If Deadspin and SB Nation started charging, I'd criticize them too. Flotrack simply doesn't have good text based content, whereas LetsRun does, which is why I assume that LetsRun is able to sell advertising.
If Deadspin and SB Nation started charging, I'd criticize them too. Flotrack simply doesn't have good text based content, whereas LetsRun does, which is why I assume that LetsRun is able to sell advertising.
Sorry, $20a month is too much. Let's stop with the stupid, wrongheaded accusations of entitlement, the "pay it or don't, no complaining", etc. First, the audience for Flotrack Pro and individual events is verylikely different -- they are fundamentallly different products with different audiences. many would gladly pay a one time fee for each meet, but NOT a recurring fee. Think of it as PPV. Lots of people pay for a boxing fight they want to see, but they would never pay for a boxing channel. It's not that they're cheap, it's that a subscription is fundamentally wrong for this group of customers.
I'm not angry at Flotack, as I think most aren't, but I hope they figure this out before the site collapses. Maybe it's time to hire a few guys with business experience.
fcgvhj wrote:
If Flo is going to be making money off their work then they need to start being more careful about blatantly stealing other people's conent.
Agreed. I posted a video a couple years ago and two days later a friend started describing what he'd watched on FT. I said, that sounds like my video. So, went to the FT site and sure enough there was my embedded video with no mention of the author or credit given. I changed the settings and took down the video and then reloaded it only to find they stole it again. I have not ben on their site since.
Civil Economist wrote:
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.
Okay, I meet you in the middle and agree wholeheartedly that $20 a month is excessive and would be even if the coverage were better; no one wants to watch a jittery camera while listening to a couple of overexcited dudes screech like 16-year-old girls at a Justin Timberlake concert circa 2002. On the other hand, given how many events they cover and their interviews and other extras, it's perfectly reasonable for them to expect, or at least seek, some compensation. My scorn is aimed entirely at the people clustered at the far end of the bitching spectrum, who think that putting streaming "behind a pay firewall" is "bad for the sport."
Look people, it's simple. If this premium model doesn't work for Flotrack, their business will suffer and they will need to reevaluate what they're doing. Until then, they are exploring options that best serve their BUSINESS.
. . . wrote:
that was a completely unprofessional rebuttal to a fairly reasonable reaction from wejo.
would never join flotrack.
For the record, Mark wrote me BEFORE I wrote my post in this thread sp I think that whole rant was in response to what was on our homepage.
I posted it after he wrote me but hadn't seen his email yet.
Once an Expert wrote:
No. F them, get better at selling advertising and start writing more articles and not posting all of those annoying videos.
Because that strategy worked so well for the newspaper industry...
As a college kid I honestly can't pay for flotrack pro. I scrapped the bottom of my savings for school/books/rooming/track spikes/school gear. Hopefully somebody just uses FRAPS and records the "pro vides" and torrents them.
Ace_RF wrote:
Because that strategy worked so well for the newspaper industry...
Certain online news outfits thrive.
Once an Expert wrote:
If Deadspin and SB Nation started charging, I'd criticize them too. Flotrack simply doesn't have good text based content, whereas LetsRun does, which is why I assume that LetsRun is able to sell advertising.
Ability to sell advertising is linked to audience size, not quality of content.
I am debating doing flotrack pro, simply because I am a fan of the sport and they provide something that others don't (and they are better then runnerspace). They off something different from letsrun.com and while the video's aren't the highest quality, they aren't terrible. You have to start somewhere
I think they are trying to get their coverage more towards a professional broadcast then something and high school AV department does. I can go on you tube for those. I hope they lower their price, but I do hope they are successful so they they can continue to improve.
Nobody wins if they just fail. Not the fans who want to see this content and not the people down the road who would want to do this type of stuff, but will be left with no venue to do it.
Oh, and espn became successful because they charged the cable companies a base fee per subscriber... So you can't always live on ad revenue alone
This must be a slow month of news...
Would I pay $20 to watch a HS track meet? Certainly not. But I think in terms of revenue, Flotrack probably has it right. They know how many people have been watching their free content, and how many people pay to watch Universal Sports. Lowering the cost to $2 would not increase their audience tenfold. Watching a HS meet requires dedication just to spend the time to do it, and there aren't that many HS track fans around to start with. Their audience will now largely consist of parents, grandparents, boyfriends, girlfriends of the athletes etc, maybe some coaches, a handful of journalists, and very few "fans". I would be very surprised if they attract more than 100 subscribers at $150 per year, or more than 100 viewers paying the $20 per event. But given the demographics of potential customers, and the elasticity of demand in their particular market, they probably still chose the price point which maximises their income.
Would it be better for the sport if the content was free, paid for by advertisers, and broadcast, rather than live streamed on an obscure website? Absolutely! And Flotrack should not pretend that what they're doing is helping the sport, by making it more "professional" or whatever. They are lying about their motives, which is annoying, but from a short-sighted business point of view, their behaviour probably makes sense.
Once an Expert wrote:
No, but I think internet pay walls are for people who don't generate good enough content to sell advertising.
As someone who owns a tech company that has been acquired, I can assure you that advertisements do not always pay the bills. Flotrack is doing it right.
Harry Carey wrote:
Flotrack, in focusing solely on track, has no means of attracting new audiences to a sport. This is not a fault of Flotrack's so much as it is just a condition of the sport of track and field. But by making people pay so steep a price, Flotrack ensures that audience grows smaller and stagnant--not larger.
False. Flotrack acts like they are about track. There also are tons of other sites they have - there wrestling site is bigger than their track site.
This is all about them trying to be .com millionaires.
Greed is good?
That being said, I agree they are making the audience smaller.
Why can't you guys get along!
Is it that hard, like you guys post stuff on LETSRUN from FLOTRACK.
yes, 20$ a meet is a tad expensive, but are you gunna go watch the meet? or are you just going to sit on the computer and wait for the results so you can post them.
Don't you wanna know how the race went down?
Don't you wanna see the big kick of blank runner?
Or blank runner die in the last 200m?
They play no running highlights on TSN, so FLOTRACK does it for us.
MAN UP. Or start making videos of your own.
The Armory wrote:
You ever think that it's the meet organizers that want the meet charged? I can't imagine Flotrack is just buying up different races. The Armory tweeted this:
"@ArmoryNYC U do know that producing events for distribution has a cost? U feel that the event host should pick up all expenses?"
I bet the Armory is going broke after streaming stuff for free and now needs a producer to come in with some sponsorship money. If you don't want to watch, don't pay.
You can be serious. The high school I coach at has around 300 kids, isn't by any stretch of the imagination "in the money" and can afford to stream events nationally. It's actually really cheap these days. And if the armory really uses "U" instead of "You", I hope national scholastic pulls the plug on them hosting NBIN.
I also wouldn't be surprised if this is an underhanded attempt to boost traffic to both sites.
God bless the free markets
yes
This is the most intellegent, logical and well thought out posts I have ever read on letsrun.com. In terms of "value" this post is ESPN while 95% of the posts on here are Flotrack. I would pay to read content like this.By the way, intellegence like this has no place on letsrun. You won't last long!
Harry Carey wrote:
People like 'worst generation ever' are inclined to make this an 'entitlement' issue because that's the hot button political rhetoric these days. Others will respond to the Original Poster by offering some answer vaguely intended to exhibit business savvy: "things cost money," "upkeep," "overhead," "production."
Both of these posts are wrong. The original issue was that the high amount Flotrack is charging is bad for the sport. As someone who has been to several USATF championships and more Millrose Games than he can count, I feel at least minimally involved and qualified enough to say that, yes, the $150 a year is bad for the sport. I do not think it is at all unreasonable to charge money--but the amount Flotrack is charging is high enough not only to turn off track fans (which actually isn't that big a deal--all of us on here will find other ways to appreciate results) but, more importantly, it's so high that it ensures only die-hard track fans with the proper disposable income will be exposed to all that Flotrack has to offer--thereby ensuring, in turn, that Flotrack attracts new fans to the sport (with the exception, perhaps, of a handful of athlete-parents).
It's possible to argue that this would be the case no matter how much Flotrack charged; however, I think a cheaper fee of, say, $5 per meet, would allow wider and more flexible involvement on the part of fans than the $20/month charge.
It's possible to argue, too, that none of us should expect track to be free, since, after all, we invariably pay in some form to watch more mainstream sports like basketball, football, and baseball, whether through a cable subscription or a beer at the bar. But a large and unfortunate difference between track and these more mainstream sports is that track enjoys far fewer competitions than, say, football, meaning that you get far less "bang for your buck" with a Flotrack subscription rather than an ESPN subscription. Flotrack is throwing in videos, documentaries and the like to convince us that the money is being well spent, and I like the idea; but they are, ultimately, supplementary videos, and until Flotrack gets solid writers to complement the videos, that supplementary material will not be worth the cost.
Another word about a pay-to-watch company like ESPN--it does for the sports it showcases something that Flotrack, in its present state, will never be able to do. It attracts single sport viewers (say, football fans) to other sports like basketball or tennis by diversifying its coverage; commentary on football is interlaced with commentary on basketball, or the football game ends and a basketball game can be watched. This diversification ensures that single sport fans quickly become multi-sport fans. This is why I think it is wrong-headed to point to ESPN as any kind of model for Flotrack; Flotrack, in focusing solely on track, has no means of attracting new audiences to a sport. This is not a fault of Flotrack's so much as it is just a condition of the sport of track and field. But by making people pay so steep a price, Flotrack ensures that audience grows smaller and stagnant--not larger.