Found an interesting article.
It was a thesis like paper writen back in 1996 that this guy wrote about the future of sports online and in the media. It's pretty cool in its predictions that are coming true. Just thought some of you would find it interesting. I've just posted a small section of the article. I posted a link at the end to a "sports technology" home page started by the author. -Enjoy
The Appeal of Sport for Business
Business desires sport applications that encourage spending on equipment and ticket sales and that are also well-suited for broadcasting and commercial advertising. The broadcast industry is currently the most significant economic factor in modern sport and it focuses on sports with interesting visuals that translate well to the television screen but that are inexpensive to produce [12].
Broadcasters are looking for a solution to the following problem. Only 1 out of 6 people, mostly young and middle-aged males, is actively interested in sports. Increasing competition for the sports audience is forcing sports broadcasters to seek out new demographic audiences by starting foreign language sports stations and airing new sports like beach volleyball and arena football. However, broadcasters are on the lookout for new sports and sport applications that will attract larger numbers of women and non-sport television viewers (e.g. ice skating). They would also like to find ways to make popular youth participation sports like soccer more conducive to television and television advertising strategies. One fallacy that sports business must contend with is that households with higher incomes tend to watch less television [38].
Visually unappealing sports and sport applications are of interest to business only when they have some of the qualities that has made golf one of the fastest growing participation sports in America [12]: the principle opponent is oneself so it is clear where credit or blame lies for success; players can lack muscular athletic talent and have any body build and still be good players throughout their lives; the nature of the sport makes the player think that "one little change," provided by some expensive piece of equipment, will radically improve the player's game; and social communication is an integral part of the sport, making it possible to more easily combine entertainment with everyday activity and economize leisure time [4].
As described in below, new online applications can and must capture some of these desirable business qualities to be successful. First however, the next section discusses current online sporting technologies; the following section describes some problems that future applications should strive to overcome.
IV. Sports Online -- Today's Technologies
Present-day online sport applications can be roughly divided into four categories: information sources, communication channels, competitive systems, and physical systems.
Information Sources
Sports fans crave information. News, statistics, analysis, schedules, prices, etc. All of this information can now be found online. The most popular type of information source online is the news service. These are large repositories, mostly web sites, with the same type of sports news, graphics, and design found in a daily newspaper. Unlike a paper, however, they can be updated many times daily. Two of the most popular sites are ESPNET SportsZone [44] and Sportsline USA [45]. These commercial undertakings charge fees of about $5 a month for their advanced services.
SportsZone, Sportsline USA, and the Boston Globe Sports Pages [46] are primitive examples of how newspapers and sports magazines will look when most households have fast Internet connections and sleek high-contrast paper-like displays. The high cost and hassle of newsprint distribution makes online distribution an attractive option for publishers. These Internet news services, which have a familiar feel because they are laid out much like newspapers, solve some problems with traditional newspaper and broadcast news. The amount of news presented is no longer directly determined by advertising space or available air time [28] (although it is indirectly determined by advertising through staff size), layout constraints are less likely to limit content, and all news can be recorded "for the record" and left online for search and reference.
Services like SportsZone have hired talented writers because they know that users prefer fewer more personal and highly-engaging articles over hundreds of AP wire summaries. People want stories that entice them and grab their attention [28]. Sports fans are looking for writers who have a feel of the sport, a knowledge of its history, a clear understanding of local personalities and rules, and a rapport with the fans [4,p.423].
Currently, these online services do not provide much community news, but such information is a powerful draw: news about a next door neighbor who won a national title in some rare sport is generally considered more exciting by the sports fan than 95 percent of more mainstream national sports news. Why? Because local news personally connects a fan to the action (even if the fan never met the neighbor) and it provides a potentially useful social tie to the fan's community. Expanding online services like SportsZone to provide community-based stories will require large distributed staffs. Automatic sports article generation programs like Sportswriter [24] will not provide the type of depth and analysis fans expect.
The news services are attracting customers because of their novelty, timeliness, and depth of resources. However, until better displays and fast home access materialize, these services will need more innovative services in order to steal leisure time away from convenient, inexpensive newspapers.
In addition to news, the popular information-based sports services provide play-by-play descriptions of sporting events. SportsZone has football "Drive Charts" [10] and basketball "Shot Charts." These graphics diagrammatically show where and when action took place, second by second. This type of detail, seldom found in newspapers due to space limitations, is being used to entice information-starved fans to pay monthly membership fees. Live audio of some NBA basketball games[44] and sports radio stations [63] is already making its way onto the net, as are highlight video clips and special interactive video demonstrations (e.g. Sports Illustrated Online's Interactive Baseball Map [64]).
Once a fan has news and play-by-play, he may want scores and statistics. Selling sports stats is already a multi-million dollar industry [20]. Several CD-ROM software packages like Microsoft's Complete Baseball now provide online repositories that update the software's stats daily, charging $1.25 per day. Companies like Stats, Inc. provide details like the number of running back "stuffs" and umpire call tendencies which are available instantly for a $30 registration fee and $.25 per minute online charges [40]. All of the major sports services are overflowing with statistical information; ESPN's scoreline charges $.95 a minute for scores. Motorola's sports beeper that reports on baseball games in progress costs about $50 per month. Now online services are providing customizable, real-time scrolling Java scoreboards.
The amount of sports information being distributed online is snowballing. Well over 2500 sports-related web pages currently exist (e.g. see [57]). Hundreds of sports fans have started their own information repositories as they gain access to the WWW. Most professional sports oversight organizations have informational web sites that they plan to use to generate revenue or solidify their fan base. Individual teams have put player information, game schedules, and ticket information online. Along with other online specialty sports stores, teams are displaying and selling game merchandise.
In summary, online sport information services provide vast quantities of news and statistical information that is easier to search and more current than information available in more traditional print media. The positive qualities of sport that are captured by these information providing services are listed in column C of Table 1. Many of the most seductive aspects of sport, such as immersion, are missing -- the presentation of information, no matter how detailed or timely, cannot compare to the intense sensory and emotional experience of actual participation or even television spectatorship. The major problem with information providers is that they are overloading the user with information instead of providing information specifically selected to encourage meaningful interaction. Reporters know, for example, that although statistics are an important tool, "it is the people involved who are interesting to readers" [29]. People want to talk about people with other people. Consequently, popular online sports information services are pushing to improve their communication channels.
www-white.media.mit.edu |
