May 2, 2015; Las Vegas, NV, USA; Floyd Mayweather (black/gold trunks) and Manny Pacquiao (yellow/red trunks) box during their world welterweight championship bout at MGM Grand Garden Arena. Mayweather won via unanimous decision. Mandatory Credit: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports
The big fight this weekend was destined to put new live streaming apps Meerkat and Periscope in one corner and television providers in the other.
And if there was one thing that did not disappoint Saturday night, it was their ability to provide users with free live streams of Mayweather’s historic victory.
The problems started with the fight’s availability.
Viewers could not watch the matchup on TV if they did not want to pay $100 pay-per-view access. And if you were not a diehard boxing fan who could travel to Las Vegas and spend an insane amount of money to sit next to celebrities in the MGM Grand – you probably were not going to watch it in person.
So what options did you have to watch the fight? Well, you could have followed a live blog and missed every punch that was dealt.
Or you could have turned to controversial new live video streaming apps Meerkat and Periscope.
And that is exactly what happened.
People pointed their cell phone cameras at their TV and streamed the fight through Periscope and Meerkat. A few brave individuals streamed the fight directly from the casino. It is not easy to put an exact number on how many streams there were given that many of them were taken down only to be revived with a different name.
If you worked the system, jumping from stream to stream, you could have caught every round for free.
Of course, the quality was pretty lackluster, but you do not expect free food to be of high quality either do you?
Still. Free is free and free is good. At least for everyone but the television networks.
Live Streaming apps present a complex situation for pay-per-view TV. They provide streams, not downloads. Trying to prevent a stream is like trying to stop somebody from shooting a video.
And while Showtime and HBO were aggressively filing lawsuits against sites that were streaming the fight, they were helpless against Periscope and Meerkat.
We all tuned in to see the fight of the century, little did we know we would be watching two.
