Very interesting piece (behind free reg-wall) on Google’s slow move into sports broadcasting, an area traditionally dominated by the major networks and satellite/cable conglomerates.
YouTube has aggressively chased content over the last several years, and may have created the infrastructure to expand it to historic levels. YouTube has already inked a deal with the NBA D-League to air more than 90% of games, and is predicted to bid for MLS soccer rights in 2014.
Imagine watching the Olympics on YouTube, NetFlix, Hulu, or on some network that isn’t even born yet.
I doubt we’ll ever see a time where the IOC will break out online streaming rights from general broadcast rights, so we’ll likely always see a situation where whomever pays the billions of dollars to broadcast the Olympics in a given country will also own the streaming rights. And when a cable company owns the TV network that’s won those broadcast rights for the majority of recent (and next 3) Olympic games, I doubt we’ll see anything other than streaming only available with a valid cable subscription login.
That’s because sports are expensive and the major leagues have exclusive long term deals.