Take Me Out to the Ballgame! Or Should I Stay Home?

Submitted by Eli on August 9, 2010 - 17:04

Woman using cell phone at baseball game

The NFL kicked off its 2010 season Sunday night with the Hall of Fame game, bringing in impressive viewership numbers for NBC: the telecast drew an overnight rating of 7.6, up 31% from last year’s preseason opener. Thus continues the successful trend for sporting event broadcasts.

As The New York Times reported a few weeks ago, the experience of watching sports at home is now so good that teams are working to find new ways to keep fans coming to games (you mean to say Mullet Night isn’t doing the trick anymore?). One solution: enhancing the video experience for those inside the stadium.

Watching a game from the comforts of home certainly has its advantages:

  • Multiple camera angles, such as the Skycam, give the home viewer vantage points not available at a stadium;
  • "Insightful" commentary from beloved play-by-play announcers shed light on what injury took Player X out of the game;
  • Rewinding the live broadcast via DVR to watch that last highlight over and over. Fans at the game get one or two chances to see a replay. That is, unless the replay is controversial: then they don't get to see it at all;

  • Not having to pay how much for a ticket to the game?

With television ratings continuing to climb and NFL attendance down 3% since 2007, teams are increasingly challenged to attract people to live events. The New York Giants and New York Jets are answering with a unique video experience of their own at the New Meadowlands Stadium...perhaps better than the one viewers can get at home. The stadium plans to offer fans “free smart-phone applications that they can glance at to see video replays, updated statistics and live video from other games.” If you want to check out these applications, you’ll need to be in attendance: they only work inside the stadium. But how are fans supposed to stream video when it’s hard enough to get service to simply make a phone call at a game? 500 wireless antennas have been installed at the New Meadowlands Stadium to take care of that. Add this to the 2,200 televisions with 48,000 square feet of screens now in place and that’s one significant investment in video.

Don’t expect television networks to roll over, though (3D, anyone?). Our eyeballs, whether at the stadium or in front of the TV, are worth too much to the brands that want our business. Media distribution has gotten to the point where in some ways, virtual reality has trumped “actual” reality. But hey, as long as this means new and better ways to watch our favorite teams, fine by us!