TV sports adopts Web coverage, plays with iPhones

NEW YORK, N.Y. - Will sports best suited for HDTV flat panel displays eventually become obsolete? Execs from NBC and other sports media discussed about how the Web and iPhones are coming into play for airing the Olympics, the Tour de France, and Wimbledon.

If a sport is shown on TV only, and not on the Internet or mobile phones, ultimately it might just fade away, predicted Jamie Davis, president of Versus (formerly the Outdoor Life Network), which recently extended its US deal to cover the annual Tour de France bicycle through 2013.

Younger people, who don't tend to care as much about TV anyway, are likely to switch to other forms of digital entertainment if they can't keep track of a game or a race over the Web or on their iPhones, according to Davis. Kids want to be able to "take [the game] with them," he contended.

Although some of his fellow panelists didn't agree about the usefulness of sports coverage on mobile phones, the speakers from NBC, HBO Sports, and other TV sports media all talked up the benefits of transitioning to the Web for at least some sports programming and promotion.

NBC was amazed to find that its series of 4,500 video snippets -- or "Olympic highlights" -- from this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing went over so well with Internet and phone users alike, said Perkins Miller, senior VP of digital media for NBC Sports and Olympics.

At the start, NBC offered the video clips only as an experiment. The broadcaster couldn't see any way to use all 858 hours of video footage on its TV network, anyway.

But NBC soon discovered that "there's demand for those clips," according to Perkins. Internet and mobile phone users liked to be able to pick and choose between shots of a gymnast hurtling through the air, a diver poised for a high dive, and a runner dashing across the finish line in the 10,000 meter race, for example. The network is now considering similar online digital video highlights for the Wimbledon tennis championships.

But when it comes to sports coverage, the mobile phone is only good for purposes such as showing scoreboards and short video clips, according to some of the other speakers.

"The handset is limited from a live standpoint," noted Chris Bevilacqua, CEO of CAA Sports Media Ventures.

Davis concurred this this had been the case until recently. But now, live sports coverage on mobile platforms is becoming feasible, with "the iPhone leading the charge," Davis argued.

"I believe that in the long run the iPhone-sized screen will be a winner," he elaborated. Versus' deal around the Tour de France calls for streaming video over the Web to phones as well as other platforms.

Ross Greenburg, president of HBO Sports, said his company will "dips its toe in the water" slowly with mobile phones, after an earlier experience with AT&T which didn't do well from the revenues standpoint.

HBO is under contract, anyway, to deliver programming such as pro football games directly over the HBO TV network, where it often appears in HDTV format on large flat screen TVs in fans' living rooms. At the same time, the company is also using the Web as an "incubator" for experimental content, including a possible sports comedy show, he said.

Meanwhile, HBO Sports is also "flooding the Internet" with ads for its TV sports programs, and these ads are paying off well, Greenburg told the conference-goers in New York.