Like any red-blooded sports fan, I just spent too much time
watching a number of opening day college football games. Despite my love of sports and technology, I
rarely see an opportunity to combine the two. Wouldn’t you think there would be a good reason to have a laptop handy
to augment the game on TV? The
skeptics say it will never happen because the veg-out mode of TV doesn’t mesh
with the interactive requirements of the web. I happen to believe the only reason sports
nuts don’t use a laptop and remote simultaneously is because there’s no killer
app…yet.
Why doesn’t ESPN (for example) have a dedicated site for
every game currently being played? The
site would offer several cool things, including:
- A pair of trash-talking chat windows, side by side, where
fans of both teams can comment on the last play, make fun of the other team,
etc. Comments from both sides are
streaming in throughout the game.
- A customizable interface, allowing me to track whatever
in-game stats I want to, not just the generic box score set-up they currently
offer. This interface would also let me
build my own custom scoreboard featuring a few other live games; clicking on
any of those other games takes me to the same rich interface, but for the other
game.
- If ESPN is broadcasting the game, why not post replay videos
for everyone to view a play or two later?
These sites could go live an hour or two before each game,
letting everyone state their predictions up-front in a community pre-game format. Over time, some of the more noteworthy
participants will emerge and could become visible moderators or “hosts” for
future games. It could also stay
up for an hour or so after the last play, until the winners are completely
finished with their celebration and taunting.
How many old college buddies, who now live hundreds of miles
apart, would rather hop onto a site like this instead of calling each other on
the phone after every big play? Heck,
why couldn’t ESPN embed an audio/video IM service so that you and your buddy
could talk directly through this page while you also enjoy the rest of the
community’s commentary in the chat windows?
Yes, there are plenty of challenges to something like this,
but none are insurmountable. For
example, what do you do with those nitwits who insist on obscene language? Why not have a moderator who tosses them off
and bans their IP address from future use of the site? And talk about site stickiness…wow, the
advertising opportunities really open up when you figure someone’s likely to be
checking in on this screen throughout an entire game.
This program wouldn’t just be limited to those games
televised by a particular network. Why
couldn’t ESPN (or any other site) offer this for every live sporting event that
day? Granted, they couldn’t include the
video option I noted, but that’s more of a minor feature.
I’d use a service like this. In fact, I’d be willing to pay to have access to a service like this,
which is pretty unusual for a cheapskate like me. I’d see it as a $5/month program, $10
max. If it really gave me access to this
sort of community interface and offered the chance to bust on the opposition’s
fans it would be worth every penny!
The latest cable set top boxes have this capacity and the cable companies are pushing hard to do this. These boxes have hard drives and processors just like a computer, but to your point, no one wants to interact with television. Research show that over 60% of all home computers are in the same room as a television. Take your thought a step farther, what if you were watching the game and on the bottom of your split screen was a chat session going on with other fans in their living rooms watching the same game. Maybe even a few webcams?
Posted by: Tom Britt | September 03, 2006 at 09:57 AM
Hi Tom. Although set top boxes have been pegged as the silver bullet for interactivity I'm not sure it's the solution to this one. Perhaps I'm in the minority, but when I'm watching a game on TV I want the entire screen dedicated to the game and nothing else. I even hate it when those crawlers and 30-at-30 scoreboards pop up, turning my TV into one that has about 80% of its original screen size.
I like the webcam idea, but only as a feature on my computer, not my TV. Speaking of which, for anyone who figures the system would get overloaded with too many comments from too many people you don't care about, why not let users select who they can trash-talk with and only show those comments? That way you could create the equivalent of a private session between you and your sports buddies, letting the system filter out all the comments from the rest of the participants.
Posted by: Joe Wikert | September 03, 2006 at 12:55 PM
Don't leave out the feature which allows the fans to decide the team’s starting lineup each night. Could you imagine?!!
Posted by: Joel Fugazzotto | September 11, 2006 at 01:26 AM
New site to watch free online tv
http://tv.stafex.net
Posted by: spiridon | May 19, 2007 at 03:17 AM