The coolest game on ice, the National Hockey League (NHL), has partnered with Sling Media Inc., which will allow users to clip or grab short segments of TV shows online and upload them to the company's Web site.
The terms of the deal are owners of the Slingbox will be allowed to record their favorite hockey clips and post them on the Sling Web site. To begin the uploaded clips will be searchable by each team. Hopefully they'll expand that to players and maybe specific actions as well.
This is a good deal for Slingbox in that they now have the bragging rights to offering professional sports content on their site. For the NHL, they've had a hard time drawing large TV audiences, so the Internet is a great way to have hockey content that fans like put up for a larger audience to see.
"Clip+Sling makes it extremely easy for fans to share a priceless moment with others, dramatically changing the way consumers socialize around TV," said Jason Hirschhorn, president of Sling's entertainment group.
CBS (CBS-A) already has a deal in place with Slingbox to upload clips from their programming also. Clips will be able to be monetized through selling advertising against them.
What a service like Slingbox is doing is taking the ability to watch a TV not only when you want, but where you want. Typically some of the sports and other media companies are fearful of the new service, while Major League Baseball has been one of their leading opponents.
Comment Preview