What Flotrack is doing is bad for the sport

For the record I don't believe the production costs are that much or don't have to be that much but glad people are at least having the conversation.LetsRun.com would stream a Robby Andrews record attempt for free. That removes any production cost.But let us try and figure out what the production costs are.A full year of the most expensive streaming plan on livestream.com is $4000 from what I can tell ($333 a month). There are free plans. http://new.livestream.com/plans#plan_comparison_tableUstream.com and other free options are available.As for all the "bandwith costs" to stream to the few thousand people who might watch this all that is needed is the bandwith for the stream to reach the streaming provider. That's essentially called good upload for high speed internet today. The Armory more than made sure they had this covered with their deal with Youtube last year.As for the rest, it's how many bells and whistles you want. 1 camera, 2, 3? A wireless mic or two. An encoder and graphics. What else? Chime in for the cost of these. Might sound complicated but I don't think it really is. 5 years ago we did some live streaming at the Olympic Trials and didn't have a clue what we were doing and we had onscreen graphics and what not. Oh yeah we paid $0 for the streaming as we just used the free services.Cameras don't have to cost $5000. There are HD cameras for like $500-$700 if I'm not mistaken.Round up some NYU/Columbia tech students and give them a few thousand bucks and I bet they can come up with a pretty good solution that works for all the Armory meets. I'd be curious in a cheap portable solution they come up with.There are cell phones that can do live streaming that is in good quality. That cost nothing assuming the wireless speed is there. Not that is what we want, but to prove the cost doesn't have to be much.You need announcers but Ian Brooks at the Armory on the PA system would be sufficient if they wanted to save $.As for charging, I'm totally fine with the Armory getting some $$$ and Flotrack trying to find a business model, but think the price is too high. I know I won't pay it. Others are more than welcome too. I agree with a lot of what Harry Carey said:

and

I'd take the the ESPN point one step further. ESPN brings the audience to non-revenue sports like track whereas I believe even with track events the event brings the audience to Flotrack not the other way around.

You need to stop eating that much pizza.

Production costs can vary tremendously based on what is being done but should not be taken so lightly by people. You can take an iphone, tape some stuff and stream it, but its going to look like it. Or you can use reasonable equipment and actually have a picture that's watchable.

While you can by a consumer HD camera fro under $1000, to have the likes of HD-SDI connections, XLR inputs, more capable low-light and action sensors/lenses, you have to make the jump into the mid-level of camera's which run $5000-$8000.

If you're doing a multi-camera broadcast, you need switching equipment which on the cheapest end is $2500. You need wiring and patch panels, a rack to keep everything in. All these little things cost money and add up too.

You need people - audio mixer, a video switcher (for multi-camera shoots), and camera people. As much as people think college kids are able to do all of this, getting an 8-10 hour day (the down side of track vs most other sports) out of someone is not an easy thing - esp. for free. So typically you have to pay people.

If you wanted to just have one wireless camera, you're looking a starting at $2500, probably $4000 for a transmitter and that's the "prosumer" versions.

Technically, when you take a video stream and send it to a provider, Livestream, Youtube, etc. you have to send them multiple encoded streams for different resolutions. Typically this is an HD and SD/mobile friendly feed. This requires encoders - again, you can get one for $700 or have a more capable workstation that costs $1500-2000 (per stream that goes out). The bandwidth to reliably do this about 10Mb/s-12Mb/s on upload - without loss of connection or lost packets - and again, over a long period of time. Having the right and redundant equipment to do this means more money.

An audio mixer for something like this is also between 1000 to 2000. Wireless microphones are not cheap. And just like everything else, you can get cheap ones or better ones. But even a cheap unit will cost several hundred dollars.

Communication between the people working is essential and comm units, whether wired or wireless are expensive. The cost of a basic comm system will start at $3000 and easily work its way to $10000 - and that's for analog, fairly bare bones systems - a real partyline system can easily be double that.

I haven't yet mentioned on-screen graphics and things like results integration. Graphics systems are both expensive and require labor to operate and set-up.

And there's a lot of other things that come into play, tripods, cables, converters, etc. and none of it is free.

Lastly, it takes at least a couple experienced people to help bring all this together. And those people aren't going to do it for free.

At some point people have to realize that its cost a fair amount of money to make an even half-decent product. Colleges that stream in HD get to spread the hardware costs over countless sports and have the athletic budgets and staff to do so. Video advertising revenue for video is more than web pages, but still not tremendous, esp. with the number of people that tune in to watch a free stream.

I'm not saying the amount Flotrack is charging is the right amount. But there needs to be some experimentation around this to find the right balance. Free live streaming for long track meets is not a practical long-term solution. Finding sponsors can help defray costs, but even then you can't always rely on sponsor dollars.

TAKE THAT BACK

classy flotrack

I love Flotrack and I have no problem with them trying make a few bucks but I personally won't be buying the Pro package. As much as I would enjoy it it's just something I can happily live without. Even for $5 I still don't think I'd bother. It's sort of like when you get a free sample of some food and that shit is good, you might even say it's delicious. But you still never bother buying it in the end.

Would love to see how many people have subscribed to Flotrack Pro. You can see the views for most Pro videos are between 1000 and 2000. But how many of these are from the free trial users? I just don't think there is a market for this.

Or maybe I just don't love running enough.

Oh and I see Mark's thread was deleted.. stay classy Letsrun.

ahahahahaha that video is so lame

I personally think that the model Flotrack is presenting to us is awe full. $20/month is not going to garner a lot of viewers. The model I would present is a name your own price or

5 dollars a view for the Flotrack Pro content/ meets. If i can watch a DL meet for $1.99 and get a good quality meet. I would pay even more, just to hear more Track intelligent commentary (Flotrack). And Mark Florean should be ashamed of himself calling out Lets Run. The Brojos didn't seem like they were provoking them that much, they say sarcastic remarks like such all the time. Granted though it is very hard to interpret emotion by reading text. Mr. Florean is just trying to start drama to bring attenion/ more hits to his site. It's also very stupid to do a "call-out" like this considering the two sites cannibalize on hits/views. Mr. Florean is a hypocrite by stating "I find it comical that you are bashing us when what you guys do and how you guys make money is by creating drama, by creating drama by tearing down athletes". Am I the only one that finds this weird? If you recall during the Ncaa cross country meet Flotrack posted a video of Craig Lutz crying on the shoulder of his Mom after dropping out of the race. Is that how you repay people who go out of their way to promote your website? Granted I personally,haven't read every Lets run posts from the Brojos but from what I have seen, there is nothing to provoke a comment of them "tearing down athletes". There are more "mature ways" to promote your website than by doing an act like this. (And when reading my post, try to distinguish the words of the posters who do tear down athletes, and the words of Wejo and Rojo)

Taking the position that it is fine for Flotrack to charge for a broadcast, and assuming that Flotrack's only goal is to maximize its revenue, I have serious doubts that charging this much money is the way to do it. I wonder if Flotrack gave any consideration to the Price Elasticity for this kind of product? Universal Sports charged $5 for some events. Would four times as many people (or more) buy the product if it was only $5? I'd say there is a decent chance of it. If so, that would provide the same revenue to Flotrack but be much better for the sport because more fans could watch it.

that was a completely unprofessional rebuttal to a fairly reasonable reaction from wejo. would never join flotrack.

wordddd wrote:

http://www.flotrack.org/speaker/118-Mark-Flotrack/video/684648-CALLING-OUT-LetsRun

classy flotrack

I have repeatedly paid $2.99 per meet in the past for a live feed of the Diamond League meets through Universal Sports and I thought that it was a great deal. They had great coverage, a clear stream without a bunch of ads and fantastic commentary from the likes of Brendan Foster and Steve Cram.

I certainly wouldn't pay for a half assed stream or if the commentary was less than spectacular. I'd rather have NO audio than to have crappy commentary.

I think that charging $1.99 on a per meet basis would bring them a lot more success than a monthly fee would.

The video that they posted calling out LetsRun strikes me as being a bit obnoxious. I get that they are trying to come across as passionate, but it just doesn't work.

That video should show everyone why Flotrack truly sucks. They only want money and a monopoly over the coverage of running. Obviously this conversation is upsetting them. Everyone please boycott their precious "Flotrack Pro".

Flosuck wrote:

That video should show everyone why Flotrack truly sucks. They only want money and a monopoly over the coverage of running. Obviously this conversation is upsetting them. Everyone please boycott their precious "Flotrack Pro".

Even if that was true, what's wrong with that? Doesn't every business want money and monopolization???

The problem is pricing. For the same money I could buy NBA League Pass, or MLB extra innings, or subscribe to both Netflix streaming and DVD service, or the Sports Pack for Direct TV to get Universal Sports (and save $8/month). $20 a month is just way too high of price when you look at how little is provided compared to other equally priced products. I'm not angry at Flotrack for it, I just think it is a foolish business model.

Flotrack should just make money through ads before videos, similar to what youtube does with adsense.

Flotrack locking out content through a paywall is a disaster simply because you are going to lock out your main audience which is high school kids, and college kids - but of which have ZERO money to spend.

Part two of that, the cost of the paywell is unreal. 200 dollars a year? That's not even reasonable.

A BETTER solution would be for Flotrack to partner with track athletes and sell signed merchandise for cash or organize runs with elite athletes and charge 10 bucks a head or something.

Basically, include the community, not lock out the majority of your audience.

Lets Think About This wrote:

Why are we putting up another barrier for fans?

Oh, "we" are doing this? Do you work for Flotrack? Seems unlikely considering that you are among the grousers.

There is no barrier. You don't have to be wealthy to pay Flotrack's asking price. If you can afford to be online, period, it's a virtual given that you can fork over the dough for the streaming. How about ordering one less pizza a month? Or buying store brand? Or working an extra hour when you can? If the privilege of watching track live on the Internet is truly that important to you, you can finance it. It's not like finding cheap seats at the freaking Super Bowl.

Christ, these guys have offered everything for free for YEARS, and instead of giving them a nod of appreciation, some of you act as if this fact implies that they're obligated to keep it free in perpetuity, and on top of that you malign the coverage. Some of you should just quit being a part of the sport, quit running, and lay around like most Americans slamming back cheese doodles and whacking beers while you lazily finger your shrunken crotches and daydream about past and future athletic glories that never were and never will be.

Of course people can pay the asking price, the point is that it isn't worth it. As much as I love track, I can get more enjoyment in many other ways by spending $20. It's called marginal utility. There is no duty as a track fan to pay inflated prices to watch a race. Claiming that anyone not willing to pay $20 to watch one meet online should quit being part of the sport is absurd. I'll get more enjoyment from $20 by going to the movies and checking the results of this meet later than I will paying $20 to watch the internet stream. The point is that the privilege of watching track live on the internet, as you say, is not important enough to pay $20 for each meet.

The Obama generation wants everything for free. Kudos to FloTrack for trying to make a buck.

Flotrack can make money through advertising while providing free content that doesn't exclude the majority of their audience.

Stop trying to make this a generational thing.