When CBS Sports began free online streaming of the NCAA Basketball Tournament a few years back, it was widely regarded as the network’s canary in the coal mine for wholly ad-supported online video. Track to 2009, and the experiment has proven such as success that CBS has taken program straight to your pocket – in the form of a streaing iPhone app. Last week, Mashable stated that CBS is reporting huge increases — 56% year over year increase in unique visitors and 65% increase in hours watched – largely as a result of a developer program that lets other sites easily link to the CBS video player.

And check out how these numbers affect the bottom line.

Source: Center for Media Research

But if mobile was the buzz this year, CBS and the NCAA should take a lesson from Barack Obama’s and turn to community for 2010.

It’s no secret that the grassroots organizing efforts of the Obama Campaign was a major turning point in the digital age. Marketing gurus everywhere have been studying how the use of technology across multiple platforms, through a widely distributed network, shifted the balance of political power in our country. Simply put, it was a marketer’s dream scenario.

Obama’s inauguration continued the trendsetting with several expected and unexpected means by which people watched and discussed an large-scale event. Beyond the live webcasts from CBS News, Joost and others, there were user-contributed image maps on Photosynth and the chatter of millions of Twitterers clicking away in 140 character intervals. You could watch on CNN’s Live Channel and simultaneously trade status updates with your Facebook friends. Current hooked up with Twitter to display feeds on its live broadcast.

It was live, it was free, it was shared and it will pave the way for how we experience events in the future. Expect March Madness, the NBA Playoffs, the World Series, and the Superbowl to quickly follow suit.

North Carolina may still be wiping down the trophy, but is it too early to get excited for next year yet?

Given the decline in ad revenue and the fixed costs of long term deals with leagues and content providers, it is likely a large share of sports content will start to require a subscription. Headlines and Fantasy Game registration will remain free but expect that real-time stats ,video clips and other premium content will become part of subscription packages in the near future. My over-under is that by the start of the 09 NFL season, the major sports sites will have moved a significant amount of content and features from “free” to “subscription required”.

Most sports portals already have some forms of subscription ranging from TV content to premium Fantasy leagues to exclusive college recruiting insights. What I dislike about the current offerings is that it’s very piecemeal. Every sport or game seems to require it’s own subscription, there are no all in packages. So every time I hit one of these premium content areas I need to reconsider whether to pay now, later or not at all. After a few subscriptions, I have become suspicious of the subscription’s limitations. Are my fantasy basketball stats valid for a calendar year or just for a the remainder of this season? Does my insider package include college recruiting information or is that additional? Every question is a step closer to “No”.

So sports site GMs, please make my subscription options as simple as possible. Subscriptions should cover many sports and many areas of your site. Despite the recession, many sports fans have no problem giving you somewhere between $9.99 and $29.99 for a year of sports content and fantasy games. But don’t bother me with requests for a few quarters or bucks here and there. The bait and switch micro payments are annoying and make me click or google elsewhere.

Perhaps Techcrunch is correct. However, the number of people that would convert is small. My guess is that per million fantasy sports players less than 50,000 people would check out oneseason.com and less than a 5,000 would actively play it. Oneseason would be better of looking for their users elsewhere. 

Many investors and startups seek to leverage the popularity of fantasy sports but fail to address the basic needs of fantasy players.

Our top five needs must be met before we’ll consider playing your game:

1. We play for recognition amongst our friends. Games against large groups of anonymous players who can have an identical roster as me are not attractive.
2. We want to play by our own rules. Playing a game with my friends where we can’t play by our own rules is boring. The point of playing amongst friends is that we get to discuss real world sport from the perspective (our rules) that we value.
3. The scoring must be easy to understand and verify. Playing a game a where a player’s performance is not directly reflected in points are unattractive. (Salary cap games don’t even have 10% of the participation rate of trade and draft games. Even in Europe where soccer is popular and salcap games are the only game in town, salcap games fail to attract a steady large audience).
4. We’ll heavily participate if there are 10 to 12 teams per league. If a league has than 10 friends my ranking becomes meaningless. More than 14 teams and there are not enough 1^st and 2n tier athletes to populate my fantasy roster.
5. We want a clean the slate every season: For every winner there are 9 losers, we like a fresh start every season. For you entrepreneurs … the keeper league market is tiny.