Posted in Media
4 comments
09/15 2010

On Blogs, Embeddable Video And The NFL (A Plea)

Posted by Dan Levy.

Yes, this is the second Blogger Fantasy League-related post today, but this has less to do with Will Brinson ripping my roster than actual substantive ways to improve sports blogs, the NFL’s relationship with online media and, well, the internet in general.

Embeds.

I’ve mentioned this before and I’ll scream it as long as I need to: it’s too easy to steal video these days for major organizations to not just bite the proverbial bullet and allow sites to embed video. This isn’t just an NFL issue. FIFA is the worst. MLB is close (at least MLB encodes their video that makes it incredibly easy to steal. Shhh.) But the NFL can do something about it. And that’s where you come in.

When the members of the BFL were graciously offered time with Greg Aiello and Brian McCarthy of the NFL’s PR staff, the major topic of conversation became embeddable video. They listened. They understood where we were coming from. Did any of us expect them to change their policy right then and there? We’re pie-in-the-sky bloggers, but we aren’t that pie-in-the-sky. It’s going to take work, and more than 12 people telling them to change. Again, that’s where you come in.

Today, the NFL sent around their first Top Ten Plays of the Week video link. It’s fantastic, and a perfect opportunity for something to go viral.

If THIS VIDEO (LINK) was embeddable, it would have been the featured post on 300 different websites within an hour. Sure, it has over 50,000 views on the NFL.com site, but I’ll bet if they allowed that video to be embedded we’d double that number in a few hours.

How could it possibly hurt the league to give us a tiny morsel of their proprietary video content? I’m not naive enough to think they’d give us full games, or even highlights of every game (which would be nice). But one video a week? Your top plays, that you hand pick? Your top plays, with ads from your sponsors at the beginning of every video, all across the internet on hundreds of sites?

How is this a bad idea? Not only can the NFL embed an ad before their video, but that kind of thing is incredibly easy to track. With the video (and player) housed on their server, all the hits or pageviews or plays or whatever aggregative term you want to use to charge sponsors even more money, is all built in for the league.

You give us the content — once a week, or once a day, or once an hour — and we’ll play it. You control the message. We make it viral. Not a YouTube shot taken off a DVR with someone’s cell phone. Not an animated gif image. Actual video, that you create.

(Please vote in the poll above and hopefully we can get enough people involved to show the NFL we’re seriously not going to stop asking for video.)

Help us help you. We all grow together.

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Posted on September 15, 2010 at 6:23PM
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  1. Biff Lohman
    09/15 2010

    Youtube pays people to make videos and post them to the site. Some of them make $10k per month. Why can’t youtube share ad revenue with the NFL and allow embedding?

  2. Ben Koo
    09/15 2010

    ESPN has a deal with Youtube at this point and a lot of MSM companies have actually been compensated well for having their content on youtube.

    At some point a pro league will go this route but I think in the short term they’ll remain stubborn thinking a pot of gold is out there for them to exclusively hold the video rights on their own digital properties.

  3. PSA: Good Sir, A Moment of Your Time?
    09/15 2010

    [...] friend Dan Levy over at OnTheDLPodcast and Press Coverage is working to champion a cause that I would LOVE to see effected by NFL.com; the league should release more embeddable video [...]

  4. todd
    09/15 2010

    you people (nfl players) should be ashamed of your selfs nobody made you play football you did it for the money only anybody who says different is a liar period. tom brady payton maning drew brees are not earnest people they have plenty of money and dont care about anybody but themselfs. if they did they would think about the people that work at the stadiums who will be the ones who will pay for this so called work stoppage . i have watched football my whole life and wanted my son to do the same if he cant play it himself.you have wrecked a great game because of your greed. tom, peyton and drew. you have lost my respect but i guess that does not bother people like you you have lost all asspect of reality good for you you really suck sorry to say