NBC scores with huge online numbers for Olympic hockey, even with cable restrictions

The combination of some must-see competition — U.S. vs. Canada in ice hockey — led NBC’s Olympic online efforts to a couple days of record-setting numbers in terms of overall viewers. Friday’s men’s semifinal game will go down as one of those watershed moments in online sports viewing, with NBC reporting more than 2.1 million unique users of the network’s “Live Extra” online video. Friday’s totals followed Thursday’s 1.2 million online viewers of the women’s gold medal game between the same two countries.

While several factors probably contributed to the perfect storm of viewership on Friday morning — an important game, during the least important day in the U.S. work week — what makes the more-than-a-Super-Bowl total even more impressive is the fact that if you were watching the game, you almost certainly had a cable TV contract to allow access. While we give credit to NBC for its achievement, we can only wonder how big the online number could have been if NBC had opened up its Olympic online coverage to all viewers, not just those with cable validation.

In the wake of this week’s blockbuster $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook, it’s worthwhile to ask whether or not broadcasters are being too old school when it comes to monetization models for big events like the Olympics. I don’t know the answer to this, but how much money could NBC potentially reap if it tried a WhatsApp pricing model — say, $1 for all Olympic streaming coverage — instead of restricting it to current cable customers? Here’s another idea: How about a streaming channel that shows the prime time coverage, without commercials, without blabbering hosts, available at hours children can watch? Anyone else out there like me who would gladly pay an extra $5 for something like that? Of course, then NBC’s prime time numbers would fall even further than they have already.

So yes, cheer for the massive online numbers. But the fact that just about every big event keeps setting new mobile/online viewer “records” should be a message that there is possibly a bigger untapped audience out there, maybe even far larger than the conventional TV/cable audience. Remember, at the last Olympics WhatsApp barely existed. The current model of sports-content distribution reminds me more of the cellular carriers’ approach to text messaging (remember 10 cents a message?) than WhatsApp’s version. And it’s pretty clear who’s winning that battle. It’s not the team who never saw the competition coming because they played by different rules.

NBC’s own Twitter feed ‘spoils’ its live online video stream during Sochi super-G

Screen shot of NBC live stream video with Twitter window to right.

Screen shot of NBC live stream video with Twitter window to right (click for larger image).

Even though American skiers Andrew Weibrecht and Bode Miller were fast enough to win medals in the super-G Sunday in Russia, it was Twitter outpacing NBC to the finish line during the broadcaster’s live streaming coverage from the Sochi Olympics.

If you were up late in the U.S. watching the live online coverage via NBC’s Live Extra service, you could also see a window with “experts” Twitter feeds to the right of the video screen. As the super-G progressed, and as racers challenged Miller’s once-leading time, you could see race results being tweeted before they were shown via the “live” video. The spoiler effect got some Twitter users and live-stream watchers angry, and they took out their frustrations on the reporters whose tweets were being shown in NBC’s official window.

In a very unofficial review yours truly has noticed that NBC is jamming a lot more commercial breaks into the online streams than they did at the start of the games — the first night of action I watched online (men’s DH) had very few commercials breaks. The super-G coverage on Sunday/Saturday, however, had numerous commercial inserts, many right before racers were about to ski. There were also some buffering and streaming hiccups, which may be a result of my own connection and not NBC’s fault. Maybe it’s hard to blame NBC for the lure of trying to pump more advertising in; according to NBC press releases that come along almost daily now, the live streams are extremely popular and will probably become more so as the big-ticket events like men’s hockey and women’s figure skating get seriously underway.

Viewers expressing frustration at Twitter feed outpacing video

Viewers expressing frustration at Twitter feed outpacing video

But at some point during the super-G, because of the ads or because of physics, the Twitter feed on NBC’s page got well ahead of the event, and I had to resort to the full-screen option to keep the Twitter feed from playing spoiler. While we have messages and emails out to the reporters/tweeters and NBC to try and figure out the particulars, we can pretty much guess what happened — NBC probably had no buffer or filter in place at all, and the speed of 140 characters is going to beat video bits (which need encoding to traverse the interwebs) every time.

It is most likely an early-days problem of trying to do something ambitious like live stream every event, an undertaking NBC should be commended for. But with all the resources at its disposal and all its social media savvy, NBC should have forseen this kind of glitch. In this age of reporters tweeting from events there is always the problem of Twitter moving faster than even official broadcasts — but you rarely see a network spoil its own show with official Tweets that move faster than its own “live” video.

For us here at MSR it’s a glitch we can live with, since efforts to stymie the speed of Twitter are as futile as they are worthless. The easy solution will be to restrict or delay the Twitter feed, which will cripple the instant-feedback usefulness of Twitter. More live Twitter and more live video is what we say. But the glitch is also evidence that the desire to blend video and social media on the same viewing page may not always produce the results you are looking for. Maybe better design is the answer?

And sorry if we are playing spoiler for NBC’s prime time show later Sunday but hey, two medals in one race is pretty big news for the U.S. Ski Team, and what a killer effort from the old man Bode. And tying for a bronze — well that’s just a pretty Bode result too. And here’s an Instagram to show the proud teammates posing with the flag after their second- and third-place finishes.

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