I also caught up a little with NBA Commissioner David Stern, another of the panelists in the USA Today session. I spent an intense amount of time several years ago covering his efforts to launch NBA.TV. At the time, the idea of the league as competitor with the rights holders was still fairly new. Now, the leagues, the rights holders and, in some cases, their advertisers as in the case of Bud TV, are all competing, especially online. His comments on that and some other issues:
On competition: “I think all of us are responding to the places our consumers are moving to. I think it’s just natural and woe is to the enterprise that doesn’t move there, whether it’s A-B or the sports leagues or the networks, we’re all developing additional components because that’s what our marketing partners want and our consumers have moved to. ... Sometimes it’s symbiotic and sometimes it’s dilutive but if I own a store on the street and there’s another store that’s going to open, the issue is should I own or should someone else own it. ... I think we can make it, if not symbiotic, supportive of what we’re trying to do in a cumulative way.
On Anheuser-Busch’s Bud TV: We’re meeting with A-B and talking about possibly producing for Bud TV. They’re a sponsor of 26 of our teams. They’re a sponsor of the NBA on ESPN, TNT, etc. so we see this as accretive and supportive.”
On Google Video, iTunes, etc.:  How has that gone? “Those are, in the short run, experimentation to say that we’re there and to test it. I don’t think the story is yet written on the long-term strategy of those endeavors. There are different league models. Some want to maintain the rich content for their very own; some are prepared to partner with others, and some are prepared to give content to others to drive them back to our own web site. We haven’t to rest on this one yet.”
On affiliate/network concern about Slingbox: “I think that’s a fair point but the question’s going to be who owns those rights and assuming that they’re properly exploited, how to monetize them. I think that it’s all very new and the amount’s being siphoned or maybe accreted because if you’re sitting in a bar and the game isn’t on and the only way you have access is through a cell phone and you’re getting the commercials also, and they’re home commercials, that remains to be seen—whether place shifting and time shifting should be treated the same by those of who value intellectual property.”