Triplecast
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The Triplecast, also referred to as the Olympics Triplecast, was an experimental pay-per-view telecast in the United States during the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.
NBC, which had broadcast rights to the Games, thought that people would pay $95 to $170 to see events live, which would normally be shown on tape delay on the network in prime time. By the time the games began, relatively few people had ordered the package, which featured Red, White and Blue channels.
The Blue channel featured swimming events during the first week, and track and field events during the second week. The White channel featured many individual sports, such as gymnastics, boxing, rowing, equestrian and other minor sports. The Red channel featured team sports, such as basketball, baseball, volleyball, water polo, and team handball. A special three-button remote control with the colors of the channels as the buttons was offered by some cable operators for free as a lure to sign up for the service [1].
By the middle of the Games, they simulcast the Triplecast on CNBC utilizing a three-way split screen during several hour-long blocks. This was an apparent attempt to boost sagging sales in what amounted to an infomercial.
NBC, which partnered with Cablevision for the experiment, would lose millions of dollars, with one estimate putting their losses at $100 million.
[edit] Legacy
- Because of the failure of the Triplecast, NBC decided not to use pay-per-view to cover any future games. After only NBC showed the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, NBC decided to use cable television partners for its subsequent telecasts. CNBC and MSNBC showed the 2000 Summer Games and 2002 Winter Games along with NBC, and three newer acquisitions (Bravo and USA Network in English and Telemundo in Spanish) joined the coverage for the 2004 Summer Games, and Universal HD was added for the 2006 Winter Games. This arrangement is expected to continue into the future; NBC has rights to the Olympics until 2012. (CBS, which had the broadcast rights to the 1994 and 1998 Winter Olympic Games, also used a cable partner, TNT.)
- Triplecast did demonstrate that pay-per-view coverage of sports events was possible. In 1994, the National Football League introduced NFL Sunday Ticket and it has been more successful. In fact, the NFL got DirecTV to pay over $700 million for eight years of exclusive Sunday Ticket coverage in the U.S. starting in 2006. Also available are Major League Baseball's MLB Extra Innings, the National Basketball Association's NBA League Pass, the National Hockey League's NHL Center Ice, Major League Soccer's MLS Direct Kick, college football and college basketball packages, and NASCAR In-Car.
