Delays And Crowds

It's a British Bank Holiday so I'm doing what any sane individual would do - sitting in Lords watching the cricket.

Unfortunately the game is being covered live on Sky Sports and I'd estimate that under five hundred people share my nirvana.

In the Midlesex clubhouse one of the interesting things to note is the delay between the actual action and the live transmission on Sky. It's as much as twenty seconds. Interesting to note since this is longer than the average buffering time for live event streaming over the Internet.

I'm not sure if any of this is deliberate (eg to sync the TV transmission to mobile and web). It certainly seems a lot longer than I remember in the past and maybe enough time to make an in play bet, even.

The second thing that occurs to me on seeing yet another empty sports stadium (the curse of Welsh rugby that has previously been commented on on this blog), is that there surely is a huge role for Groupon and their ilk to play in building up live sports audiences. Has it been tried ? Does anyone know ?