Google has already tried its best to find different directions for YouTube. Yet, despite Google’s guidance many of these attempts are not successful. Google’s latest attempt is to stream live sports events on YouTube. Even though not a lot of sports events were streamed, Google and YouTube had made some considerable profits. So, they plan to make some big moves in the area of streaming live sports.
Indian Premier League is not a very famous sports event in the world. All over the world few people even understand the rules of cricket. This league has 20 clubs. After all the games came to an end this year, other than the new champion and the controversies behind the scene, YouTube’s live streaming of the 60 cricket games also grabbed people’s attention.
After being acquired by Google, YouTube is looking for a new direction. With only a large number of users’ own videos, and under the pressure of copy writing problems, YouTube, even with numerous more clicks from users and viewers, is doomed to fail in its future competition with Hulu, whose business direction is very clear. Streaming cricket live is a very successful attempt for YouTube. Today, some people even begin to worry about the future of television.
Of course this attempt to stream Indian Premier League is successful. Let’s look at the numbers. YouTube’s I.P.L. channel has received over 50 million clicks, way over Google’s expectation. Even more encouraging is the fact that 40% of the clicks are from outside of India. In addition, Google has signed 7 contracts of advertisements in India, including Coca Cola. Also, Google found a sponsorship in the U.S., even though in U.S. the website does not stream sports events live and they can only be viewed 15 minutes after the game.
After this successful attempt to stream sports events live, Google immediate gets into action to find potential sports events to stream. Google’s plan will be one that can change the world’s sports live viewing industry. From today’s point of view, this plan’s major obstacle is mainly the conflicts of interest with all the popular sports and entertainment networks. For example, networks like ESPN also have their own streaming live on their websites right now. These streaming are usually due to conflicts of time between sporting events. Nonetheless, they present some conflict of interest with Google’s plan of streaming sports live.
Before the amazing experience of streaming Indian Premier League live, YouTube’s most successful live event was the U2 concert in 2009. However, because the concert streaming was purely for technological experience, Google did not make a cent from it. Yet, from streaming cricket live, YouTube was able to see the potential in streaming sports events live. YouTube is ready to change the world of live sports viewing.
