Joel Price Blog

Using CNN.com’s Pipeline technology, TNT along with PGA.com will offer four live streams from the PGA Championship on Aug. 17-21. The streams will be ad-supported (Hitachi, Travelers and Buick) and available for free. TNT says if the coverage goes well, it may work up a similar plan for its Nascar races next summer.

BC’s streaming-video experiment earlier this year on ABC.com will become a real offering in October, said Anne Sweeney, Walt Disney Co. co-chair-media networks and president of Disney-ABC TV. The network said the experiment was a success for advertisers, given that research showed users had 87% recall of the advertisers involved.

YouTube delivered 724 million page views, up a staggering 515 percent versus the 117.6 million views seen in January, found Nielsen//NetRatings. (via Media Week)

What will kill YouTube first? Lawsuits or bandwidth bills. I say lawsuits.

With the news of with Ty Law agreeing to a 5-year deal with the Kansas City Chiefs I browsed over to kcchiefs.com. And it appears the Chiefs have launched a new site, from what I can gather they re-launched back in mid of June.

Found this blog post on The Redskin Report.

The simmering battle between local media outlets and the Redskins reached another apex this week when Daniel Snyder’s Red Zebra Communications launched Triple X ESPN radio on the 3 local stations in the DC Area. The feud between the Redskins and local media outlets has become quite a story over the past year. Talk continues about how the Redskins are revolutionizing media relations and changing how sports news will be covered in the future. But has anything really changed for most Redskins fans?
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In a roundtable discussion at CTAM, Andy Sippel, SVP Sports and Product Management for ESPN said they are “making a ton of money” off their video ads. They typically use prerolls. He characterized the “auto start” video ads on the ESPN homepage as “controversial.” I was honest and told him I didn’t like them. I don’t mind watching prerolls, just give me a chance to click on the video I want to watch first. Regardless of what I think, 60% of their video ads are viewed. I also found it interesting that ESPN sells “holistically” seeking the best opportunity for their clients regardless of the platform. All the account executives from each platform report to one sales manager. He said they have seen, “a lot of cross over sales.” (via a CTAM attendee)

Merrill Lynch analysts Jessica Reif Cohen and Michael Kopelman say “it’s time for Disney to pull the plug on Mobile ESPN,” the media company’s branded phone service. They estimate ESPN will sign up 30,000 subs over the course of this financial year, well short of estimates of 240,000. Meanwhile, ESPN says they have no plans to shut it down. “While sales have been slower than expected, we have added retail distribution outlets, introduced a new thin handset and have enhanced marketing efforts,” an ESPN spokesperson said.

Live World Cup Streams Not So Hot (Via Tech Web News)
Soccer’s World Cup was a big play on the Web, but streaming video failed to score with fans in the U.S. Chinese Web sites offering streaming video and play-by-play in various languages were abundant, but shoddy quality and a lack of English commentary, meant most U.S. users were forced to keep refreshing a browser at work while reading a text play-by-play. For users with certain ISPs, ESPN offered 360, a streaming video service, but aside from Verizon, most major ISPs didn’t carry the service. “I would have happily paid to get a video feed of the game,” said one fan. So why didn’t anyone offer this capability? Because broadcast rights limit streaming video over the Internet, too. The BBC, the UK’s public broadcaster, controlled access, only allowing live streams to UK-based IP addresses. However, many people in Europe didn’t have to watch games on their computers because most of the games took place in the evenings after work. Just 10 percent of the UK public watched the World Cup over streaming media, said research group TelecityRedbus. Yahoo, which hosted FIFA’s official Web site, fared better. It streamed more than 138 million video highlights to World Cup fans for free during the month long tournament; meanwhile, 4.2 billion pages were views, more than double the number in 2002. – Read the whole story…

In this interactive feature, the AP has done a nice job at showcasing PNC Park in Pittsburgh where the MLB All-Star Game is being played.

The final tally on online and mobile viewers might take some time to compile by the research firms, but some revenues and other numbers from around the world (via paidContent.org, more Online Numbers from around the globe)

“In U.S., MediaPost Publications reports that the Yahoo FIFA World Cup website received more visits than the official site for MLB. It was the fifth most visited Web site in the sports category for the week ending June 24, 2006, accounting for 4.1 percent of U.S. category visits.”