—31.2 million video streams delivered totaling 4.7 million hours.
-- 31 million unique visitors; 6.5 million daily uniques.
-- Users spend approximately 13 minutes per visit.
These numbers pale in comparison to ABC.com who recently announced that they had streamed 815 million minutes of video in May of 2008 (http://www.lostremote.com/2008/07/14/abccom-reaches-record-video-traffic/). I have a hypothesis that sports that are not followed by a core audience of fans (e.g, MLB, NHL, etc) will have trouble growing an audience online. The Olympics demonstrates challenges the NFL may have online this fall with their video product for Sunday Night Football, specifically:
- Games are readily available with no clear barriers to consumption in traditional media channels (e.g, blackouts, scheduling)
- Much like watching Phelps, the event is very much "lean back" as viewers do not want to risk missing action taking place live
- Online quality, even in HD, does not present a clear value add above the HD signal most can receive from their television provider
If the NFL is able to address key barriers to building this platform they will make a significant demonstration to other companies with similar aspirations.
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1 comments:
The numbers were disappointing--primarily, I think, because the user experience was disappointing.
The live events were difficult to navigate to, the video quality was poor, and I spent most of the time waiting for buffering.
Since you compared them to ABC, I'll come out and say it--NBC should have used Move Networks, like ABC does. If they would have, I believe viewing times would have been similar to ABC's.
I know mine would have.
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