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.