Fair play to the team at IP&TV News who got a real global exclusive in the video content and sports space in their latest newsletter.

The question of how to police broadcast content and more to the point monetize it is something bedeviling every media and content publisher today. Broadcast companies pay big bucks for the live experience and the match highlights but often times goals or interesting passages of play end up on social media thanks to everyones capacity now to pause, rewind, record on your mobile phone and upload to wherever. Today the guys in IP&TV News have a revelation that will have sports organizations across the world taking note.

What’s that sez you?

Empowering rugby fans to edit their own video mashups using broadcast quality tv standard footage.

Rugby has been very quick to harness the viewing power of youtube with match highlights available after Six Nations matches. Some of that can be distressing viewing as was the case with our weekend Paris match. But here’s an example of a similar game with happier memories for us.

World Rugby’s Murray Barnett outlined a new departure for a sports organization.

“Let’s say, for instance, that you’re reading a sports article online. If the blogger or journalist in question was looking to illustrate a specific point about a team’s defensive frailties, wouldn’t it make sense for them to be able to offer a video compilation of the incidents under discussion? And what about a fan wanting to make a similar compilation, either to prove a point, or simply share on social?”

Surely this can only be good for the sport? Certainly, with so much sports video out there, and with video editing technology so readily available and easy to use, it makes sense that the ability to do so isn’t confined to the Carraghers and Nevilles of the world.

Murray Barnett stresses that, when it comes to claimed content, there is as much enthusiasm for it as opposition at World Rugby.

He explains: “From the fans’ perspective we’re delighted if a fan goes and puts a mash up of their ten favourite tries from the rugby world cup: that we like. What we don’t like is people trying to monetise off the back of ripping our content off. The Rugbydumps and Rugby Heavens of this world, they’re making money from using our content for free, which other people pay a lot of money for.

“The other issue, which is also important, is quality. We would prefer to give people access to be able to create those mash ups, using our high quality content that we put up on YouTube, rather than have them rip up crappy versions of our content, and reflecting the sport in a bad way.”

Murray revealed that World Rugby is presently exploring a tool for their website that would enable users to access content, do some basic editing, and upload it to YouTube. The copyright, in this instance, would still belong to World Rugby (and so would any advertising revenue), but the chance to customise top quality content, and to post it, would be placed in the hands of the user.

The implications of this kind of approach are potentially huge for sports rights owners. Imagine if every time a fan posted Premier League content online the Premier League would receive revenue. “It helps with the whole fan engagement,” Murray adds, “and the customised content becomes a much richer viewing experience than just plonking up the content that we pump out, because we’re obviously editing for a mass audience but there are lots of very talented people out there.”

You can read the full article here.

In the meantime anyone else looking to edit content for nothing send cvs this way! (Joke!)