To Stream or Not to Stream? The Future of Live Sports Distribution

The wildly popular U.S. men's college basketball face-off known as March Madness offered a teachable moment this spring. Thanks to a partnership between CBS and Turner Sports, not only was more of the tournament shown live on TV than ever before, but every game was streamed online for free. And here's the kicker: viewership in both domains was up over last year. In the case of online, way up.

That's significant because an oft-heard argument among broadcast networks, rights holders and others is that streaming live sports on the Internet and on mobile devices cannibalizes their cherished TV ratings. In fact, March Madness is the latest in a series of high-profile sporting events – including the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and the 2010 World Cup in South Africa – that suggest the opposite may be true: live streaming can happily live side by side with TV viewership, and may even enhance it.

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To Stream or Not to Stream? The Future of Live Sports Distribution