NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) has entered into a strategic partnership with Ten Sports to launch a sports video portal. For the first time perhaps, cricket crazy Indians from everywhere can enjoy a free live webcast of key cricket matches–a service that was previously available, but behind a paywall. We first reported the story on 26 August.
In an email interview with contentSutra, NBC’s VP of digital product strategy and development, Sab Kanaujia, who will also head this business, talks about the economics of webcasting for free, content, that is expensive to acquire, recreating a television experience on the web and more.
This is the second in a two-part interview. The first part is here.
Do you fear that the site will get banned in workplaces as it becomes popular and employees watch cricket during their work hours? (Many Indian offices have banned IM applications, mail websites and social networking sites.)
We’re aware of this, and it’s a valid concern. But given this is outside of our control, we’re focused on providing the best possible experience when and where users can access tensports.com.
Why did you decide to make the site free of charge for this service that has this far been paid for? Do you hope to generate a lot of advertising for the live webcast? Is there going to be a time lag for the web feed?
Providing all the content on tensports.com, both live Webcast and video-on-demand, available for free to users was a rather straightforward decision for us. First, sports fans in India are not currently habituated to watch live sports online, so we need to change user behaviors, and therefore didn’t want to put any hurdles to adoption. Second, all live cricket is already available on television, so a pay wall on the Web would not work.
Watching sports today is primarily a television experience. Charging online users would work either for niche sports which are not available on television (e.g., cricket & soccer in the U.S.) or when popular sports are not available on television for some reason. E.g., sports leagues in the U.S. (MLB, NHL, etc) are currently charging a small subscription fees for live online streaming, but I’d imagine in most cases fans subscribing to these packages do not have access to those live games on their television (either due to local blackout restrictions or if they’re following non-local teams whose games are not available in their region).
Cricket in India has a massive following, so it can provide a large and scalable audience necessary for the advertising model to work. It’s too early to say, but we won’t be surprised to see a two-screen behavior emerge, where users watch live cricket on the TV, but also simultaneously interact with their family and friends online on tensports.com to discuss the game.
Ref: advertising revenue, we are optimistic about our assumptions. There are no precedents in the market, so we have many unknowns. We believe that online video consumption in India is about to take off, and as long as we provide a great user experience and, in our case, have exclusive premium content, we’re confident of generating value for all stakeholders – consumers, advertisers, our content partner, and NBCU.
There will be no planned lag for the Web feed of live matches. There might be a few seconds delay depending on user’s computer settings and Internet speed.
Are you gonna show the same feed that appears on TV, riddled as it is, with all kinds of intrusive advertising? If so, won

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