NCAA Goes Backwards On Streaming The Basketball Tournament
from the same-service,-now-for-a-fee! dept
If anyone has gotten the streaming sports thing right in the past, it's been NCAA Basketball. I've actually pointed to them as an example in the past of how the rest of the sporting world should embrace streaming their games and advertise the hell out of the experience. Rather than locking down access to viewership, like the MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL, the NCAA Basektball Tournament got it right, partnering with broadcasters to stream the games to their sites free of charge, with all the advertising one would expect on television. It was a wonderful method for ensuring that one of my monitors at work had their games on. It made it certain that I'd be that weird guy staring at images on his phone while taking the train home from work. It confused my neighbors as to how I could somehow simultaneously grill steaks on my deck while announcers went ballistic over last second hail mary shots as time ran out on the clock. I was engaged (sorry Mom and Dad, I mean engaged to the game).And now they've taken that all away from me. To be fair, they're still streaming the games. And they promise that the streams will work across multiple platforms (computer, iPad, iPhone, Android devices, etc.). And it only costs $4.99 for the entire tournament.
But that's where the lie in all this is. It's not just $4.99 to watch the tournament on every device other than my television (where it's FREE!). There are serious mental transactions to consider here. Like most red-blooded Americans, I'm in an NCAA office bracket. Something like half the games in the tournament take place during work hours across the country. Most of us don't have televisions at our desks, in our cubicles, wherever. Watching at work is kind of the whole point here, with all the ducking and dodging from our bosses we have to do as a result. Now, we can argue all we want whether watching the tourney at work is productive or a good idea, but from the NCAA's standpoint, they shouldn't care at all. They should want people to watch. Asking them to pay $4.99 to do all of this is a massive fail, particularly since all of those same advertisements that were in place remain.
So...they're charging for something that used to be free...without adding any benefit. I watched the games on their feeds the past couple of years. This year, not so much. The obvious question is does the money they're making from the $4.99/subscriber outweigh the eyeballs that are no longer watching the advertising because of that cost. Maybe those in the comments can change my mind, but I'm fairly certain there's more folks like me out there than people buying the "package".
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: basketball, march madness, ncaa, streaming
Companies: ncaa
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I also understand the problem with local ads being sold to local affiliates. But, why can't the stream interject local ads based on IP adress? Even if IP addresses aren't perfect, it would be better than nothing. Or in the alternative, sell those unaffiliated ads separately.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Ads
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
So you like paying more for commercials....
You are the entertainment industry shill's wet dream....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I got this
I think the value is fine. The interface is nice and the boss button provides a semi-functional webmail interface so you can even appear to be working by closing windows and switching e-mails ( they really put some effort into it ).
The reason I got this is that I really wanted to see an early round game on a channel that was not in my cable package.
That being said, after this weekend goes by, I don't think the value of this service will still be $3.99. I would't want to pay that.
But this could be much much worse. Major league baseball turns the screws on their online viewers. Their prices are obscene. What is really insulting is that in the post season, if you want to view a game you still have to pay the full regular season price for the streaming. Horrible customer service.
I think the NCAA is still doing this very well. $3.99 is a reasonable charge for the value here. I'm sure a good chunk of money went into developing the streaming apps for the mobile devices, which are free once you have the service.
That does bring to mind an alternative. I wonder how they would have done if they'd have left browser viewing free, but charged for the apps....?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: I got this
All of this is the same as last year, when it was free.
"But this could be much much worse. Major league baseball turns the screws on their online viewers. Their prices are obscene. What is really insulting is that in the post season, if you want to view a game you still have to pay the full regular season price for the streaming. Horrible customer service."
Again, that's all true, but if you're focused on gaining eyeballs (which they should be), this should all be free with advertising. NBC Sports does them one better by offering the stream for free and actually having a couple of their personalities (one sports journalist and one comedy guy) on a live chat stream at the same time, which gives users a reason to go to that official stream and engage.
"I think the NCAA is still doing this very well. $3.99 is a reasonable charge for the value here. I'm sure a good chunk of money went into developing the streaming apps for the mobile devices, which are free once you have the service."
Amazing how the illicit cites can provide all this for free, but the NCAA and CBS somehow can't....
"That does bring to mind an alternative. I wonder how they would have done if they'd have left browser viewing free, but charged for the apps....?"
Same problem. The idea is eyeballs, not tiny payments for apps....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: I got this
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Loaded with Junk
You would think the iPad app would be more useful because of the larger screen. But no, I have switched totally over to my phone, which is actually less convenient for me. The iPad app screen space is loaded with chats, scores, and other non-useful info to me. They shove the actual video of the game into an iddy-biddy spot in the middle of the screen. I thought for sure I would be able to expand the video to fill my screen, but no such luck.
Using my Android app, I get to watch the video, and the video alone, on my phones screen which equates to a bigger picture. So that's what I do, even though the app does not run nearly as well on the Android platform. You would think the NCAA would want to enable me to watch on whatever platform I find the most convenient and useful. But no, I have to choose between two mediocre experiences because they want to control things.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Loaded with Junk
I too have the iPad app and you can absolutely make the video fullscreen. Once you are viewing the game, tap the video once for a toolbar to come up and click the set of outward-facing arrows on the right-hand side... MUCH more enjoyable!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Wow...
Half of the staff already had paid up the money to watch both at their desks AND at home, and they said it was a great deal they were all happy to pay for.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Wow...
The additional follow-up, but unasked, question should be, even if they are increasing their revenue, how does the choice to charge effect the relationship with the fans?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Wow...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Not a massive fail
This is something that ESPN should take note of. I would happily pay a reasonable fee for streaming of their ESPN3 service. Now, in order to get ESPN3 Streaming, I have to have ESPN from my cable provider. That costs $42/month for the least expensive package that includes ESPN! I don't watch hardly any of the other channels, and I only want ESPN for my college team. It isn't worth it.
Free is good, but so is reasonable. Right now, the other streaming options have unreasonable restrictions, or are low-quality/illegal.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Not a massive fail
Normally you have a 15-minute refund opportunity in the Google market (or Play, as it is now called). However, this is an in-app purchase, so the refund opportunity does not apply. Clever of the NCAA to set it up that way and guarantee themselves $3.99 worth of angry fan.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I usually don't disagree on here, but you answered your concern in your post. Umm, the added benefit would be the fact that we can now watch the game at our desk at work.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
The only rant I can see is yours and it misses the point. $4 may not be much for a whole season of content, but whether they like it or not they're competing with other non-official offerings and as has been pointed out by others in the comments the official offering is limited. Which of these sounds more attractive?
1/ $4 for something that allows you to watch a single game at a time, forces you to watch and listen to ads, and requires a specific application that may or may not work on the device that you want to use.
2/ $0 for watching as many games simultaneously as your connection will support, being able to turn off ads you don't want and no application tie-in so it's pretty much guaranteed to work where you want it.
It's not quite that simple of course since legitimacy has value in and of itself and on the other side there's also the emotional response of "hang on a minute they could provide this free and now they want money for it?". Normally when something free starts costing there's usually at least the illusion of better service (value) and there doesn't appear to be in this case
Whether the $4 is worth it or not (and I don't care either way, not interested enough to watch for free even if it were "allowed" in my country), some people who watched for free last year are not going to pay to watch and the legitimate (and non-ranting) question in the article is whether the lost viewers are worth more than the gained subscription fees.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Still streamed free on CBS' website
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
How big will their streaming viewership be?
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0320/NCAA-March-Madness-On-Demand-sets-streaming-video-reco rd
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I paid and wished I never did
1) As it turns out their servers are over loaded so the quality of the streams dropped to the same quality as the free (though illegal) streams. I know for a fact it is not a bandwidth limitation on my connection because we have 100Mbps Ethernet and I am the network administrator and saw that we were only consuming 20Mbps which is our average during the day.
2) When a commercial comes on you can't change to another game or even adjust the volume. The screen gets locked. This pissed me off as I would normally mute commercials so I could listen to something else while they were on and perhaps I wanted to check in on another game. On TV you can change the channel at will. Free streams you can mute at any time as well and change to any of them you want.
3) Their player doesn't let you stream more than one game at a time, something that you can easily do with the free streams.
I could live with numbers 2 and 3 I guess but if the quality is as low as the free streams then what’s the point of paying for something that’s supposed to be better.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Price fits for non-cable viewers
I don't have cable so can't watch games on TBS, TNT, or True TV (which I didn't know even existed...). So hooking up my computer to my TV and streaming any game for $4 sure beats paying for cable.
Could I have found a website to view it for free. Sure, I find the connection to be a ton better with the paying service
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Thanks
I for one refused to pay it. Not even a consideration. And I am a guy who played college ball, played in the tournament, and love this time of year. In fact, I take off from work every year to watch games on the first two days. It would've been great to be able to watch riding in the car or outside or on the toilet! But instead I didn't watch when I wasn't near a TV. I didn't watch the games. I didn't watch the ads.
Everyone lost.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Comcast's fault?
I wonder how much they paid the NCAA for the privilege.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]