Verizon and NFL Lay Groundwork for Future of Television Sports

Bernie — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 09:16:47 -0500

The NFL Network and Verizon are providing glimpses into the future of sports on television through their NFL Network Game Extra package this year. The package offers eight Thursday/Saturday prime time games, which are viewed online through a broadband connection. Offered to Verizon broadband subscribers (FiOS or DSL) who also subscribe to a Verizon video package (either through a FiOS or Verizon DirecTV bundle), the package provides a variety of exclusive features that are not available for traditional television viewing – at least not yet.

The features include the ability to select from up to four camera angles; live online chats with other NFL Network Game Extra viewers during the live games; game statistics, highlights and drive-chart simulations during the games; and on-demand video highlights of the games. Verizon does not intend to charge for the package. While this experiment is limited to online viewing for now, it certainly represents the future of sports on television. These are the types of features that IPTV promises to deliver – true differentiation over the traditional viewing experience. To be fair, there’s nothing here that cable can’t emulate, and DirecTV has already demonstrated that they know how to leverage interactive sports packages for competitive differentiation through their venerable NFL Sunday Ticket package. It’s just a matter of time before these features make their way to the “big screen.” The NFL Network Game Extra is also a prime example of the growing convergence of broadband content with traditional television viewing, which will fuel further innovation in the total entertainment experience. Carriers who embrace this convergence and learn how to leverage it, will certainly gain competitive advantage.

Windstream and TiVo Partner for Interactive Bundle

Bernie — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:02:38 -0400

Windstream, the wireline telco spin off from Alltel, announced a partnership with TiVo for a bundled high speed Internet and DVR combination. Windstream plans to market the interactive bundle as differentiated video service, providing broadband, access to broadband video content, and traditional DVR service for linear television viewing. TiVo offers a broad mix of broadband video content, including TiVoCast and Amazon’s Unbox service. This announcement is the second one within a week featuring a broadband TV launch for a large U.S. telco.

These deployments could be viewed as “pushing the envelope” of traditional entertainment bundles. The line between traditional multichannel video subscriptions and broadband TV appears to be graying by the week. Is it conceivable that a subscriber could choose a broadband TV enabled TiVO, over a traditional pay TV subscription? Maybe, but probably not – at least not yet. It’s more conceivable (at least in the short term) that subscribers will view this new bundle as complimentary to their subscription TV service. But as Internet content continues to flourish and search capabilities mature, an all broadband TV option may gain traction. TiVo is working to position itself as a potential solution of choice for this possibility. And telcos continue to explore the options of video services beyond traditional video subscription models. We can’t draw any firm conclusions from these trials yet. But they are interesting developments to study. We may be witnessing the early transformation of long standing video business models. Stay tuned.

Broadband TV

Verizon and NFL Lay Groundwork for Future of Television Sports

Windstream and TiVo Partner for Interactive Bundle