Live Video - Year Two

“Wimbledon Live” is again being offered at the 2007 Wimbledon Championships. This year, fans will again have the option of watching live streaming video from 9 courts including Centre and Number One courts, as well as interviews and videos of past matches from the archive. Fans are the real winners with this new technology because if they are at home and watching the matches on TV, they can choose to watch another
match online. Conversely, if one is sneaking a peek from work, this offers a smorgasbord of matches when one has only an Internet connection. Some may complain that there is one 30 second commercial at the beginning of each video stream in addition to the cost of paying for the Wimbledon Live service (i.e. $24.99 for the tournament pass and $4.99-$7.99 per day), but one 30 second ad doesn’t bother me. On feeds from certain courts, there is just the raw match video feed without any TV commentary and on others you can listen to the TV announcers as well. I really enjoy the TV commentary, but in the end I care more about watching the matches that interest me. Offering fans the chance to be the “director” of their “Wimbledon telecast” is (part of) the future as technology advances. Bring it on…






