THese things happen, although even I never thought that dorpus would do this.

    Has anyone else noticed that there is a dorpass as well as dorpus?

    link to this | view in thread ]


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