Regarding this story in the New York Times:
With Bloggers in the Bleachers, Leagues See a Threat to Profits
(and related, my post on “Don’t Be a Player Platform Hater“):
I have such a rant in me on this topic but I simply cannot write it now, I’m way too Supposed to Be On Vacation. But suffice to say, you can do two things if you “own content” – like, say, football games (yep, that’s content). One, you can cut it all off and hoard it. Or two, you can be the oxygen in the ecosystem. The first allows you to profit but it kills your long-term community ecosystem and prevents, entirely, your product from growing as your supporting community wants it to grow – because in essence, you are refusing to allow your community to have a voice and point of view about your product. It’s YOURS, and you’ll LIKE IT THE WAY I WANT TO GIVE IT TO YOU!
The second makes you a crucial, life giving element of an ecosystem, but one that is as dependent on that ecosystem as it is upon you. Yes, air is unbreathable without oxygen, but then again, it ain’t air if it’s ONLY oxygen.
Anyway. Read this piece, and really think about it. Cutting fans off from blogging (or Tweeting, since there are ads there now and will be more*) about the games they go to because they might be getting paid by SBN, or AdSense, or whoever? Are you F’ING NUTS?
Pull your head out, sports guys. It’s way better to be the oxygen in the ecosystem. It’s a bigger profit opportunity, for one. And it’s just a way more fun approach to business, one that feeds more than just your bottom line.
OK, back to vacation.
*PS, oh yeah, and Facebooking, because, shit, Water Cooler is on Facebook, isn’t it?! Yikes, thousands of people talking about football AND WE’RE NOT MAKING MONEY ON IT DAMNIT! And doesn’t Facebook show ads next to fans’ personal pages? Time to get me a cut of that revenue too, I hear Facebook is making hundreds of millions!
** PPS I am NOT saying that businesses who make it their business to cover and profit from covering sports should not have a revenue model that pays content owners, far from it. I AM saying that content should have an API – and a set of business rules around use of that API. Duh.