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

Critical thinking: Flotrack paid the NCAA to be the sole provider, knowing they have sheep who will pay their for their coverage.

Of course, while some people will pay, many of us just stop giving a $h!t about it anymore. This isn't basketball or football. Even as a track fan, watching XC meets and track meets isn't all that exciting outside of the Olympics and Worlds and a few of the Euro meets (which you can find international streams for free). Trying to justify charging $30 to watch some college cross country meet is outrageous. Even worse is when they get the "rights" to stream international races of which they do zero work.

Coach Jeff ROC wrote:

No, I’m generally regarded as exceptionally intelligent. I assume you are, too. That’s why I would urge you to continue to work on your reading comprehension and critical thinking skills.

Good, I was afraid JS was the only self proclaimed genius on here.

When flotrack goes away the stream will be free again. Just like the live stream was free before flotrack bought the rights to it. Not to mention that it will give sites who actually promote the support like runnerspace the option of uploading their own videos. Best case scenario is that Nike or New balance buys the rights. Have you seen their coverage of their national high school cross country races? It is 10x more impressive than anything flotrack has ever done and it is all free to watch.

For a little perspective: Would you rather pay $500 to see it in person? Fifty years ago, I'm pretty sure someone would pay $30 to see a meet in a different state, while laying in bed...

Info Update:

Flotrack was NOT allowed to go to the 2016 Olympics and they did not go to 2017 Worlds.

I will never pay for Flotrack

It's funny that you people (losers) complain over someone charging for their service. Welcome to the (business) world. Poor snowflakes expect handouts and have no money. It is dirt cheap anyways. It's their product which they own rights to and they can do as they please. You can also do as you please and either buy the product or not. But if you're a broke loser who complains, STFU and get a job or a better job. Flotrack is doing a favor by filming this for dirt cheap and y'all mad cuz they didn't charge before, grow the hell up.

[quote} Good, I was afraid JS was the only self proclaimed genius on here. [\quote]

That fact that I am regarded as intelligent (passive voice) implies that this intelligence is not "self-proclaimed." (There are people who pay me $75 an hour for this type of education! And here I am giving it to you as a gift!)

Your definition of "free" (I don't have to pay for it) means that all of the food and shelter that your parents provided for you until you became an adult were free. Your definition of free means that every gift you've ever received has been free.

I am merely saying that although somethings may have been free for you, those things were provided to you by someone at a cost to them. I'm suggesting that you be thankful when others incur a cost to provide you with something at no cost to yourself rather than resentful when they, for whatever reason, decide to no longer provide those gifts. It's a more pleasant way to live.

These thoughts are a gift to you.

There's constant disruption now and the confusion will be 1000 times higher when 5G TV appears in 2019-2020.

So Glottal thinks people will pay? Haha. Their business model is terrible and they've turned their base against them. No wonder they have to branch out to other sports.

Flotrack is the worst thing to happen for running. I've still never been able to see last year's NCAA XC race because the only way is to pay for the archived video. I hope people that are at the race video part of it. There will undoubtedly be a few flotrack workers in this thread defending it, but don't listen to them. Screw flotrack

I'd pay $10 to see the championships online as a ppv package. But not more than that. Plus flotrack's coverage is notoriously lame. Bad video, commentary by a couple blokes and gals off the streets could do better, and they crash every time.

Memo to flotrack: get a better product and charge a reasonable rate. Otherwise forget you!

Flotrack tried to monopolize sport climbing coverage, but got soundly body-slammed by the entire climbing community, including the athletes themselves who didn't want to be exploited by outsiders as unpaid labor. As a result, I can watch World Cup competitions live from Europe free of charge with excellent commentary and interviews. I know the phrase is cliche', but it is true that runners are such beta-cucks it's ridiculous. Don't put up with this crap, boycott it until they break.

I'm pretty sure I used to watch the XC champs on ESPN 2 or something... now I'm getting old, son maybe it was like 15 years ago, but I'm pretty sure it was a delayed broadcast on one of the major sports channels... I even remember seeing a 10 minute summary of the D3 XC champs on TV. Am I misremembering?

OK. I am looking at old emails. I tried to get in touch last year with the NCAA about all of this and didn't get too far. I thought that the NCAA's own policies said that internet broadcasts had to be free. They did write back the following stating that it doesn't have to be free.

NCAA wrote:

Mr. Johnson,

The championships staff forwarded your most recent email to my attention. We’ll decline an interview, however, please note the policy you mention below is for our member schools that are assigned the rights to stream championship events – not for broadcast partners.

The coaches association explained to me and they said the language requiring it to be free didn't apply to D1 as the whole document talking about streams being free didn't apply to d1 as it said "except for those Championships which fall under a prior national television and/or digital rights agreement (i.e. ESPN, CBS)" and ESPN owns the rights to Division I.

So basically, ESPN could sell the rights to flotrack and flotrack could do whatever it wanted with it.

I still don't understand why it's not supposed to be free at least for d2 and d3. The NCAA updated it's media policy for this year below.

In that document, it says,

Live Internet Video Streaming Rights.

For those available NCAA championships in which

Turner/NCAA Digital elects NOT to exercise its video streaming rights [nor is it being televised

by an NCAA network partner (Turner, CBS, ESPN and Golf Channel)], member institutions

and/or media outlets may request live video streaming rights to these events. The request form

and live video streaming policy can be accessed at ****. Click here

to review the Live Video Streaming Rights Policy

If you click on the Live Video Streaming Rights Policy (link at bottom of this doc), it takes you to the page we cited last year that said the broadcast had to be free.

I imagine the NCAA will argue that they sold the tv rights to flotrack even though most don't view flotrack as a tv network.

Television Broadcast Rights.

If an NCAA network partner (i.e., Turner/CBS, ESPN, Golf

Channel) chooses not to activate or televise a particular round of an NCAA championship, those

television rights revert back to the NCAA, permitting the NCAA to grant/sell the rights to any

network [e.g., NCAA conference/institution (campus) television networks / Regional Sports

Networks (RSN), local television stations], if it so chooses.

The NCAA broadcast media services group will award qualified NCAA conference/institution

television networks / RSNs and local television stations commercial/noncommercial television

broadcast rights

Update: Ok. The coaches association has helped me out. Flotrack is doing this as a partner of turner sports so therefore it doesn't have to be free. It says, "In a partnership with the NCAA and NCAA Digital -- managed by Turner Sports." It's interesting to note the last line of the press release says, " Turner Sports has announced plans to launch a premium sports OTT platform in 2018."

I don't have an issue if this was part of Turner, or ESPN - stuff I already pay for. I get there needs to be a reason to buy cable.

Anyone who is attempting to support Flotrack in charging to watch these events are missing the point.

Flotrack did not use to cover D2 and D3 nationals. I'm not completely sure on DI but I don't believe they covered them either. The NCAA would have the events hosted on the NCAA.com website and the videos were free to watch, the same as any other sport's championship is and will continue to be on their website. Therefore, all of us are used to watching these events for free because the NCAA provided that for us since they have a budget and everything specifically for things like national championships.

This coverage is very cheap- some meets will have live streams on their own (D3 prenats this year)- all you need is a camera and a good location to film, not too hard of a concept.

Flotrack came in and did a shady deal with the NCAA to be the exclusive rights holder for D1, D2, and D3 nationals, and now will charge for it. Therefore, a service that had been free to all of us is now unreasonably expensive.

Of course your argument would be that it should have never been free in the first place? Except as one of the other posters pointed out, the NCAA is funded by member institutions (mainly through the TV rights for March madness) and thus by tax payer dollars who fund their state institutions. The services SHOULD be free, the NCAA is a not-for-profit and doesn't need the money to subset any costs since there basically are none that go into live streaming the event.

Therefore, the NCAA is greedy (shocker) for selling the rights to Flotrack and Flotrack is greedy for taking what should be a "free" commodity and then charging for it. Everyone loses here- Flotrack's rep gets tainted and loses followers, the sport loses because less people watch. Whereas had Flotrack allowed it for free, it would've driven a ton of traffic to their website which could have helped with ad revenue.

This is why our sport sucks at drawing fans and retaining the ones it has.

PS. I realized this was happening about a month ago. We thought we might get the radio broadcast rights for ourselves so you all could listen to it for free but I've got a family obligation and don't think I can make it. Maybe next year.

Stop traffic everyone, Coach Jeff charges $75 PER HOUR

If you're going to act like an arrogant prick, then you should up your hourly rate. Yours is far too low for the amount of d!ckery oozing from your post.

You could always go to the races. I will be at the D1 race for the 4th year in a row.

And short-sighted, and the entire reason competitive running remains nothing more than a "hobby sport."

This *IS* the NCAA we're talking about and "Coach Jeff's" broken logic is religious law in most sports marketing.

Tyrone Green wrote:

Info Update:

Flotrack was NOT allowed to go to the 2016 Olympics and they did not go to 2017 Worlds.

I will never pay for Flotrack

Because the NCAA is a direct competitor to the IAAF/IOC. Welcome to lightly regulated capitalism.