Speaking of Poor Execution

A few days ago, in another life, I mentioned the fact that one of my pet peeves was taking really good ideas and fucking up the execution so badly that you turn away not only potential customers, but also the potential to actually execute it correctly. Today, we have another case-in-point, with the mis-handling of online broadcasting of the World Cup.

First, read this from BoingBoing. I've seen info from others about others having received this "anticipatory cease and desist." We'll leave alone the fact that BoingBoing is hardly likely to have been a site that would broadcast clips of the World Cup. But, let's just look at this way, from a consumer's point of view.

Most of the games for the World Cup don't start until mid-to-late-afternoon in Germany. This means, that here in the United States (particularly in the Central TimeZone, where I am) the games come on in the morning and early afternoon. I am at work during that time. Lots of people who would want to watch the games are at work during that time. So, it's a little hard (see my prior post about the World Cup - because it's actually impossible) for me to watch The World Cup live on ESPN. So, ideally, I could subscribe to a service that will broadcast, live on the internet, English language broadcast of The World Cup. I'd probably $25 for this. Hell, I might even pay more than $25 for this.

But, InFront Sports & Media is running the broadcast and licensing for the World Cup. In their infinite wisdom and, I'm assuming, prompted by the broadcast television, they have not licensed for broadcast on the internet to any one. Instead, the only internet-based way to get the games is via "live highlight clips" that I can subscribe to (and receive on my fucking phone!?!). My only guess is that they did this so that people are forced to watch the broadcast television telecasts. But, this has resulted in two deficiencies (and losses of revenue) for them. First, I want to watch the games not just the highlights, so I am forced to video tape the games from the Univision feed. Which means, I'm not going to subscribe to their highlights because I don't want to "ruin" it before I get a chance to watch it. So, we both lose: I don't get an English language live feed and they lose out on A) subscription fees and B) advertising fees for any internet broadcast.

I've got to imagine that there are others that would pay handsomely to be able to watch the world cup games live over the internet. But, no, we are treated like criminals because they're afraid we might store the games on our hard-drives and that someone might re-broadcast them (without commercials, oh no!). It seems to me that I can already do the former anyway (thank you Orb and even just a simple VHS tape). And that the latter could be taken care of via legal mechanisms in place (copyright laws) that prevent the re-broadcast of sporting events without the express written consent of Major League Baseball.

I wonder if anyone will be making their Orb accounts public and releasing the videos? If I could record to my hard-drive, I would.