The commissioners of three professional sports leagues were brought together at an Advertising Week panel and said they weren't concerned about the shrinking TV audiences and the affect it will have on their sports and ad revenue.
NBA Commissioner David Stern, Carolyn Bivens, commissioner of the Ladies Professional Golf Association, and Gary Bettman, leader of the National Hockey League were questioned about the continuous disruption in the media.
Ad Age believes that TV will still remain the preferred mass-market channel for live sporting events. Quoting the panels' conclusions:
"'Sports has always led the technological revolution,' Mr. Stern said, citing cable and satellite as channels that prospered - like high-definition TV does today - partly because of sports programming. Even if mass audiences are slowly splintering, he said, new media widgets let the NBA "accessorize" the games with player info online, mobile alerts when games hit overtime and so on."
Bivens also placed her hopes on TV and added that technology will help advertisers reach the core consumer.
The problem with all of this is that ESPN Mobile, with a $150 million budget failed completely to draw sports fans to their service. If ESPN has failed in the fragmented market, how will sports succeed there?
All mass-media is still in denial about what's going on: markets aren't going to be as big anymore - period. Now it's possible that the subscription model offered by ESPN was what was rejected. It did cost users about $40 a month to access it. I don't think it was only that though.
Fragmentation isn't just about a scattering of people or reaching people where they're at physically...it's about people making choices and downsizing their options. Options are forcing people to make decisions...decisions that limit the amount of input into their lives. Technology can't solve the problem; it's created it.
The answer is that people do want what they want when they want, but what they want is within a limited sphere. Every bit of research says that people can no longer keep up with technological change; the consequences are making choices. The audience is shrinking, nothing is going to change that!
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