The drop in prime-time TV viewership for the recent Rio Olympics was a bit of a head-scratcher for many, especially in light of the soaring numbers for online viewership of the same games on various streaming outlets. In the STADIUM TECH REPORT PODCAST episode 7, hosts Phil Harvey and Paul Kapustka explore and explain why this shift from scripted to live happened, and what it means for all types of live sports content going forward. Give it a listen now!
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Given the time differences between Scotland and the United States, making all the Ryder Cup coverage available live online or via a mobile app seemed like a smart move for the Golf Channel and its parent NBC. Now that the stats are in the numbers back up the move, with Golf Channel claiming record unique visitors and video starts for both its online and mobile-app platforms.
In a press release NBC Sports said Golf Channel Digital had “its best week ever across all digital metrics” during the Sept. 22-28 Ryder Cup week. According to NBC, for the week Golfchannel.com attracted 2.16 million unique visitors, a 325 percent increase from the Ryder Cup week in 2010 and a 75 percent increase from 2012, with 16.2 million page views. The website also recorded 1.3 million video starts, respective increases of 438 percent and 173 percent over 2010 and 2012.
On the mobile side the Golf Channel mobile app racked up more than 10.4 million page views, which according to NBC was a gain of 93 percent over usage from 2012. The mobile platform this year also had more than 267,000 video starts, which NBC said was up 81 percent over 2012.
Let’s hope the PGA takes the numbers to heart and increases mobile/digital coverage of all Tour events, especially during Thursday-Friday competition days when many golf fans are more likely to be in front of a PC than a TV. Golf Channel’s Ryder Cup numbers are just a sign that we’ll watch online or on mobile devices. Tee it up, PGA!
Are you ready for late-night or early morning golf online? That’s what fans in the U.S. will be watching in potentially large numbers this weekend as the Ryder Cup takes place in Gleneagles, Scotland. With live coverage starting Friday at 2:30 a.m. Eastern time (that’s 11:30 p.m. Thursday for us west coaster types) it’s a good bet many golf fans will be tuning in online, using headsets so they don’t wake up the rest of the house with the TV.
All the action will be streamed live by Golf Channel and NBC, through their Golf Live Extra and NBC Sports Live Extra services. Depending on the day and time you may need to bounce between the two outlets, a small hassle but an OK price to pay to get to see the intriguing competition live. You will need to have an authorized cable account to view the live feed, though it looks like they are giving fans a 30-minute grace period of free viewing before you have to log in with your cable account. You will also be able to see the live action via the Golf Channel/NBC apps for iOS and Android devices.
Especially interesting to us is the addition of something Golf Channel is calling its Alternate Shot coverage, which is basically a different set of analysts and announcers led by the entertaining David Feherty. Feherty, a former player who is often the most engaging voice on any broadcast these days, has a unique style and fun sense of humor, which fans of his excellent interview show Feherty know well. Like past experiments with college football that offer announcer choices, we are glad to see the trend spreading to other sports, and expect Feherty — who played in the 1991 Ryder Cup and is extremely passionate about the event — to do a bang-up job.
Of course, the competition will also be shown on TV, and if you want a good place to find a lot of information easily the Golf Channel’s Ryder Cup hub is a fine place to start.
Call us biased, but we bet that the numbers would have been even better had the Chicago Blackhawks been in the Stanley Cup final instead of the Los Angeles Kings. Still, according to NBC, this year’s Stanley Cup Final recorded record online streaming numbers “for virtually every metric,” according to a press release out today.
Here are the figures from NBC: “Live streaming for the five-game 2014 Stanley Cup Final on NBC Sports Live Extra delivered 603,000 uniques and 37.14 million minutes, up 38% and 22%, respectively, vs. last year and made 2014 the most-consumed Stanley Cup Final ever.”
For the entire NHL playoffs, NBC said it had 1.52 million uniques and 201.50 million minutes watched, “the best-ever for an NHL post-season” and an increase of 180% in uniques and 183% in minutes as compared to last year.
One question we have for cable and broadcast execs: Do the authentication measures really help with cable subscriptions? Or are they just a kind of feel-good thing to make cable providers feel like people aren’t getting “free” content? I’d love to see some proof or stats that say the authentication measures are valuable — as opposed to the good will and free marketing you could reap by just making stuff free online. Because really, nothing is “free” online — if you want to watch sports online you still need broadband, which isn’t really free anywhere.
Off the soapbox now. And hoping that next year when the Blackhawks return to their rightful perch atop the league, the online numbers will double this year’s.
If there’s one thing that’s been a bonus of ESPN’s coverage of the U.S. Open golf championship, it’s the fact that for those of us on the West coast, coverage starts at 6 a.m. local time. That means that by the time most of us are at our computers Thursday or Friday, there’s already live golf to be found. For one last time, we’ll enjoy it as the lads tee it up at Pinehurst No. 2 starting Thursday morn.
Will it be the same next year when Fox takes over? Though Fox did a decent job of the Super Bowl online this past big game, there’s no telling how good or how bad Fox’s golf broadcasts will be, and much less how much Fox will devote to online efforts. If the past is any clue, we may see a regression of sorts when it comes to online options from Fox. For this year, anyway, we’ll still have the rich options usually available from ESPN (including the WatchESPN app) as well as the above-decent online offerings from NBC for the weekend play.
You can, of course, also use the official U.S. Open apps or mobile websites to get mobile/online coverage of two featured groups and featured holes, a la the Masters but with less depth. And if you can stand the amount of time it takes for all the dumb features to load, the PGA’s new home page will certainly be kept up to date with scores and video highlights, as well as pointers to where you can watch live stuff.
NBC, which earned all kinds of honors recently for its online coverage (especially its Olympic streaming efforts) still, in my book, is learning how to do all this. Yes, there was lots of Olympics stuff online, but you had to hunt really hard to find the actual live programming late at night from Sochi — and when you did, the NBC window could spoil the results for you, since the integrated Twitter feed was usually a minute or two AHEAD of the NBC “live” online broadcast. Still, NBC and the NBC-owned Golf Channel should have more info and analysis than you could possibly want all weekend.
If you are watching on an actual television set, the ESPN coverage on Thursday and Friday goes from 9 a.m. Eastern to 3 p.m. ET, then you switch over to NBC for two hours, and then back to ESPN for the last two hours of coverage. On the weekend, it’ll be the last call for Johnny “63” Miller as lead broadcaster, as NBC covers things from noon ET to 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and Sunday from noon until the winning putt drops. Or until there’s a tie and an 18-hole Monday playoff.
Island green at TPC Sawgrass, home of the Players Championship
In addition to having big-event features like being able to follow featured groups of players throughout their entire round and to watch every group play the famous island-green hole, No. 17, the Players online options also include the PGA’s whizzy Live Maps feature, which lets you look at an interactive Google map of the course and then click on the group you want to see shot info for. For desktop jockeys who want to keep an eye on golf during Thursday and Friday, such option are what make online sports worthwhile.
HERE IS THE LINK TO PLAYERS CHAMPIONSHIP ONLINE VIEWING
As we did last year, however, we can’t heartily recommend the PGA app for mobile devices, unless your mobile device is made by Apple. We’ve tried the PGA app on several of the Android devices we have around the MSR headquarters, and have found it still spotty — sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The other confusing thing about trying to watch golf online is the weird handoffs that sometimes happen due to network coverage issues.
What do we mean? Sometimes the golf is available online only, and sometimes you have to open the NBC app because the coverage is live on broadcast TV. Though it seems like you can always get there, the hoops and jumps seem like a confusing Kludge. Why golf (and other sports) can’t figure out the rights issues between themselves and just make it one-click easy for the fans is beyond me. But it’s a little reminder that we are still at early days for online and mobile sports viewing, and at least for me the value of being able to watch online or on a mobile device is worth the tradeoff of having to figure out how to configure my device or launch the right app. But it should be easier, and better.
Our latest report provides an in-depth look at the new Wi-Fi 6 network deployed at Coors Field, ahead of the All-Star Game. READ THE ISSUE NOW
