What can we do to stop flotrack?

HardLoper wrote:

We could stop them by purchasing the rights to meets, filming them, broadcasting it ourselves, then giving it away for free. Working for free isn't much fun though, is it.

I would generally agree with you that nothing is or should be free, but a solid business case could be made for either lowering prices or making the site free/almost free with many ads. The latter option is especially appealing because it encourages support and participation - and this exposure - from a broad array of industries that would otherwise have eschewed track and field.

Could someone summarize the reason for the uproar?

Disclaimer: I had a flotrack subscription, did not like it and got rid of it. That was no different from how I make other choices. So, I do not really get this cheating stuff. Not questioning it, just don't get it.

Nobody is justifying cheating. We are complaining about a product. Customers complaining en masse = foreboding sign for company that their future revenue outlook may be lower than expected. Free market is in play, but one could foresee demand for FloTrack slipping, with continued lack of value from their product.

simple logic wrote:

HardLoper wrote:

We could stop them by purchasing the rights to meets, filming them, broadcasting it ourselves, then giving it away for free. Working for free isn't much fun though, is it.

I would generally agree with you that nothing is or should be free, but a solid business case could be made for either lowering prices or making the site free/almost free with many ads. The latter option is especially appealing because it encourages support and participation - and this exposure - from a broad array of industries that would otherwise have eschewed track and field.

Lower prices - maybe yes

Free with ads - no way. Ads generate almost no revenue

So is this uproar over the pricing, then? Nothing else?

Thanks 4 the replies guys, glad to see people who agree/disagree on the subject

Keep in mind to the old bulldogs on this thread - Im not trying to mooch off the company for free vids, im simply suggesting a better option they can go about in promoting our sport. We don't have alot, as you can tell... LetsRun is literally the only popular running forum for the entire Northern Hemisphere lol.

SO when you put a huge price on a product thats not even as popular to begin with, that draws very bad publicity. $150? are you f*king kidding me?!? Is that what, 3x more than a netflix subscription? (Which has WAYYYY MORE content) That is ridiculousness, I dont care what anybody says. I wonder if anyone can pull similar companies that are like flotrack but for football & baseball, etc... and see how much they charge for their subscribers ( so we can easily compare)

It should be no more than $30 a year, MAX. Flotrack is so lucky that track fans literally die for track & dont give a dam about pricing.

Thanks 4 the replies guys, glad to see people who agree/disagree on the subject

Keep in mind to the old bulldogs on this thread - Im not trying to mooch off the company for free vids, im simply suggesting a better option they can go about in promoting our sport. We don't have alot, as you can tell... LetsRun is literally the only popular running forum for the entire Northern Hemisphere lol.

SO when you put a huge price on a product thats not even as popular to begin with, that draws very bad publicity. $150? are you f*king kidding me?!? Is that what, 3x more than a netflix subscription? (Which has WAYYYY MORE content) That is ridiculousness, I dont care what anybody says. I wonder if anyone can pull similar companies that are like flotrack but for football & baseball, etc... and see how much they charge for their subscribers ( so we can easily compare)

It should be no more than $30 a year, MAX. Flotrack is so lucky that track fans literally die for track & dont give a dam about pricing.

My 2 cents, if Flo Track offered a quality product their would be far less uproar over their premium pricing. Our son runs at a D1 program, his conference meet was streamed on the web for free. We were at the meet and did not watch but had a friend record it. Stream was solid, commentary was not hugely insightful but accurate and relevant. Next meet is covered by flo track. We purchase the annual plan and go to meet. Coverage was archaic, commentary was ridiculous. announcers were basically self absorbed and lacked any insights.

The value proposition by flotrack, other than their monopoly on content is non existent. More information can be obtained from reading about races theam watching Flotracks non existent quality webcast. The good side to this is the market will hopefully weed out the lack of value provided.

It is not a monopoly. It is an inferior market in which there are only one of a few key players that have vested interests in covering it.

HardLoper wrote:

simple logic wrote:

I would generally agree with you that nothing is or should be free, but a solid business case could be made for either lowering prices or making the site free/almost free with many ads. The latter option is especially appealing because it encourages support and participation - and this exposure - from a broad array of industries that would otherwise have eschewed track and field.

Lower prices - maybe yes

Free with ads - no way. Ads generate almost no revenue

Ads generate no revenue? Um... If you have viewers, a good product and people who know how to make a profit off advertising you can do alright.

There's a football game coming up in a couple weeks that does pretty well off ads.

Let's knit hats and have a march!

The issue I have is that Flotrack is charging just way too much money for the limited content they have.

I can get Netflix HD for $10/month. Hulu is $8/month. Amazon Prime is $8.25/month. Between two of these, you can get access to tens or hundreds of thousands of AAA movies, originals, plus you can share access with the rest of your family (**cough** or friends).

What the hell am I getting for $20/month (or $12.50/month if I prepay for a year)? A couple amateur-produced live streams and some random interviews? It's not like the quality of their productions is that great anyways. I was perfectly fine with the *FREE* NCAA coverage in past years, which was IMHO substantially better than the clips of Flotrack I've seen.

"monopoly on the content" or an exclusive. NOT a monopoly on the market.

Illinoisphotographer wrote:

The issue I have is that Flotrack is charging just way too much money for the limited content they have.

I can get Netflix HD for $10/month. Hulu is $8/month. Amazon Prime is $8.25/month. Between two of these, you can get access to tens or hundreds of thousands of AAA movies, originals, plus you can share access with the rest of your family (**cough** or friends).

What the hell am I getting for $20/month (or $12.50/month if I prepay for a year)? A couple amateur-produced live streams and some random interviews? It's not like the quality of their productions is that great anyways. I was perfectly fine with the *FREE* NCAA coverage in past years, which was IMHO substantially better than the clips of Flotrack I've seen.

It's all about scale. The more people who watch, the less you have to charge. If you cross a certain threshold of viewers, you can even make money by not charging and instead showing commercials.

The problem is that Flotrack will never have a sufficient viewer base to make it economical to charge prices equivalent to Netflix. If the viewer base did exist, ESPN would air running events, and there would be no need for Flotrack.

They do generate decent cash flow from their pre-rolls, but the business model still needs cash revenue from customers. I couldn't imagine their operating cost being low anymore, it probably was in the early years, but now it has quite a few more employees.

Personally, I don't dislike FloTrack because I understand that it is a business. I've had the FloPro content before. I originally got it because of the Driven series, not the streaming content, but my work life is too busy to watch it nowadays. The product is not cheap, but it's also very niche. Go walk around to a mall and ask normal people if they have Netflix, the answer is yes. Go to a road race and ask people if they even know what FloTrack is.. the answer will be commonly no. Us fans of the sport are not in big numbers at all.

How many people would sign up for Flotrack if the price was $5, $10, $15 per month? The customer base will likely grow, but possibly not the total revenue. I'd think at $12.99 and $99 could be interesting.

Lastly, my advice for FloTrack is to shed its distance-first motives. I feel like they aren't exactly focused on all aspects of track still and cater to endurance events. Unfortunately for track, the sport fan base is VERY fragmented and people only care for events that they are good at.