NCAA Still Going Backwards On Tournament Streaming

from the seriously? dept

Last year, around NCAA Tournament time, I wrote a piece about how the NCAA was going backwards on streaming the games. Once free streams were locked up behind subscription charges, reducing the pool of eyeballs that could be watching the advertising that actually makes the NCAA and their broadcast partners the real money in this whole situation. It's been something of a disappointment for me, being a sports fan, to see how far the leagues are going to lock up their content rather than expose it to more revenue-generating viewers via the internet. Seriously, can't I just watch the game?

Well, add another wrinkle into the mix for this year's NCAA Tournament. Gone is the $4.99 subscription fee, but before you begin jumping up and down for joy, they've now added cable subscription requirements for any game that isn't on CBS.

Things have changed a bit this time around to stream March Madness online. Last year, the NCAA charged a small fee for access to all of the games. This time around, any of the games that are broadcast on CBS are free for anyone to stream online. The games that are broadcast on TBS, TNT or truTV, the collection of Turner Broadcasting-owned channels, will require a cable subscription authentication.

While this may not strike some of you as wholly unreasonable, it's actually worse for several reasons. First, it's another step backwards from the way things are trending. Cable cords are being cut in favor of the evermore common micro-transactions that occur for online content. I didn't think last year (and still don't) that such a transaction made sense for the Tournament, because it naturally limits viewers for advertising purposes, but at least it was in keeping with the modern trend of viewership. For the NCAA to instead embrace a log in system to stream games that is trending downward in use is downright stupid.

Worse yet, it isn't as if all cable customers can get in either. At least that's the conclusion I came to yesterday when I grudgingly tried to log in from work to watch the games (sorry, boss) and found that my cable provider, 3rd largest provider in the 3rd largest market in America, wasn't listed in the log in options. This may be simply a result of RCN not having a deal worked out with either the NCAA or the cable channels in question, but as the end viewer I don't care about such things. RCN is the only provider for my building and the NCAA's system results in my not being able to watch the games and generate ad revenue for them and their broadcast partners.

Or, rather, I can't watch the games on their sites. I can certainly find them streaming elsewhere, where the ads aren't targeted to my region (or country) and fall outside of the NCAA's control regardless. The NCAA could do this freaky free streaming too, if they wanted. I saw them do it not 3 years ago. So why are they going backwards?

Filed Under: cable connection, march madness, ncaa, streaming
Companies: cbs

Lawsuit Over Video Game Rights Might Kill The NCAA But Not The System

from the the-system-always-lives-on dept

I don't particularly like the NCAA and I enjoy their legal difficulties as much as the next guy. As a devout college sports fan, the usually arbitrary and always backward business side of the NCAA (including the affiliated schools and "non-profit" bowl associations) causes me great consternation.

Apparently, the incomparable Charles P. Pierce shares my disdain for the lumbering excuse for a fair and credible sanctioning body that currently governs collegiate athletics.

In a sharp Grantland piece, Pierce revisits the Ed O'Bannon-led class-action case against the NCAA and video game manufacturer EA over their combined efforts to profit in perpetuity from the likenesses of unpaid "student ath-o-letes." (Take it away Eric Cartman!) But I think Pierce is overselling the extent to which a possible O'Bannon victory would really change the college sports landscape....

By way of background, Ed O'Bannon is a former UCLA and pre-Brooklyn Nets basketball player who had retired from the game. It came to his attention that the NCAA had licensed his likeness to EA to make approximately a gajillion dollars selling video games featuring "classic" teams like O'Bannon's 1996 UCLA Bruins. O'Bannon felt -- and he was later joined by basketball legends like Bill Russell and Oscar Robertson, who were stunned to learn a) that they were in a video game and b) what a video game was -- that this seemed a little far afield of putting his likeness on a calendar in 1995, which is what he reasonably assumed he was authorizing the NCAA to do when he signed away his rights to profit from the marketing of his collegiate career when he was all of 18 years old.

O'Bannon filed suit in 2009, alleging that the NCAA violated the Sherman Antitrust Act when they forced him to sign a waiver giving up his rights to profit from representations of his collegiate career. As Robert Wheel of SBNation explains:

O'Bannon is alleging that if the NCAA didn't force him to sign this contract, then he could have gotten money from someone else (say, an EA competitor) to use his likeness. Thus, it essentially fixed the price of using his image at zero. Even if you consider players' scholarships adequate payment for their services, this still artificially depresses how much they're paid. If a judge agrees, the waiver would be considered an illegal restraint of trade under the act.

And now O'Bannon and his lawyers are seeking to certify a class of all former athletes used in this way for a trial next year (courts have held that maintaining the amateur status of current student athletes is a laudable enough goal to justify the NCAA robbing current athletes of the fruits of their potentially debilitating labor, so this case only deals with former athletes).

Which brings us to Charles Pierce's piece. You see, Judge Claudia Wilken of the Northern District of California just denied the defendants' motion to end the class certification process on the grounds that the plaintiffs have changed their legal strategy. Judge Wilken basically asked, "So?" and the defendants had no response. Pierce contends that this legal setback for the NCAA, along with recent NCAA retreats on the issue of stipends for players, portends an extinction-level event for college sports.

By and large, the people charged with running our various sports conglomerates have proven through history to be as incapable of taking the long view of their own survival as the average brachiosaurus was. They blunder around, eating whatever comes under their noses, trampling the scenery and hooting loudly into the wind. They never see the meteor coming. …

For the NCAA to survive in its current form, it has to win this lawsuit or get the lawsuit dismissed. There’s no third alternative. The NCAA can’t settle and then go back to the status quo ante. It can’t pay off O'Bannon and Russell and Robertson and all the rest of them, and then start business as usual again as regards Cody Zeller or Kenny Boynton. If it loses the lawsuit, the effect on the NCAA's financial structure would be profound. About which, at this point, the device has not yet been invented capable of measuring how little I care. Instead, I stand aside and listen to the stomping and the hooting from the thick Cretaceous rain forest, which is just loud enough to drown out the high whistling sound of something coming down from the sky.

I'm not sure comparing the NCAA to the dinosaurs makes much sense. The dinosaurs were wiped out entirely and a new world order replaced their presence. The elimination of the NCAA is more akin to the extinction of the Dodo bird: the weakest, most ineffectual player on the evolutionary stage will saunter off while the crazy dudes with guns and hunting dogs remain on top.

Or maybe Pierce is right about the extent of the mass extinction... but he forgets that the elite athletic departments and conferences aren't the dinosaurs, they’re the cockroaches. I just don't trust these folks to go quietly into the night. They'll let the NCAA take this hit regarding past licensing of "classic team" likenesses and then come up with some new regime where the individual schools capture all the revenue from licensing their own classic teams through bi-lateral agreements with manufacturers to create some semblance of a competitive market for these likenesses and go on exploiting the next generation of future former athletes.

Would that survive legal scrutiny? Maybe not, but the big power players in the sport will happily drag out the issue as long as possible to capture as much profit as possible, even at the expense of the weaker sports schools who would lose out without the NCAA dividing the licensing pot. But for a major athletic department, this is no time for communism! There's already a roadmap out there to ditch the NCAA and kill off the weaker sports schools leaching off the strong.

So the NCAA might die, but for the players themselves, the motto would be "meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

The O’Bannon Decision [Grantland]
Ed O’Bannon vs. the NCAA: The antitrust lawsuit explained [SBNation]
NCAA Student-Athlete Licensing Program — How Could It Happen and What Are the Elements? [Winthrop Intelligence]

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• When Luddites Handle Cyber Security, You End Up With American Law Firms
• The Practice: Blogging And Other Social Media, Like A Search Engine Whore
• Quote of the Day: Trump’s Lawyers May Be ‘FIRED!’ Over This

Filed Under: ed o'bannon, money, ncaa, publicity rights
Companies: ea, ncaa

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".

Filed Under: basketball, march madness, ncaa, streaming
Companies: ncaa

College Football Playoffs Patented?!?; Mark Cuban Warned Not To Infringe

from the patent-madness dept

For years, fans of college football have been clamoring for some sort of playoff system, rather than the messy rankings and bowl system that currently exists. It's a topic that people can get pretty passionate about. Even President Obama has weighed in on the subject arguing for a playoff system. I'm not a college football fan, so I don't really care one way or the other what happens, but there is a little tidbit in the latest discussion that I find interesting. Jarrett Streebin alerts us to the news that Mark Cuban is pushing hard to create a college football playoff system, which normally wouldn't be of that much interest to folks around here, except in Cuban's blog post about the topic, he posts an anonymous email from someone who claims to hold a patent on a football playoff system. Here's an excerpt from the email that Cuban posted:

My advise is, don't waste your money. There are three perfected alternatives to the BCS. I own one, a guy with CBS owns another and a guy in Arizona owns the third. By that, I don't mean the screw-ball ideas you see on the internet, but actual branded properties.

[... a bunch of stuff skipped, some by me, and some by Cuban ...]

You should also consider that the playoffs are already owned by someone, as in, the patent for resolving the FBS championship by way of a playoff was issued long ago. It's called a method patent, so be careful not to infringe it.

Anyway, if you want to know who owns assets in this field, let me know. I can put you in touch with one of my attorneys who can let you know what you're in for. It's much more complex that it's commonly understood to be.

Ownership of a sporting playoff system? Seriously, USPTO? Cuban uses this as an opportunity to point out the ridiculousness of patents and how they're abused by people "who have no intention of solving a problem or building a business but want to get paid by those that do." It's a nice little rant, but no different than what you've probably read here on Techdirt a hundred times.

What interested me was this idea that the concept of college football playoffs could be patented. It looks like, from the email, that the guy did not reveal the patent. If anyone knows what it is, please share. I went looking myself, and have found two possibilities -- one an issued patent, and another that's still in the application stage.

The issued patent (6,053,823 -- full patent embedded below) is held by Marc Mathews and was issued in 2000. The patent indicates that Mathews lives in Arizona, so he's likely to be "the third guy" mentioned above. The patent application (application #11/327,584 -- full application embedded below) was filed by three guys: Edward Baxter Williams, Tyler James Williams and Edgar Richard Williams Jr., all from New Hampshire. Perhaps one of them emailed Cuban. That patent application is especially odd, as it looks as though the "abstract" is for something entirely different. The application is supposedly for "a flex schedule playoff system" and the claims definitely discuss that -- but the abstract appears to be for "a protective fender is provided for use on a pontoon boat." Not quite who screwed up there, but someone clearly did.

Either way, if you wanted to see how one might go around patenting the concept of a football playoff system, go ahead and dig into the patents. I'm just going to sit back and wonder what the USPTO was thinking when it approved that first one.

Filed Under: college football, football, mark cuban, ncaa, patents, playoffs

The First Rule Of NCAA March Madness Is You Can't Mention NCAA March Madness

from the where's-that-happening?-shhhhhh! dept

What is it with sports leagues that think they have the right to deny anyone from making factual statements? We've seen it (repeatedly) with the Olympics and we've seen it with the World Cup... and now we're seeing it with the NCAA men's basketball tournament, better known as March Madness. This week, of course, some of the games will be played in Syracuse (including, I feel the urgent need to mention, the surprise of the tournament, my alma mater Cornell), and jsl4980 was the first of a few of you to send in the news that local businesses are being told they cannot mention the fact that the tournament is being held there. No local businesses are allowed to "welcome" fans or players for the event. They can't mention the NCAA event is happening, or that we're at the "Sweet Sixteen" level.

Of course, that's all according to the NCAA, which is basically lying. They're abusing the rights that trademark law gives them to try to restrict free speech on factual information, in a misguided effort to squeeze more money out of sponsors, by pretending that only sponsors can mention the event. But trademark law does not give you blanket control over the trademarked terms -- and presenting factual information, or welcoming people to a city by mentioning an event that is absolutely happening there should not be considered trademark infringement in the slightest.

Apparently, in the past the NCAA wasn't as abusive of trademarks, but it's learned a thing or two by watching how other sporting events abuse trademark law, and now everyone seems to be bending over backwards assuming that just because the NCAA forbids something that they have the legal right to do so.

Filed Under: basketball, march madness, ncaa, syracuse, trademark
Companies: ncaa

NCAA Tries To Bully Fan Discussion Site Into Handing Over Its Domain Name

from the how-about-ncaasucks.com? dept

Reader Eileen writes in to alert us that the NCAA -- known for its overly restrictive views at times -- is trying to bully the owner of the discussion website NCAAbbs.com into handing over its domain names. The NCAA is, not surprisingly, complaining that any domain name that includes NCAA automatically should belong to the NCAA. Of course, it's not so simple. While the NCAA does have a trademark on its name, that doesn't mean it gets automatic control over any site that uses NCAA in its domain name. The NCAAbbs site is clearly not associated with the NCAA and is pretty clearly just a fan discussion site. The owner of the site says that he's planning to fight the demand, and hopefully he can succeed. While the domain dispute process can be a bit arbitrary, the courts have often realized that a trademark holder does not get full control over every domain that mentions them. Hopefully, that will be the case here as well. Of course, the one area where it's pretty clear that you can keep such a domain name is in cases of "sucks sites." So perhaps if the NCAA wins this, the owner can simple relocate to NCAAreallysucks.com.

More to the point, however, you have to wonder what the NCAA thinks it's doing here. You have a site that has been set up to promote the NCAA and all of the various sports teams within the NCAA. This is an incredibly useful promotional tool that the NCAA should be celebrating and helping rather than attacking. Why do so many organizations think it's smart to threaten, attack or sue their biggest fans?

Filed Under: domain names, ncaa, trademark
Companies: ncaa

Sports Fans On Facebook May Violate NCAA Recruiting Rules?

from the oh-come-on dept

We've seen way too many situations where modern technology has shown how ridiculous certain rules and regulations are. The latest involves the NCAA apparently freaking out about students at certain colleges setting up Facebook groups pleading with high-profile high school sports students to attend their universities. According to the NCAA such "recruiting" violates its rules that forbid trying to influence student athletes over which college to attend. Because of this, the NCAA has pushed the universities to reign in students, to the point that NC State sent one of its students a cease-and-desist, threatening "further action" if he didn't take down a Facebook group trying to attract a student athlete. The folks who sent the cease-and-desist admit that it's ridiculous, but they had to do so due to the NCAA pressure. They're hoping that the NCAA will back down on this:

"I think nationally the NCAA needs to address further Facebook and how these groups play a part in recruiting. Is it realistic for us to be able to monitor them? What harm is a group like this causing? But as the legislation stands right now, this is the position we have to take."

Of course, this is the same NCAA that has tried to limit reporters from live-blogging sporting events (though, it's done little to enforce those rules), so it would come as no surprise if it chose to continue down this path.

Filed Under: ncaa, recruiting, social networks, sports

No, The FBI Probably Isn't Looking Into Your March Madness Brackets On Facebook

from the a-little-march-madness-exaggeration dept

Every year around this time, you can be sure of two types of stories: the first will be about how much productivity is lost thanks to March Madness (NCAA basketball tournament, for those who don't know) and the second is about how the customary March Madness pools are probably illegal gambling. This year, it's been turned up a notch, thanks to reports like this one in PC World claiming that the FBI is looking into the brackets available on Facebook thanks to a CBS Sportsline app. From reading the article, you'd think that the FBI is spending valuable resources trying to track down your office pool or the pool among your college buddies. Except... the article doesn't quote anyone at the FBI or even indicate that it tried to get the FBI to comment on the matter. It merely points to a Chicago Tribune article that says Facebook may face "scrutiny," but also provides no proof. That one at least has an FBI quote, but it's clearly in response to a question from the reporter over whether or not such pools violate the law -- not about whether the FBI is actually investigating Facebook.

The PC World report also points to a blog post saying that Facebook is coming under FBI scrutiny, but again provides no proof, other than some unsourced conjecture about the FBI "loitering" around Facebook -- and another link. This one goes to a report at a site called Online Casino Reports, which also gets a quote from the FBI -- but again, it appears to be in response to a question about the legality of betting pools, but not claiming that there's any sort of ongoing investigation. While there's a chance it's happening, there seems to be a bunch of folks reporting on this with no actual evidence that the FBI is looking at this. The only quote from the FBI came from the Chicago Tribune and was clearly in response to a question about the legality of betting on March Madness, not about any investigation into Facebook. So, chances are, the FBI isn't going to burst in on Mark Zuckerberg for putting a couple bucks on North Carolina to win it all -- or on you for picking Cornell (go Big Red) to beat Stanford this Thursday in the opening round, but if you want to be safe, maybe don't bet any money on it in the first place.

Filed Under: basketball, betting, brackets, fbi, march madness, ncaa, office pool, social networks
Companies: facebook, fbi

NCAA Puts Limits On Live Blogging Sports Events

from the a-new-low dept

For years, we've been pointing out how ridiculous it is for professional sports leagues to try to claim ownership of game data. Facts cannot be covered by copyright -- and neither can your own description of the events on the field. However, many of the leagues still wanted to claim that you couldn't report the facts of the game without paying a license. Trying to show how ridiculous this claim was, I asked where it ended, saying: "If I'm at the game, and I use my mobile phone to report what I see, is that considered 'rebroadcasting' the game? What if I'm posting the information to a web site?" The point had been that no one would rationally think that was against the rules. How naive I was apparently...

Acting even worse than a professional sports league, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), got things rolling last summer by ejecting a live blogger from a college baseball game. Apparently, the NCAA had decided that this was too close to "rebroadcasting" and ridiculously believing that fans might just watch a liveblog report rather than the actual event on TV. This kicked up some attention -- and you would think that the NCAA would have realized what a dumb policy this was and backed down. Not so.

Instead, the NCAA has now instituted special "live-blogging rules" for anyone credentialed to cover NCAA events. The rules change per sport, but they limit how many times you can blog during the course of a game. For baseball: once per inning (not even once per half-inning!). For basketball, it's five times per half, once during half-time, and twice in overtime. Football is three times per quarter and once at half-time. It even covers the more obscure sports: you can only blog 10 times per day at a swimming match, for example. You can see all the details here (pdf).

Now, before anyone goes screaming censorship or free speech or anything along those lines -- these are the rules that the NCAA is setting for credentialed reporters. And, as a private organization, the NCAA can set whatever rules it wants for handing out credentials, no matter how mind-numbingly stupid they may be. If I were a publication covering NCAA sports, I would simply buy my reporters tickets to the games, rather than getting them in on a press pass under such rules. What's really idiotic, though, is that this makes no sense. Limiting live blogging only hurts the sport. The people who follow live blogs are the really passionate fans -- the ones who love the game the most. They follow the live blogs not as a substitute for watching the game on TV or attending in person -- but because they cannot view the games that way and/or they want to feel the camaraderie of discussing the event with other passionate fans. Cutting off the ability of a reporter to feed info to these fans simply makes no sense. It's hurting your most passionate fans for no good reason whatsoever.

Filed Under: journalism, live blogging, ncaa, reporting, sports