Professional sports leagues and franchises have spent decades learning and perfecting the science of monetizing their live game broadcasts. Billion-dollar network contracts and lucrative local affiliations are now the strongest economic pillar for organizations that have become the toast of the global sports industry.

But even if you’re sitting as pretty as, say, Major League Baseball ($3.2 billion, seven-year contract with Turner Sports), you wouldn’t willingly leave money on the table, would you? If you had the ability to create a new revenue stream using existing assets, with almost no need for building new technology infrastructure, wouldn’t you go after it with both hands? And if you were a niche enterprise or a startup, with greater limitations and less room for error, wouldn’t you feel that instinct even more urgently?

The answer, of course, is yes. But the reality is, many of the largest and savviest sports entities aren’t doing enough to tap into their embarrassingly rich content resources and capitalizing on pay-per-view video opportunities.  There are almost innumerable ways to package and deliver sports video content – from social networks to personal blogs to niche online communities –  which means sport video publishers have never had so many ways to reach viewers. This fast-growing landscape provides powerful opportunities to disseminate content widely and gain a large global audience through content syndication.  

Here are just a few ways for a successful video distribution and syndication strategy:

Highlights. Forget SportsCenter or YouTube. Think customized highlights. This could be the top plays from the previous night’s action or unforgettable historical moments that built the legacy of a player, franchise or league – and everything in between. Steve Sabol’s genius turned NFL Films into a small cottage industry during the days of the VCR. Now imagine a supercharged, online version of that platform that allows instant access to preferred footage and individually curated content delivered directly to your inbox.

As the landscape for video distribution and discovery is becoming increasingly scattered and fragmented, InPlayer developed InPlayer Moment with the intention to satisfy the need for a highlighted, bite-sized content. By using this solution, content owners are able to break out an additional offering with Live PPV of key moments and offer those as separate viewing options to their end users. Viewers can watch the content they want, when they want – post-match interviews, the last minutes of a given match or anything else of interest with instant footage access. 

Classic contests. Boxing is the sporting world’s Jason Voorhees – routinely declared “dead” until, like clockwork, it comes storming back onto the scene. Fight fans can be found in greater numbers around the world than those in most other sports, and they are, by and large, stubborn and insatiable consumers. Many of them – who often pay upwards of three figures for a pay-per-view event – would undoubtedly pay a buck or two for a slickly packaged classic fight. Chances are, plenty would even pay a monthly fee for a service that would allow them to search and view a library of similar on-demand content.

Personal footage. The popularity of Michael Jordan and the 1990s-era Chicago Bulls laid the foundation for “The Last Dance,” the year’s biggest binge-able hit this side of “Tiger King.” But it was the content – locker room moments, archived footage, intimate original interviews – that made ESPN appointment viewing on Sundays back in the spring. Harnessing existing content assets, and in some cases packaging them with new ones, can breathe new life into a subject that makes it worthy of a long (and potentially valuable) afterlife.

Content syndication through the Web. Organizations and content owners these days are rarely satisfied with publishing content on a single website. For a video initiative to realize its full potential in terms of reach and engagement with target audiences, it needs to be disseminated through multiple channels. Broadcasters, studios, pay-TV operators, sports leagues and various content rights holders are developing more sophisticated distribution strategies by syndicating their content to third-party affiliates and partners. This results in growing exposure, bigger fan bases and new revenue opportunities. 

The sheer scope of the Web and explosive device landscape creates an opportunity to reach sports fans with relevant, engaging content on diverse properties outside the publisher’s own domain. InPlayer’s Syndication solution simplifies the dissemination of content through relevant channels, and provides the tools necessary to create a successful distribution strategy that drives traffic and helps video content reach its full audience potential. Broadcasters can simply and easily syndicate their content to third party publishers, partners and affiliates, removing the complexity of content delivery resulting in multiplied revenue for themselves and their partners. 

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