Live Events’ TV Rights Complicated by 3D

Negotiating 3D distribution rights for live TV events such as sports has become a complicated task as content owners, licensees, traditional distributors and new distributors seeking them all are at the table, industry executives said in interviews. “In terms of rights?” said Terry Denson, vice president of content strategy and acquisition for Verizon. “It’s cloudy. It’s real cloudy."

Years ago, distributors licensed the “rights in all formats that were now known or may be developed, on Earth or anywhere throughout the universe,” Denson said. That’s how the boilerplate contract language read at the time, he said. “Things aren’t that way anymore. For the most sophisticated negotiations, every single element of media is individually negotiated. The question is where does 3D sit? Where does HD sit?"

In many cases, legacy rights holders have the 3D rights, at least for now, said Frank Hawkins, partner at media consultant Scalar Media Partners. “That means they're the ones that are going to be controlling the decisions until the next contract rolls around."

So companies have experimented, yielding discrete events such as Comcast’s production of the Masters golf tournament and the upcoming Major League Baseball All-Star game. With so few 3D-ready TV sets in homes today, the initial stakes are low, executives said. “I think a lot of people are going to be willing to experiment in 3D as long as it’s a financially neutral proposition,” Hawkins said. “Even if there’s nothing in the short run, if somebody else is paying for them to learn, and they see a financially positive result a few years down the line, they're going to learn."

CE makers are behind the growth of 3D today, Denson and Hawkins said. “As the CE market is stimulated, then a customer may want to consume some 3D content,” Denson said. “They may start looking around again, shopping for a distributor or provider who will actually deliver that content to them.” So programmers and distributors are also getting involved, stimulating the market with high-profile events, he said.

As rights get sorted out, the cost of producing live 3D telecasts is coming down, said Sandy Climan, CEO of 3ality Digital, a 3D production company that’s worked with major sports leagues. “We are now into the next phase of 3D sports production, where the camera positions for 3D and 2D will be integrated and there’s enough experience and understanding to generate both the 3D edit and 2D edit from shared camera positions.”