

Ustream hands over user IPs to UFC - ujeezy
http://newteevee.com/2010/08/02/ustream-hands-over-users-ip-addresses-to-ufc/

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jacoblyles
There's actually a cottage industry that's popped up selling discount PPVs.
They sell a low-quality internet stream for $5 or so. From an economic
perspective, it's an interesting phenomenon. You can see the demand that fails
to clear at the market price.

For a sport still struggling for a cultural foothold, the aggressive anti-
piracy actions of the UFC may eventually do it more harm than good. The pay
per views are an expensive product, and the free cable shows aren't available
in as many homes as the internet. In the long run the promotion would almost
certainly benefit from being more open with their footage, especially that of
older fights, until Georges St. Pierre is as popular a name as Lebron James.

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ja27
They do at least stream all the back episodes of The Ultimate Fighter for
free.

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mistermann
Watching UFC over streaming sucks big time, but I've done it as paying ~$50
when its just me watching is just too much.

I wonder what kinda revenues they'd make if they did their own low quality
streaming for say $10 - this way, if you have friends over, you'll opt for the
$50 HD version, but for a single person, $10 is reasonable.

I'd bet there's a huge segment of the market they are missing out on.

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rewind
The UFC has contracts in place with their PPV partners. They aren't legally
able to undercut them by running cheap streams.

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RK
Why wouldn't the PPV partners get some of the streaming money?

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rewind
I have no idea, but if their business model is selling PPVs for $50 and
keeping $25, I don't think they'd be thrilled at the prospect of the UFC
selling streams for $10 and giving them $5.

My guess is that it's not the UFC that has a problem with it. I'm sure they'd
be happy to throw a $30 stream on the Web and keep all the revenue. But keep
in mind that they would be nothing without their PPV partners, and they will
need them for a long time still, so there are a lot of issues.

Also, keep in mind that the PPV partners are in the same group as the music
industry, newspapers, book publishers, etc. They are going to try to hold on
to this model as long as they can instead of embracing the new one that's
obviously coming at them a lot faster than they'd like. The UFC might not like
it, but they still need to play their game for the foreseeable future.

I'm just speculating though.

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niekmaas
Even though I understand that the UFC wants to protect their revenues I'm
disappointed by their actions. I don't watch UFC streams but I do watch soccer
streams when my favorite teams in The Netherlands. I do this because I live in
the United States and watching an illegal stream is the only way possible for
me to watch those games. If this is the beginning of the end for illegal
sports streams than a lot of people living abroad are going to be hurt by it.

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noarchy
I have a similar problem when wanting to watch pro cycling events, admittedly
a bit of a niche market. Living in North America, you're pretty much out of
luck, except when the Tour de France is running.

Most of the pirate streams for cycling are Eurosport streams. I've seen that
Eurosport, along with a few other networks, offer paid streaming, but they
don't want my money since I live in North America. So this will keep me
hunting for streams wherever I can find them.

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jim_h
The people watching those streams were probably not going to pay to watch it
anyways. They didn't lost much profit.

If anything they probably gained more viewers who might pay to see the next
event.

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kierank
I'm surprised Ustream capitulated so easily. In the UK release of IP addresses
would have required a court order afaik.

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ScottWhigham
I don't think it is 'capitulating'. UStream's service was being used against
its TOS by these users whose actions threatened the health of UStream. UStream
can't afford a $500k-$2m legal battle with {UFC | WWE | whoever does PPV}.
This is win-win-lose for UStream IMO:

* Win #1 - users who were causing harm to the company are no longer allowed in

* Win #2 - UStream has served notice that they won't allow this sort of behavior.

* Lose - a small percentage of people who are not really the target market for UStream's advertisers _and_ who actually read the press release are put off by this action

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talbina
I wonder what Justin.tv would have done.

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ujeezy
Justin.tv was also subpoenaed, but hadn't gotten a comment back to NewTeeVee
when that post was published. I'm curious as well.

