Master’s article is a ridiculous Chicken Little scenario. I bet many who are on Optus (including myself) would not TV Now to check on betting legs. Personally I’d use Twitter or the many live update sites accessible from smartphones to get results. And if you aren’t hip with the latest smartphone I’m sure there are text based services. In fact, I bet Optus’ TV Now has very little impact on Telstra’s NRL rights. It is just a case of legal pissing to mark out boundaries.

The lack of vision by the NRL is frustrating but alas nothing new. But if you are going to take up Michael’s challenge you’d need to to have an idea of how NRL fans use the net (and how they don’t). It is interesting that as many NRL clubs are embracing social media the NRL as a whole is yet to work out who to embrace the Internet beyond Twitter and Facebook.

I quite like the how the NHL’s (US National Hockey League) Gamecenter Live works. All out of market games are shown on it for about US $120 per season. Can view it via iPhone, iPad or even Apple TV. Not saying Apple is where it is at or will be in the future. But smartphones, IPTV etc are great avenues for sporting organisations to start developing strategies for rather than whinging to the government and asking for changes to legislation.

I will say, though, that if the task is “Provide a large, distributed audience with the sound and vision of a football game” — even with the clause “along with competent commentary” added — then it’s relatively easy.

If the task is “Provide an existing large sporting-media collaboration with a new business model that’s at least as profitable as the old, and with a transition path that’ll be acceptable to all the stakeholders” — and by that I probably mean that mid- and upper-level managers won’t have to sack themselves — well, that’s rather different.

That overall is the problem facing the AFL, NRL and their media partners. They all want their respective organisations to continue to exist more or less as they are now. I don’t think that can be done — though that’s all gut feelings rather than science.

It’s easy to say a ruling means “revolutionary new ways of engaging fans and monetising their eyeballs” must be found. That much is obvious.

It’s a tad harder to generate those “revolutionary” ideas.

People have been mentioning for a decade that “old” media organisations need to find ways to monetise, etc, and everyone says, yes yes, they need to think up something … without coming up with too many viable suggestions.