Screen play.

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: SPORTS [biz] - Sports television programs

Professional football's enduring entanglement with television began to generate its first serious sparks in December 1958, when NBC televised the NFL championship game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants, drawing an audience estimated at 45 million viewers.

The network couldn't have picked a better game: Baltimore won 23-17 in a thrilling overtime victory that has since been canonized as 'The Greatest Game Ever Played" (the title of an ESPN documentary) and "The Best Game Ever" (a 2008 book by Mark Bowden).

Since then, the love affair between television and football has only gotten steamier, with breakthrough technologies like robot-commanded cameras and high-definition resolution enriching the appeal of a sport that plays beautifully in the living room. Recent experiments in 3D presentation of football games have teased at what's next: spectacularly immersive experiences that come closer than ever to replicating the live event.

That very progression is increasingly troubling to NFI. and college teams that have a pointed interest in keeping their stadiums full of ticket-buying, girder-stomping, jersey-wearing, refreshment-gulping, cash-spending fans. There may come a point--and for some fans it's already here--where the appeal of watching a game in HD splendor at home trumps the allure of driving across town, presenting your bar-coded ticket and entering the stadium

Concern about preserving live-game luster is what's driving the deployment of a novel video gadget that's being field-tested this season by 12 NFI. teams, the Denver Broncos included. About 5,000 Broncos season-ticket holders who responded to a preseason e-mail invitation now have one. The FanVision device, developed by a Florida company, is about the size of a thick paperback novel. Outfitted with a high-resolution, 4.3-inch display screen, it connects to an over-the-air communications network that broadcasts throughout Invesco Field and surrounding terrain--nearby tailgate parking lots included.

Push a few buttons and you can summon instant replays, highlights and live broadcasts of other NFL games, exclusive camera angles you won't see on the scoreboard, fantasy-football scores and more.

FanVision is the first entry in a push by the Broncos to upgrade the live-game experience by leveraging new possibilities of information technology, says Malcolm Freeman, senior vice president of business...