wejo wrote:
The cost to live stream is $0 if you use Youtube. And I just googled and it looks like you can do pay per view on youtube:
https://gigaom.com/2012/04/10/youtube-adds-pay-per-view-to-live-streaming/
So while I agree with almost everything you wrote here, live streaming does not cost $0 if you try to do it well. I'm a fan of using youtube for streaming track meets for the reason that you mentioned - its free. Otherwise streaming a full day track meet can cost a lot of money on other services that charge by bandwidth used. The reason you use one of these other services is to typically control advertising and monetize video. Youtube does share in their ad revenue, but you are at their mercy in terms of CPM and can't truly control which advertisers' videos will play before your video.
That's the streaming part of it. Now the other side is the actual video. Let me first say that neither FloTrack nor Runnerspace do a particularly good job at this part, but places like the Armory have been putting out an improving product over the last several years and USATF typically hires a professional crew for its big meets. Good video requires multiple cameras, camera operators, a switcher (person & hardware), video routing equipment, graphics software and hardware, interfaces with timers & results, an encoding computer, replay system, communications system, etc. Together, these things add up and become fairly expensive. Thus there is a cost to recoup by anyone putting together a quality broadcast. This can be marketing exposure for a place like the Armory or USATF or for a business, subscription fees to make a profit on and continue doing it.
The reality is as a subscriber to FT or RS, its a fair, but sadly not true, assumption that you will be getting a quality and professional broadcast. That's where my issue lies with the paid services.