vsprabhakara1

>And what happens when wider direct distribution means that the sports world no longer needs ESPN's cable reach to get to viewers?

Its not the viewers the sports leagues value ESPN for. Its the money ESPN pays them for the right to broadcast to their viewers. That's why the NFL Network is a step-child network that can't maximize its value as the NFL can't make more from it that they can selling to ESPN, Fox, CBS and NBC

I would classify this as the most rational "insider alarmist" version of the anti-unbundling argument. There will certainly be discomfort upon the arrival of unbundling, but this article ignores long-term adjustments of the ecosystem. Here's five gaps that aren't considered:

1) Bundling will still exist, but just not in the current 100 channel, one-size-fits-all variety. Media conglomerates will bundle directly to consumer - that's how Disney gets distribution for the SOAP channel, they bundle it with ESPN to the cable provider. Various channels may team up. Bundling across media types will happen (MSNBC + NYTimes; Fox News + WSJ). Massive direct-to-consumer marketing groups will be formed.

2) Sports Rights will cost less, not more - Sports leagues know hoe much ESPN makes, and they make sure they get their cut. Eventually, costs will decrease.

3) Sports providers will differentiate their product offering, and be free to sell different subscriptions to different tiers of fans (TV, internet streaming, mobile devices, value add services). The same, to a lesser degree, will apply to other genres

4) The average cable bill may be $40, but the key is what is the LTV of a cable customer (including all services - cable companies make profit in other areas like internet and phone that help keep that number down.

5) Companies will manage their bottom lines, revenue be damned. If ESPN can cut costs (rights, headcount, production, distribution) as it loses revenue, there's still hope. Maybe its not as huge of a profit, but it can hang pretty close and probably become significantly more capital efficient.

*I worked at ESPN as a Director of Finance & Strategy, and founded Fanvibe (YC S'10) that partnered with the NBA, NHL, and Comcast. And I can't wait for unbundling.

Generally speaking, stats are public domain as they are a public event that occurred. Because a sports league may disagree with this position doesn't mean that it isn't true. However, its entirely possible to violate a given site's TOU by scraping the data, it doesn't mean the data itself isn't allowed to be compiled or distributed.

IANAL, but I worked at ESPN and founded Fanvibe (YC S'10), and worked quite a bit with the leagues and lawyers on rights-related topics.

>But seriously, ditch the real time sharing stuff. I don't know why so many todo lists focus on that.

I think what you're missing here is THE TRACTION. They have 10s of thousands of users already, and they are using the app, as explained in the article. I would imagine the team has enough analytics in there to know what features people are using, and talks to their customers to understand the analytics better.

What's the reason for your suggestion? What you envision? Or what people actually do with an app based on thousands of users? I would guess the Anylist guys use the latter.

Plenty of things go wrong everyday at companies like FB that people don't see from the outside. If tons of things go wrong, and FB fails (whatever that means), entrepreneurship is the biggest thing Zuckerberg will have left.

For Fanvibe (YC S'10) we looked at a variety of sports stats providers, including TSN, Stats, and SportsDirect (who we used). These are the guys that license all the structured data to ESPN and others. No matter who you work with, its pretty painful to use this data and their schemas. And they all make you sign paying contracts before you can play with the data.

We used services like Superfeedr to grab a variety of RSS feeds, including ESPN's, to grab headlines.

ESPN, CBS Sports, the Yahoo Fantasy Football API are all middlemen when it comes to sports. The only thing they own is original video content (talking heads, not highlights) and their headlines & articles. Don't look to them for the solution. Its a big step forward for an organization like ESPN to do this, but its going to be much slower than the speed of tech-focused companies that are the usual on HN.

From my experience, better to build around ESPN and others than to try to work with them to push innovation forward.

Disclaimer: I'm one of the founders of Fanvibe, and also used to work at ESPN.

SF / Bay Area, FULL-TIME & INTERN

beRecruited.com (http://berecruited.com) is disrupting the high school to college athletic recruiting market. We connect high school students to college coaches across the country, helping students earn scholarships. We're the largest company in the space, with room still to grow.

We're 3 YC founders, we've got over 1 mm registered users, revenue via our freemium service, and plenty of funding from relevant investors. We're relaunching the site in just a few weeks, and this is a chance to get on board and drive meaningful product development and influence what we do next.

We're a small team of 5 looking to add another full-stack RoR developer.

Definitely get in touch if you: * Combine a strong overall computer science background with a passion for web development, particularly Ruby on Rails * You're equally at home writing complex SQL queries, architecting scalable rails services, and building beautiful html/css/javascript interfaces * You've demonstrated your abilities writing top-quality web or open source software * You have a strong product sense and excellent technical judgement.

Here's some recent articles about how we're improving people's lives every day. * http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jan/30/help-for-reaching... * http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/high_school/2011/09/22/201... * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3540289

More detail here: http://howto.berecruited.com/pages/jobs Or email us directly and mention you're from HN: [email protected]

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking for. Feel free to email me at vish AT berecruited DOT com with more details

"This means that the intellectual average of student athletes is highly likely to be lower than the average of non-athletes"

This applies to Michigan specifically. They are willing to make academic sacrifices for the sake of their athletic programs and (maybe) a well-rounded student body. Not all schools operate this way.

That's awesome to hear. Would love to hear more about your experiences. We hear from student athletes all the time asking for advice on how to manage school and sport. Drop me a line at vish AT berecruited DOT com.

While there might be a slight amount of skewing due to the fact that we're an online service, we have a very large data set relative to the population we're speaking about. Also, given the process of college admissions today, its fair to say that most people applying to college have access to a computer.

In addition, there is more than the NCAA, such as the NAIA and Junior Colleges. We take all that into account.

Its a bit more than a "want". They are telling this to colleges that offer that major, are taking the necessary coursework, etc.

To your question: I'll have beRecruited revisit in a few years when we have more students graduating college than still in it.

That's great background information. I wonder what the primary driver of switching out is

We did something very similar to hire our designer with Fanvibe (now we're with beRecruited.com) - we ran a normal job post, then asked everyone to submit a rough mock-up of a mobile site design for Fanvibe in addition to their resume and portfolio. We quickly got to three top options out of 100, interviewed those 3 and hired a designer who is amazing and still works with us. I'm a big believer in "real-world" challenges before hiring someone

EDIT: We likely would have not even interviewed our top 3 choices based on resume / portfolio alone

Yes, primarily for the team and our expertise in sports and mobile. However, there are some pieces we built for Fanvibe that we can apply to beRecruited - but not much on the user-facing side.

Yes, primarily for the team and our expertise in sports and mobile. However, there are some pieces we built for Fanvibe that we can apply to beRecruited - but not much on the user-facing side.

DirectTV has a strategy of using sports as an acquisition/retention tool, and paying handsomely for it. They also have exclusive NCAA Tournament content - like being able to watch 4 games at once on your TV. Sunday Ticket is the biggest driver here, though, for sure.

True, but blackouts are relatively rare in the NFL, unless its 2009 and you're the Raiders. In fact, the Chargers were about 1,000 tickets away from a blackout earlier this year, and posted this on their Twitter account, and quickly sold enough tickets.

I recently did a bunch of research on this for my company Fanvibe. eMarketer, a research firm, estimates fans spend $500mm on premium content about fantasy, but the Fantasy Sports Trade Assoc. estimates the economic impact is about $4bn - the difference being people gambling "under the table". Look at what Fanduel is doing with regards to managing leagues and bets, and taking a cut.

just think back to why you played flipcup in college...

We'll look into the "Find Friends on Facebook" issue.

We are posting the flags to Facebook, and using the Twitter hashtag easter egg to show flags there too.

Great thoughts. We're actively working on revamping the "logged-out" user experience - you should see some changes within a week - and we'll incorporate some of your feedback.