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Sports has often seemed to be the exception to the rule. Everywhere else in the world of media, we have seen mass audiences fragmenting; former monopolies losing clout; bundled content atomized; copyright holders pirated; rarity becoming commodity; audiences producing their own content; and users dictating the terms, conditions and prices of the media they consume.
The last two decades have seen musical recording…broadcast television…magazine publishing…mainstream journalism…books made of paper…Madison Avenue…all forced to change radically, or to downsize catastrophically, or to go out of business altogether. Profit margins have been slashed, stable careers decimated, salaries eliminated. Chaos! Bob Garfield calls it.
Through it all, sports has stood alone, unscathed. Leagues, tournaments and professional tours have protected their paywalls against all assailants. The athletes have continued to earn stellar paychecks. Broadcasters have continued to air exclusive non-time-shiftable content to mass audiences. Ancillary social media--the office pools, the rotisserie leagues, the mobile phone score updates, the interactive videostreams--have all stayed within the business plan, producing new revenues, not cannibalizing old ones.
ESPN, not CNN, is the king of cable. The NFL, not the network news divisions, makes broadcast television invaluable. Premier League Football, not FOX News Channel, is the jewel in Rupert Murdoch's crown.
So, it is interesting to keep an eye out for signs of chinks in the armor of sports' seemingly impregnable business plan. Or, to put it another way, to check whether sports runs the risk of becoming outdated, in our socially networked world, by keeping such a ironclad grip against any reproduction or retransmission of its content, as the express-written-permission boilerplate always insists.
In that spirit let me recommend that you tune into this Website on Saturday morning and stream its audio. Yes, I know you are not a cricket fan. Yes, I know you are not one of the one billion TV viewers worldwide who will be on the edge to their seats to see whether Tendulkar can hit his hundredth century--or whether Muralitharan can doosra his way into a last hurrah of glory. Yes, I know that for you American sports fans, Butler and Virginia Commonwealth are so much more riveting.
No, matter. You should check out the crew at Test Match Sofa not to discover whether Sri Lanka or India will win the World Cup, but to hear what the future of sports media may sound like when even that last bastion loses its exclusivity and is forced to open up to the people formerly known as their audience. And, by the way, it is jolly funny too.
The Sofa--English for couch, as in couch potato--is the sitting position for a troupe of stand-up-comedy cricket fans in south London, and their assorted chums, who have devised a way to co-exist with the copyright holders of mass market sporting events, rather than resorting to piracy. They watch major international cricket competitions (the pinnacle of which is called the Test Match) on the sanctioned television feed carried by Murdoch's Sky Sports or the BBC, and then supply their own radio play-by-play, which they supply free as an online audiostream.
The Sofa can be listened to as radio or, by delaying the TV feed with a DVR so as to synch it up, as the alternate voiceover for the video. Sometimes the Sofa's flights of comic fancy become so anarchic that the underlying game conditions are hard to discern, so I tend to use its feed as an audio accompaniment to the written play-by-play commentary, posted as a live blog, on ESPN's Cricinfo site. Yet, as you will hear, the Sofa's anarchic style is a feature, not a bug, as the saying goes.
It is an inexpensive operation, since it does not have to pay for broadcast rights, but not a parasitical one, since it offers added value to the video. It offers a refreshing, opinionated alternative to the anodyne play-by-play of the television announcers. Instead, of freeloading on the establishment feed, it makes that television content more watchable, enhancing its value.
Yet inexpensive does not mean gratis. Sofa seeks sponsors and asks, public radio style, for contributions from its listeners. Instead of offering a tote bag, it promises to read its paying contributors' witticisms live, on air, as they are submitted in its twitterfeed.
So come on Yankee fans! There must be a group of slacker stand-up comedians somewhere in Williamsburg who can produce an Americanized version of Test Match Sofa. Call it World Series Couch. What about play-by-play golf humor for the Masters, replacing the pompous, plummy resonance of CBS Sports' hushed tones from Augusta? Call it the Amen Corner Caddyshack. By the time of next year's Final Four, we could have a Bracketology Bar Stool.
Me, I'm rooting for Sri Lanka.
A long term listener of "The Sofa" (well over 1 year now) and avid fan. A very good article this is, which sums the sofa team up very well. I would just add that they mess about and have a laugh and a joke a lot of the time but don't let this fool you into thinking they have no cricketing knowledge.. they do! in fact they are a massively knowledgeable bunch as whole and I have learnt more about the game from them in the last year than many, many years of watching poorly commentated matches on the BBC and Sky Sports. But have a good laugh whilst doing so!
As Andrew has said. Well worth a listen.
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