This is simple capitalism. They sign a contract with the Nike for exclusive rights to stream the event. They pay money for that.
This is simple capitalism. They sign a contract with the Nike for exclusive rights to stream the event. They pay money for that.
Sad to see wrote:
As far as I can tell the viewership is going to be terrible for this race. My buddies and I were planning to watch, but none of us is ponying up 13 bucks for runnerspace, and I doubt other people will either.
$13 divided by several of your friends means that each of you pays less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
Why are you willing to pay that much for coffee but not for a national championship of a sport you claim to be a fan of?
Yes, but by doing that and limiting any other coverage they are killing interest in the sport. Paying to have a monopoly so that you don't have to compete is screwy that is why as running fans we repeatedly have to pay for what ends up being terrible coverage. If you product is valuable, then you shouldn't have to block competition. If someone else can do it well for free, that means you are hustling a product that is not actually worth what you are charging. If companies like Runnerspace spend money for a superior video coverage, then someone not charging wouldn't be able to compete with that anyway. They are forcing us to pay their prices to be able to watch at all. No other industry allows this.
Principal of the matter. If this greed pays off it will only get worse. In a few years it will be $30/month and then $50/month. Then add the fee for ESPNU to watch NCAA XC and then the conference channels, and then ESPN for track nationals. How much are you willing to pay to follow track. Not all of us are wealthy enough to have a running viewership budget. Gotta draw the line somewhere. Not willing to pay to watch high school. Now, watching Valby smoke the track at BU today I would pay plenty to watch! Priorities.
Heartland Fan 1 wrote:
Last year had Paul Swangard and Galen Rupp as commentators, and both drone video and multiple cameras on the ground for coverage.
No complaints from me on that FREE broadcast.
The coverage and commentary this year is excellent.
Runninglane > NXN
Not just because NXN isn’t free to watch.
Also because Oregon weather sucks and the course is typically in terrible condition.
And Runninglane’s course is super fast and it is cool to see records broken. Yes, I understand cross country isn’t all about times, but it sure is fun to see records broken.
Go for it. I appreciate that they are doing it and they are breaking even. Tell that to ABC and CBS and NBC and Fox and ESPN as they broadcast all of the college football playoff games today. I can't pay for a ticket to the event and then stream the game and charge people a fee bucks to do it.
We weren’t going to watch it together, we were just planning to watch because we race against one of the top individual guys all the time and wanted to see how he did.