Mar 22nd, 2006 - Money Game
For the past few weeks, the mighty United States has been forced to focus on yet another invader threatening the government?s business, and this one has nothing to do with sneaky terrorism.
It has everything to do with squeak-squeak, swish-swish.
How do you finally know your sport has made it?
When it has the power to stop a super power - the last super power.
The United States federal government has 1.8 million civilian employees and the powers that be who run the country have decided that a clear and present danger to American civil servant productivity comes in the form of the NCAA tournament.
That?s because, for the first time, the rights carrier for the tournament decided to broadcast the early rounds of the tourney LIVE over the internet. The result?
For basketball fans? Nirvana. For government and big business IT dudes and dudettes ? meltdowns.
For over a decade sports content has been available online live, but for a premier product like this, it?s been exclusively a Pay-Per-View enterprise. For the first time a major rights holder has come up with a business plan that allows advertising and ancillary over-net promotions to pay for most if not all of the bandwidth. By the way ? for we poor sports fans - this is nothing less than revolutionary.
A revolution the American government and corporations haven?t got their heads around as of yet.
As a result of this freebee, they have been disabling employee access to Web broadcasts. They have also been putting CBS?s SportsLine.com behind their firewalls. (If you?ve ever known an IT guy in your life ? you know they haven?t firewalled themselves!)
At first glance, their concerns are completely justified. Over the first four days of the tournament, covering 48 games, Sportsline.com delivered a total of 14 million video streams and recorded 4 million visitors.
I was one of ?em. And as far as the webcast went, it was seamless, the quality was pretty decent and watching one nailbitter, I had a crowd crammed around my PC, occasionally looking over their shoulders to see if the boss was watching them watch.
He wasn?t. He was riveted, watching in his office.
Mediaweek is all over this story and they solicited a feller named John Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, to estimate what the tournament will cost the economy.
His figure: More than $1.8 billion in lost productivity.
That sounds bad.
Except that the FBI estimates that a total of $3.5 billion will be wagered on the Final Four legally, illegally and between pals at the watercooler.
The bottom line: The NCAA tournament is $1.7-billion to the good.
And that ain?t all that bad.
Check out the betED lines for the tournament! They've got lines on every game in the NCAA Tourney as well as futures to win it all and props throughout! Get your wagers in now!
Good luck on the tournament and Cheers - Gavin McDougald - AKA Couch
Remember to drop us a line at rants@betED.com to voice your opinion on one of McDougald's articles or on anything else you read at betED.com!
For the past few weeks, the mighty United States has been forced to focus on yet another invader threatening the government?s business, and this one has nothing to do with sneaky terrorism.
It has everything to do with squeak-squeak, swish-swish.
How do you finally know your sport has made it?
When it has the power to stop a super power - the last super power.
The United States federal government has 1.8 million civilian employees and the powers that be who run the country have decided that a clear and present danger to American civil servant productivity comes in the form of the NCAA tournament.
That?s because, for the first time, the rights carrier for the tournament decided to broadcast the early rounds of the tourney LIVE over the internet. The result?
For basketball fans? Nirvana. For government and big business IT dudes and dudettes ? meltdowns.
For over a decade sports content has been available online live, but for a premier product like this, it?s been exclusively a Pay-Per-View enterprise. For the first time a major rights holder has come up with a business plan that allows advertising and ancillary over-net promotions to pay for most if not all of the bandwidth. By the way ? for we poor sports fans - this is nothing less than revolutionary.
A revolution the American government and corporations haven?t got their heads around as of yet.
As a result of this freebee, they have been disabling employee access to Web broadcasts. They have also been putting CBS?s SportsLine.com behind their firewalls. (If you?ve ever known an IT guy in your life ? you know they haven?t firewalled themselves!)
At first glance, their concerns are completely justified. Over the first four days of the tournament, covering 48 games, Sportsline.com delivered a total of 14 million video streams and recorded 4 million visitors.
I was one of ?em. And as far as the webcast went, it was seamless, the quality was pretty decent and watching one nailbitter, I had a crowd crammed around my PC, occasionally looking over their shoulders to see if the boss was watching them watch.
He wasn?t. He was riveted, watching in his office.
Mediaweek is all over this story and they solicited a feller named John Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, to estimate what the tournament will cost the economy.
His figure: More than $1.8 billion in lost productivity.
That sounds bad.
Except that the FBI estimates that a total of $3.5 billion will be wagered on the Final Four legally, illegally and between pals at the watercooler.
The bottom line: The NCAA tournament is $1.7-billion to the good.
And that ain?t all that bad.
Check out the betED lines for the tournament! They've got lines on every game in the NCAA Tourney as well as futures to win it all and props throughout! Get your wagers in now!
Good luck on the tournament and Cheers - Gavin McDougald - AKA Couch
Remember to drop us a line at rants@betED.com to voice your opinion on one of McDougald's articles or on anything else you read at betED.com!
