Why Does HBO Take Fights Off Youtube?

I don't think you're misisng anything. What you're saying has been argued all over the place by all sorts of people, laymen and expert alike. The people who make the decisions are just old school. They prob don't even use the internet.

 

yeah I dont get it either..some studios, record companys, sports leagues, etc. are very picky about what is put up on youtube.

A record company Sony BMG has their own youtube channel. They put up live performances, music videos, etc. and its great promotion. Instead of squashing stuff like that they are promoting it.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=sonybmg&view=videos

look at all the thousands of views their stuff gets. HBO could have its own channel and put up its old fights and other stuff. Heck I dont see any other way I am going to ever see Guinn vs Grant again (not saying its a great fight but I was just thinking about that BAD airiing earlier today ) I dont see them ever putting that fight up on HBO to show as a replay.

BTW yeah I know that Guinn vs Grant is up on youtube now but its not like its up there courtesy of HBO. They could see its taken down at any moment. And the guy who has it up has had his channel taken down before due to stuff like that.

 

They dont take out all the fights, just the recent ones.

If the fight is recent, don't upload it on youtube for about 6 months or so after the fight, in fear of it getting deleted/your accounts banned.

 

The thing is, they're fighting a losing battle, the sharers are always a step in front of their lawyers anyway. They think think theyre going to have any effect by getting a team of white shirts to fire off angry emails to youtube and rapidshare etc once a week? The internet is way too vast for their eyes soon they wuill realise this and embrace the technology

 

Ive seen them take fights down, read the post I did above..

 

Because it's not really HBO's job to do such. It's up to Top Rank to do that.

HBO owns the footage and if they don't want people to see it, they'll shut it down. It's stupid but it's nothing new.

Viacom does it constantly.

 

Not really. They don't make any money off of it. In their minds if it's not an immediate payback, it ain't worth it. There's where the issue lies to them.

Personally I see no problem with using older fights to hype up newer ones...that said? It's not their job. Top Rank has a marketing depot, use it.

 

I am VERY fuzzy on this, but I think a chunk of it has to do with the fact that HBO doesn't own 100% of the rebroadcast rights; they are also owned partially by the promoters. At some point I remember reading about this as part of the reason we don't have easily commercially available DVD sets - all the vested interests have never been able to sit down and sort out how everyone gets their cut.

This, of course, is stupid as there's now a vast underground economy for it and they (networks/promoters/whomever else has some ownership) have screwed themselves out of a potential considerable income.

There's a very good Thomas Hauser article in this somewhere as it is an interesting topic. But I don't think it's just HBO's decision - I think there are other interests that would have to agree to not be compensated for it.

From HBO's perspective, I'm sure the simple idea is that if it's freely available after the fact, more people will skip buying ppv's/HBO subscriptions and just wait for the postings. An online subscription service to HBO or ESPN makes great sense, but, again, I think runs into the problem of sorting out compensation for multiple interests.

Ok, did the google thing and found this, which is along those lines...

http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/boxing/news/story?id=3390712

 

Right. You don't want people saying "Why watch it I can catch it on youtube later?"

Then ratings tank or buys tank and then yer screwed.

It's a delicate line.

 

i agree 100% its a way off marketing your product and earning more money. theres no logical reason as to why they dont allow there fights to be watched online. i mean if theres a fight coming up and you never saw the guys fight before then you should be able to check them out. it would make sense for them to remove fights posted by us if they actually posted the fights themselfs

 

I noticed that too. I keep on looking for Ichiro Suzuki highlight vids on youtube, but the only ones I can find are in Ichiro's Japan playing days.

I'm not a big baseball fan, and sometimes I wanna see MLB highlights so that I might get more interested, but I cant find any decent YT ones.

Good thing the NBA arent such greedy asses when it comes to showing their player's highlight vids for free on youtube. Maybe that's part of the reason why they're becoming more and more popular worldwide.