Flotrack Monopolizing NCAA Coverage - Charging $29.99 for D1, D2 and D3 Nats - Will we ever get anything free anymore!?!?

Casual Encounters wrote:

Capitalism and quality wrote:

Similar to craigslist. It’s poor quality and hasn’t been upgraded.

Yet, letsrun is a great site because it provides access to a community otherwise not available (craigslist too).

+1 for great comparison

I agree that letsrun and, more specifically, the m4m section of the Casual Encounters category on craigslist have a lot in common.

Smart joke for a smart audience!

jhjhljhljhlj wrote:

Flotrack is literally 3 times the cost of Netflix.....think about that for second

Are there over 1 million people interested in whatever Flotrack is reselling? Netflix has at least 150 million users.

Much of Flotrack's target audience is high school kids. They have to ask mom and dad for money to pay for this. Flotrack is heartless and greedy.

Worst than this is that the NCAA has entered into these types of agreements. They are all selfish.

NCAA Championship races should be FREE for all to watch. It is a wonderful sport, so SHARE it NCAA decision makers.

Life of a manager wrote:

Lets see. How often do managers pay to handle a low value task to make their lives easier and so they can focus on other items? ALL THE TIME. It’s actually smart and good business. Not a market failure.

My point is that it isn't actually a low-value task. Producing a high quality broadcast and getting a lot of people to watch is it HUGELY important for the sport. It's only a low-value task for the individuals making decisions because incentives are misaligned.

800 dude wrote:

Life of a manager wrote:

Lets see. How often do managers pay to handle a low value task to make their lives easier and so they can focus on other items? ALL THE TIME. It’s actually smart and good business. Not a market failure.

My point is that it isn't actually a low-value task. Producing a high quality broadcast and getting a lot of people to watch is it HUGELY important for the sport. It's only a low-value task for the individuals making decisions because incentives are misaligned.

But it’s not hugely important to most (at minimum currently paying) customers. They’re paying for any access to watch the meet. Who is this “sport” you talk about?

Btw - buy some camera equipment, hire some on air and production talent, and have at it.

Capitalism and qualityb wrote:

800 dude wrote:

My point is that it isn't actually a low-value task. Producing a high quality broadcast and getting a lot of people to watch is it HUGELY important for the sport. It's only a low-value task for the individuals making decisions because incentives are misaligned.

But it’s not hugely important to most (at minimum currently paying) customers. They’re paying for any access to watch the meet. Who is this “sport” you talk about?

Btw - buy some camera equipment, hire some on air and production talent, and have at it.

This guy asks an interesting question. Who is “the sport?” It’s not flotrack’s paying customers, the athletic directors, the teams, or the athletes....because if they were “the sport”, cared, and felt the flotrack product was detrimental, they’d do something about it. Is “the sport” flotrack’s non paying customers? That group of free loaders doesn’t seem right.

Casual Encounters wrote:

Capitalism and quality wrote:

Similar to craigslist. It’s poor quality and hasn’t been upgraded.

Yet, letsrun is a great site because it provides access to a community otherwise not available (craigslist too).

+1 for great comparison

I agree that letsrun and, more specifically, the m4m section of the Casual Encounters category on craigslist have a lot in common.

m4m?

Well, it quite obvious to a "smart audience" that you must visit there often or how would you have gained the experience to compare it? ;).

Who is the sport wrote:

Capitalism and qualityb wrote:

But it’s not hugely important to most (at minimum currently paying) customers. They’re paying for any access to watch the meet. Who is this “sport” you talk about?

Btw - buy some camera equipment, hire some on air and production talent, and have at it.

This guy asks an interesting question. Who is “the sport?” It’s not flotrack’s paying customers, the athletic directors, the teams, or the athletes....because if they were “the sport”, cared, and felt the flotrack product was detrimental, they’d do something about it. Is “the sport” flotrack’s non paying customers? That group of free loaders doesn’t seem right.

There should be a commissioner for each college sport. Nick Saban said the same for CFB

I understand what flotrack is trying to do, however they are doing a terrible job of it. If you were to take a poll, I think you would find two problems with what they are trying to do. First problem is they are charging a price that is a little high. Second problem, they do a terrible job of covering the sport. It's like they haven't learned from previous problems. It doesn't matter if it cost $19.99 to watch d1,d2, d3 and other content for a month. If most fans want to watch one race they view the value as $19.99 for a single race. Lastly this is running most fans are cheap, that is one reason they enjoy running. It is inexpensive to participate. Last let's not forget this product was free to watch before flotrack. If the commentators came prepared with stats on teams and individuals people might find value in paying to watch a single race. The commentating above all else is bad for races, something I would expect for a product that was free. The message board has spoken, far more people talking about the two things I mentioned above. Good luck acquiring more customers for this wonderful product.

As someone who worked in television for 30 years I have real problems with paying $29.99 for Flotrak. The problem is the quality of the production. It's just above high school level. The announcers are amateurish, the graphics and camera work are horrible. Look at it this way. I paid $11.00 a month or so for Sling to have access to European track meets which offered professional production values and first rate announcers. To me, Flotrak, even with all of the other content, is worth maybe $15 to $20 a month. As much as I would love to see NCAA's... I'm not paying for a crappy service to watch it.

As soon as athletic.net gets an upgrade and is more user friendly, Milesplit will die. Flotrack won't be too far behind.

Life of a manager wrote:

Lets see. How often do managers pay to handle a low value task to make their lives easier and so they can focus on other items? ALL THE TIME. It’s actually smart and good business. Not a market failure.

To all the people making these business school analysis, stop.

You are supporting the OP who is talking about the NCAAs greed.

The fact of the matter is many people believe this shouldn't be about maximizing revenue. College sports were never supposed to be about that. It may have turned into that but that's not the point of a college.

Think about it. Aren't there like 600 d1 programs? Let's say it cost $30,000 to do a really good kick ass broadcast on line. You could have all of the schools kick in $50 each and then it could be free to watch. Think about that - $50. That's one kid's meal money on a given xc weekend. Do you know how much these programs blow on xc each year?

Yet the NCAA hasn't done that. They've sold it.

And then we have Mark Floreani talking about how he's going to take down ESPN. Do we really want the televising on non-revenue sports to grossly enrich some VCs pocketbook?

Great job America. So some kid who is taking on 20k a year in debt to run in college now has to pay $150 watch his buddy run at the national champs? Bravo.

Rojo

PS. Does anyone know the rights fees paid for this? I mean I can't imagine it's much. Not sure if the PR flak is worth it. NCAA may be being penny wise but pound foolish.

Loserboy wrote:

As soon as athletic.net gets an upgrade and is more user friendly, Milesplit will die. Flotrack won't be too far behind.

Are you a HS fan? What do you want? Just a list of kids PRs? I can't imagine that it's that hard to do.

What is worth paying for at milesplit. Let me know and we'll try to do it. Doesn't dyestat have PRs for free?

rojo wrote:

Loserboy wrote:

As soon as athletic.net gets an upgrade and is more user friendly, Milesplit will die. Flotrack won't be too far behind.

Are you a HS fan? What do you want? Just a list of kids PRs? I can't imagine that it's that hard to do.

What is worth paying for at milesplit. Let me know and we'll try to do it. Doesn't dyestat have PRs for free?

As far as this question goes: milesplit isn't worth it. Athletic.net does everything for me and milesplit will post the same lists but it's behind their pay wall. Maybe their articles are awesome, but I never would know cause I'm not going to pay.

Now the rest of this may get long and some of you may not be interested but from a video side of things I thought I'd share my perspective. I have a broadcasting degree and am the director of a public access TV Station. We have used our equipment and a small volunteer crew to produce a free live stream for our indoor state meet and then archive all the videos for them which can be found here:

I think they are pretty solid, if we spent a little more time on it I think they could be really good, but it's just something we throw together that weekend.

When it comes to Cross Country there is certainly challenges to providing video live. Cross country ideally would require drones, wireless cameras and then some solid way to get all of that video back to a central hub for switching and distribution. I won't say it's easy, at the same time, if it were my day job, or I was being paid to produce a certain event as large as the NCAA finals or other events that flotrack produces I think a better job could be done.

Yesterday myself and a small crew of 4 people produced a live stream for our Coaches Association(MITCA) Senior race which qualifies for the Mid East meet of champions. I flew a drone and we had a few other cameras that we were able to tie in. It turned out alright and the girls race can be found here(others coming soon and the boys race probably turned out the best).

Honestly I don't think ours was great but I feel like with these steps it could have been better:

1. Fly the drone lower so kids were more recognizable.

2. Our main setup should have been closer to the finish but originally wasn't, due to trying to be centralized for wireless cams which didn't end up working on the course. If we had been at the finish our "finish line" video could easily be much better.

3. Have spotters relaying better info to our announcer as he was basically flying blind on who was who, or figure out a wireless audio system so he could be in lead cart or at different spots on the course. Takes a little additional planning but isn't that hard.

I guess my point is if 3 HS coaches, our buddy and one of our runner girls(who is super fast) can produce that with personal equipment or gear borrowed from a public access station, I would expect a nation wide sports network to do a better job if they are doing something as important as the NCAA finals.

A great analogy would be to the roads system. Roads aren't free. They cost money.

Putting on and broadcasting NCAA athletics events isn't free. It costs somebody money.

We pay for roads largely through our tax dollars, with the occasional user fee. We've decided, through mechanisms that are sometimes oblique and sometimes flawed but about which there is generally broad consensus, that there is a utility there which is worth that cost.

We pay for NCAA athletics events and broadcasts largely through our tax dollars, with the occasional user fee. We've decided, through mechanisms that are sometimes oblique and sometimes flawed but about which there is generally broad consensus, that the utility which is worth the cost.

We are accustomed to being able to access the roads without paying immediately for that access.

We are (were) accustomed to being able to watch cross meets on a live stream without paying immediately for that access.

If someone sold exclusive access to charging tolls for a certain section of road, and that road happened to be on particular interested to us (say, we lived near it and it saved us twenty minutes on our morning commute), and that individual starting charging three or four times as much as most toll roads, and did an awful job of maintaining the road... well, you'd have pretty much the situation we have with Flotrack.

Just as the government theoretically has an interest in providing its citizenry with effective ways to get around, the NCAA theoretically has an interest in maximizing the educational benefit of its interscholastic sports by expanding their reach, permitting more friends and family to enjoy the experience, etc.

And just like our recourse for privatized and excessive tolls would be to petition the government to revoke the tolling company's exclusive tolling rights, our recourse for Flotrack should be to petition the NCAA give the rights to somebody else -- ideally, to multiple parties, so that there would be some competitive pressure on coverage price and quality.

Does anyone know how much they will charge for entry to the meets for D1, D2, and D3?

just passing thru wrote:

Does anyone know how much they will charge for entry to the meets for D1, D2, and D3?

That’s a fun question.

rojo wrote:

Loserboy wrote:

As soon as athletic.net gets an upgrade and is more user friendly, Milesplit will die. Flotrack won't be too far behind.

Are you a HS fan? What do you want? Just a list of kids PRs? I can't imagine that it's that hard to do.

What is worth paying for at milesplit. Let me know and we'll try to do it. Doesn't dyestat have PRs for free?

A compilation of results and searches by team is actually a big resource. Coaches can use that information and kids like looking at their times and where they rank.