Next week we will be looking at the Future of TV Sport with some of the biggest and some of the newest players in broadcasting.
Among them will be David O’Shea of nTrai, an Irish company who are on the cutting edge of the future now that Facebook has enabled the live streaming of sports events on its platform.
On April 18th nTrai became one of the first ‘broadcasters’ to use the service sending out live pictures and commentary from the Irish University Athletics Championships at Morton Stadium in Santry.
They were able to do so having secured a modest amount of sponsorship from Fyffes to cover the broadcast costs.
They struck gold when Phil Healy, running for UCC in the 4×400 metres relay event produced the finish of a lifetime, aided by some winning commentary ‘from the depths of hell’.
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It was picked up by Storyful and sold on to Good Morning America as well as other mainstream sports and news broadcasts on ABC, KBC, ESPN, Sky, and India Today.
The video has now been seen by more than 2.5 million viewers, twice as many as the most popular TV broadcast last year in Ireland and is a clear indication of the payoff from being in the right place at the right time.
nTrai will benefit from broadcast fees paid by those channels though it will be some time yet before the value of those can be quantified.
The ability to lifestream multiple simultaneous events onto a Facebook page, with micro payment mechanics already in existence and being further refined all the time, puts broadcast power into the hands of a far greater number.
Quality will determine the extent to which this will be adopted by sports fans but it will be a fascinating development and we can be proud that an Irish company and an Irish event have been to the fore.
