[hugh]

Golf lovers who can’t be in front of the television watching all seventy two holes of the Masters Golf Tournament this week can still have a chance to watch a lot of the action thanks to a new smartphone application from TSN.

The Canadian sports networked has launched “TSN Mobile: Masters Live, ” and iPhone and iPod touch application which lets users watch live streams from all four rounds of the tournament.

 

[leaffan1967]

You have to hand it to TSN for releasing these special apps (Masters and Tradecentre). I know I used the Tradecentre app in class back in March over Wifi on the iPod touch, and the quality of the video stream was excellent! I am certain that the streams from Augusta will at least be of the same quality.

Kudos on another excellent (free) app.

 

[hugh]

What I don't understand is why?

Why would TSN spend all the money to develop an app and spend the money to stream prime content without any return?

 

[beanagee1]

Hugh:

My sense is that it does not cost that much money to develop an App for content that you already control. I also think that they are likely to repackage an App from ESPN and may not need spend much to change it for their needs. Why bother doing it at all? I suspect they are learning how to do it for now, but they will ultimately charge a small amount for viewing or sell ads.

 

[JugglingReferee]

bean is right. They're getting people accustomed to content, and then can later charge for the content, or serve ads and show usage to advertisers.

 

[hugh]

Giving it away is never a good long term business model.

Even 99 cents would have said that it has value.

 

[QuickSilver]

I don't think it would have sold a lot at .99 to be honest. The app is ok but in no way would I pay for it and I am a huge Masters fan. I do not think a ton of dev time went into the app so it was probably fairly cheap to produce.

 

[hugh]

Quicksilver, you have validated my point. If its not even worth a buck then why bother? Why spend money developing a product that you give away?

Yeah its cool but I can't figure out the business model.

 

[Tikker]

Gets the name out
it's advertising just in itself. Sportsnet doesn't do it