Monday, May 29, 2006
Pay$Per$View TV: Is the End Near?
Most likely because I hadn't been looking for such things, I didn't realize how inadvertently easy it would be to come across free – and illegal – online videos of Saturday's UFC pay$per$view. I was looking for results and comments on the show, which I did not order, on various message boards from people who had seen it.
If you want to know why I didn't order it, on Saturday my monthly cable bill from Time Warner arrived. It included the fifty bucks for the De La Hoya-Mayorga pay$per$view – reportedly seen in 875,000 households – and came to a mere $161.06. And it was accurate.
With sites like YouTube, RapidShare, and so many others, the pay$per$view wall is coming down, albeit illegally. Policing such sites is a monstrous task, and may be a virtual impossibility, so pay$per$view producers are going to have to rethink their business models, and fast, like it or not. But like the fiasco in the music business, they probably won’t be smart enough to do so until it is too late to limit the damage.
If you want to know why I didn't order it, on Saturday my monthly cable bill from Time Warner arrived. It included the fifty bucks for the De La Hoya-Mayorga pay$per$view – reportedly seen in 875,000 households – and came to a mere $161.06. And it was accurate.
With sites like YouTube, RapidShare, and so many others, the pay$per$view wall is coming down, albeit illegally. Policing such sites is a monstrous task, and may be a virtual impossibility, so pay$per$view producers are going to have to rethink their business models, and fast, like it or not. But like the fiasco in the music business, they probably won’t be smart enough to do so until it is too late to limit the damage.
Comments:
frankly that's how I saw the Penn/St. Pierre and Franklin/Loiseau fights from UFC 58. I didn't have the cash to order it and really just wanted to watch those two fights. There used to be a ton of UFC footage on you tube until recently but certain footage will be leaked onto those sites eventually. Promotions just have to either constantly police those type of sites, probably with a separate staff just to police that footage on the net, or just not charge an arm, two legs and a liver for a PPV which I certainly don't see happening. Even with WWE, they just raised PPV prices to $39.95 this month, it's getting ridiculous really.
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1 Comments:
frankly that's how I saw the Penn/St. Pierre and Franklin/Loiseau fights from UFC 58. I didn't have the cash to order it and really just wanted to watch those two fights. There used to be a ton of UFC footage on you tube until recently but certain footage will be leaked onto those sites eventually. Promotions just have to either constantly police those type of sites, probably with a separate staff just to police that footage on the net, or just not charge an arm, two legs and a liver for a PPV which I certainly don't see happening. Even with WWE, they just raised PPV prices to $39.95 this month, it's getting ridiculous really.
By 
Art Shimko, at
1:43 PM
