Live Streaming Video: Now How Much Would You Pay?
Time for us to get streaming people! Everybody on set! Photo by Ronaldo Ferreira via Flickr
As some of you might remember, I mentioned live streaming video in my 2010 Trend Predictions article. I think it is an area with a lot of potential as Leo Laporte seems to be proving with his TWiT.tv network, which is making him a pretty substantial living. So, we can take it for granted that a profit can be made doing live streaming video. I just don’t think it will be easy to do.
The first problem I see, if we’re looking at TWiT.tv as a model, is that live streaming isn’t profitable on its own, since the majority of Leo’s audience consumes his shows via podcast download. That means that, even for Leo Laporte, live streaming video needs to be accompanied by on demand access to the content via his website, a set top box or podcast download. That’s not surprising because getting significant advertising revenue is very difficult, since you need to get thousands of viewers at a specific time. That’s not easy with a local audience and is especially difficult if you need an international audience to reach the numbers you need.
Let’s assume though that you had content that people would prefer to watch live, such as a sporting event or a highly interactive show where the audience could ask questions via phone, video call or twitter. Since the show is highly geared towards being live, could you make enough money doing it? Let me rephrase that question. What is that live streaming content worth to the audience?
That’s a difficult question to answer because it hasn’t been fully put to the test yet. Until we see a lot more paid live streaming content on the web, we just won’t know. I do feel that certain events would do well with paid versions, such as streamed conference sessions, which could potentially save the viewer the cost of a plane ticket, a hotel room, restaurant expenses and whatever flu is going around the convention floor. Of course, since you can never get the full experience of a convention without being able to network, a straight convention stream would probably only fetch a fraction of the cost of a ticket. Maybe somewhere between a quarter and half the price.
While conference sessions might be one of the more profitable types of content to stream, sporting events have a lot of potential as well. People are willing to pay a lot to watch their favorite team play. That could be baseball, cricket, roller derby, etc. The question is, does the sport have enough of an audience that is willing to pay enough to support the streaming and are you able to spread the word to get that audience on board?
The most difficult of the three I’ve mentioned is the live call in style show. That type of show can be huge, but growing it to that size is the trick. Plus, most people expect those types of shows to be free. Maybe some people would pay to watch if Conan O’Brien did that type of show? (I hear he’s about to be available.) Some people probably would, but I’m definitely not one of them. How many people would pay though and what would they be willing to pay? $1, $2, maybe $5 a month? I think he’d be much better off paying the bills through advertising, but that’s mainly because his audience is fairly large and it’s unlikely that the majority of them would be willing to pay for what they previously got for free.
For smaller shows that had a strong niche audience, but not large enough to attract advertisers for sufficient sponsorships to make the show profitable, it would probably fall to donations or some sort of paid subscription to bring in revenue. The trick would be to allow for some means of show discovery for potentially new audience members. (Maybe a monthly or weekly free show?)
These are all questions that are going to be explored deeply over the next few years and maybe I’ll be a part of that exploration. Even if I’m not though, I’ll definitely watch as others struggle to shape this new form of the video medium into a viable business.
So, what would you want to watch streaming live over the internet? And what would you be willing to pay for it? Sound off in the comments below!
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I think it’s important to anyone creating streaming content to also have a podcast/archive component. It’s rare that I can just drop what I’m doing to tune into a live stream. But give me a podcast and there’s still a chance I’ll get to hear/view what you’re doing.
Niche sports seems like a good place to start. Especially something roller derby, which likely has a large national following, but probably not big local audiences. If I were a huge roller derby fan, I’d probably pay to watch matches from outside my area. Beyond that, who knows? The generic “call-in” style shows are the ones I like best. And as someone who has some experience with them, I can say that it’s difficult to grow an audience for this kind of program. Certainly, charging for that content would NOT increase audience size. Still, a few producers have managed to make some cash by offering sample shows for free and providing the full deal as a paid subscription. Not sure I’d want to do that. I think that, right now, in the history of all of this new media, producers should put the emphasize on making good content and building an audience. It’s still gonna be awhile before people really start making money in this space. If they ever do.