Betting big on sin?

On the occasion of Fat Tuesday, a day to celebrate gluttony and clogging of the arteries, it seems only appropriate that today's topic focuses on another of the deadly sins. Or specifically, the kind of sin carriers can profit from. Of the seven big ones (envy, pride, gluttony, greed, sloth, lust and wrath) only lust and greed could be satisfied through electronic means, though sloth would qualify somewhere on the list.

Lust of course is the easy one. While a handful of carriers--notably independent telcos serving small towns in the Midwest and South--have struck a chord with their local communities by not carrying any adult movies on their pay-per-view channels, tier 1 carriers won't have that option. It's perhaps a sad statement about our society, but offering adult video content is required.

Greed, however, is a little more complex but also where the opportunity to differentiate from cable and satellite really lies. It's also where the vendor community comes into play. When companies like SBC, Verizon and BellSouth talk about offering unique content packages, often times the discussion will turn to sports programming. Offering different camera angles to views might be interesting to a small segment of diehard sports fans, but integrating data that can be used by gamblers (the greed factor) is a real differentiator. We're already seeing hints of this in the sneak peeks of telco video.

During his keynote presentation at the International CES, Bill Gates demonstrated one potential service Microsoft TV might be developing (notice all the qualifiers) for SBC. The application would allow users to watch one baseball game on a large central window while a series of other games was shown on small windows off to the side. All the while, a running total of fantasy points are tallied at the bottom of the screen for a user theoretically participating in a fantasy baseball league.

Whether or not this is healthy or good for society is a question that will be debated by psychologists or moralists. Like it or not, though, there's an intrinsic relationship between gambling and sports that won't be broken anytime soon. Vendors, which are slowly taking responsibility for developing differentiating applications as the big carriers continue their merger dances and "synergize" employees, will be stuck in the middle of the debate.

E-mail me at vvittore@primediabusiness.com.