NBC vs Fanboys vs Sports Talk Radio vs The Olympics

I enjoyed the conversations discussing my position on NBA Players in the Olympics. The sports world is its own social network where much is said , written and quickly forgotten about anything and everything that can be argued about. My last post included.

The sports world however is on an amateur scale when it comes to arguing for the sake of arguing compared to the world of technology fanboys. They are about to see just how overmatched they are

It all starts with this “No Olympics video is allowed to be shown online on any website other than NBCOlympics.com“

Translated, this means that no Olympics video is allowed on Youtube, Veoh or any video sharing site. It means that if you are an Olympic athlete and you want to post video of your Gold Medal winning, world record performance on your Facebook or Myspace page, those sites may just get a takedown notice saying you dont have those rights, leaving the dreaded “this video has been removed…..” text in its place.

If you stayed up all night to watch an amazing finish to an event that you wanted to share with friends, forgettaboutit. Unless you plan on making an expensive fair use legal argument, you re going to be running afoul of the NBC legal department.

For all things Olympics video online, its NBCOlympics.com or nothing.

All of which is fighting words to the very vocal the internet and Youtube can do no wrong fanboys. They will scream, yell and comment spam and response video to the point of hyperventilation. They will do interviews on every sports, technology and cable news show. It will become a multi platform, multi media issue. They will be loud

It will also send the message to the sports world that the Olympics is driven by money. A fact that will resonate every time someone watches the Olympics, except hopefully between the gun and the tape and the starting and ending whistles of events. Which of course means it will be sports talk radio fodder 24×7 on every radio dial in every city in America with ESPN segments everywhere covering the “controversy”

The Olympics will of course be a major topic of conversation this summer, it will be interesting to see how much of the conversation will be about the athletes and which world, technology or sports will have more influence on NBC and their policies.