NFL ON THE WEB? MARK CUBAN THINKS IT COULD WORK

Mark Cuban, who pioneered streaming video with Broadcast.com in the 1990s (becoming a billionaire when he sold it to Yahoo! in 1999), thinks Google would be making a savvy move if it obtained the rights to air the NFL’s Sunday Ticket. As for questions about whether the Internet has sufficient bandwidth to deliver football to tens of millions of viewers, Cuban told AllThingsD.com that it does … sort of. “It’s one thing to originate it and distribute it,” Cuban said during an email exchange with the Wall Street Journal-affiliated site, “It’s another to make sure that every peered Internet provider will get it to the home at a quality Google wants it delivered.” And even when it is delivered to the home in top quality, there’s no assurance that every viewer’s wifi hook-up is working correctly. Cuban acknowledged that he has never championed live programming online. “but I am softening,” he said. What may be changing his mind, he said, is that view