Well, the future is here, as we mention in the front page story. But how much are you willing to pay to see a D-III game online?
From my national perspective, the game would have to be pretty good to make me shell out $5.95. I know the quality of Penn Atlantic streams is spectacular (so good, in fact, that I was unable to load them on our business-class DSL connection at our house in Virginia). The showcase broadcasts they did last year in the Midwest Conference, CCIW, UAA and NEWMAC were impressive indeed.
But the stream itself is just one part. There’s a difference between a professional broadcast with multiple cameras and professional announcers and a one-camera broadcast with students on the air.
When it’s free, I don’t care how bad the commentary is. If I’m paying for it, however … different story.
The good news is, there is really video all over the place, if you know where to look. And we encourage SIDs to post links on our site. Tens of thousands of people visit our Scoreboard page every night. Wouldn’t you like them to visit your streamed video, audio and live stats? (Use the Edit link next to the game in question.)
But what would you pay? I would pay $5.95 for a game of national importance. I might pay a couple bucks less for a game involving my alma mater, since I no longer live in the area. And if my children were old enough to be playing in these games, I might have a different standard.
Also, on a side note, congratulations to Frank Uible, Rhodes Scholar and Diehardfan, the newest members of our Posting Hall of Fame.
I’ve been on both ends of Division III video streams. I had the pleasure of providing play-by-play for 3 CCIW games last year on Penn Atlantic. And just last week our WJBC audio was used for Illinois Wesleyan’s first crack at video streaming. On the consumer side, I’ve been watching Wheaton’s school-produced video streams on WETN TV for a few years and also watched a couple Penn Atlantic MWC productions last year.
Ideally it’d be really nice to see a lot of Division III schools produce their own video streams like Wheaton (IL) does. This brings games to alums and fans FOR FREE. What most people do not realize is how simple and inexpensive the process really is for the school. Basically, video is just taking out of the camera used to film the game (which all schools have) and audio is taken from whatever radio station covers the game. The video/audio is sent to the web, and there’s your stream. I know IWU’s experiment last week went over very well and I’m hoping the school moves forward with it on a permanent basis.
I am not ready to pay $5.95 to watch most D3 games. The real big ones (like Wooster vs Wittenberg), yes…but not most. Like tonight, I’d watch parts of Lawrence/Grinnell if it were free, but I’m not going to pay to watch it.
I know it is not realistic for many schools to produce their own video streams, but I’d like to see more at least look into it. Again, it’s easier and less expensive than they think.
Is $5.95 really that much more than what you would pay to see a game in person? If you’re a paying person you pay $3 or so for a ticket. You add in snacks at the concession stand and gas for the trip and that could be well over $5.95. If it’s a matter of watching your team play or watching a great game on the internet when you can’t make the trip to see them, I would say it’s worth it.
Most d3 basketball is free, so 5.95 is quite a bit more than it would ordinarily cost to see a game.
Since the closest d3 school to me is a 4 hour drive away, the chance to see video of some games is pretty cool. However I also have a wife who would complain about 6 bucks to watch a game on the internet, so it would have to be a pretty big deal for me to endure that.
Also, I agree with Q that it would be nicer for more schools to do their own streams, but it’s not quite so easy as you say for the many d3 schools who don’t have any radio coverage for their games.
I wouldn’t say most Division III basketball is free. The last two games I went to were free admission but that is in the vast minority in my experience.
Hoops fan,
You haven’t been to many WIAC gyms. Games are regularily running at $4 to $6 and men-women dobuleheaders can be $6 to $10.
Is the Midwest Conference offering an unlimited access price. I would be more likely to drop $34.99 for a full season of WIAC games than I would be to pick and choose games at $5.95 a pop.
I’ve paid anywhere from $4 to $8 to see games this year, with only one venue that doesn’t charge (Kenyon.) I’d only pay $5.95 to watch a game online in exceptional circumstances, mostly because I’m not sure my computer or connection is able to process the feed correctly. I’ve watched some games where the feed was like watching a series of still photos taken a few seconds apart, and I wouldn’t want to pay to get that kind of quality. I’m afraid the MWC won’t see any of my money this season, but I’m pleased that it’s at least available.
Internet feeds are one thing, and I think they can be great. Television converage is another, and I hope that never comes about in D3. I think there’s a slippery slope, at the bottom of which is Dick Vitale and Bill Raftery and SportsCenter. I’d hate to see that happen to D3 hoops. I think internet feeds are safely behind the guardrail at the top, but television coverage is too close to the edge to suit me.
I guess that’s true. It depends on where you are. I’ve never paid for a regular season d3 game, but then again, I usually am at small schools with bad gyms and even worse teams. Well that or Grinnell.
Point gets all they can out of you. Men play in Quandt, women play down the hall in Berg. Men’s game went up to $7.00 and women’s are $6.00. When the women play first, you can get a men’s ticket for half price…$9.50.
One weekend, Point men played first and the women second…same policy, but you pay $10!
I watched the video webcast of Point at Eau Claire, which was cool. Not sure if I’d pay $6 a piece, but I may do a full-season package as well, like Just Bill said.
Congrats to the three new HOFers.
At McMurry, we are fortunate to have local radio broadcast for a whole year of events, 10 football games, approximately 40 women’s and men’s basketball games and 8-15 baseball games, depending on conference tourney appearances. This is real labor of love by our broadcast team, Kit Kimbrell, the son of the all-time winningest bsaketball coach at McMurry, and Leon Rawlings, who sometimes make the 600-mile round trip to cover a game and then drive 400-miles round trip two days later for a couple more of women’s and men’s games.
A single camera angle, dubbed with their radio broadcast, would be more than sufficent for me to buy a $9.95/month package. How many games could I watch? I might keep one or two “LiveStats” going simultaneously. (I really enjoy it when posters that I know and trust are posting the games that they are following on the D3Hoops message board!)
What might entice me to upgrade would be to buy the local package for my alma mater (?? $9.95/month ??) and then get the “D3 ticket”, access to all of the other D3 schools who use that video streaming service for $2.00-3.00/month more.
I am only consuming bandwidth. How expensive is that?
I have a little different take since my niece plays for Fontbonne in STL and her family lives in Texas. We find it difficult at times to even find box scores, so we’d love the opportunity to see a few games. Not so sure I’d want to pay per game, but a one time rate might be more reasonable.
I’m watching the Tufts/Amherst game, now in overtime. In retrospect I might have paid $5.95 for this game, but how would I know that beforehand?
In St. Louis all SLIAC games are free. Also, Wash U’s games are free. On the other hand, last year when I went to see women’s/men’s double headers at Randolph-Macon, since I got there for the women’s game first I got in free and got my hand stamped so I could leave and come back in for the men’s game free as well. The people who came only for the men’s game had to pay $5.00. This year the R-MC women were on the road while the men wer at home, so I had to pay to get in. I found it very odd last year that I could get in free to see the women, who had been the national runners-up the year before, but would have had to pay just for the men. Obviously gender equity has not fully arrived at R-MC basketball. I would have gladly paid to see the women play and then been allowed to stay and see the men play without having to pay again.
Oh yes. As for paying to watch games on line — no thanks.
pay 5.95? it better be an espn quality broadcast then! i’ve never paid a single cent to watch any D3 athletic event, regardless of sport, except for ncaa tournament games because the ncaa requires paid admission.
Personally, I wouldn’t pay to watch a streaming broadcast. If what Titan Q says is true, there really shouldn’t be a need to charge for the internet broadcasts.
As for why I wouldn’t pay for it, I guess I’m old school in regards to enjoying listening to games I can’t attend over the radio. Wooster’s play by play man does a very nice job and makes it really enjoyable to listen to Scots’ radio broadcasts when I can’t see them in person.
An Emory alum has formed a company called Highlight Reel Productions that is charging $10 a game for the Emory basketball home UAA games, men and women. In addition, if you just wanted to listen to the audio of Emory games on Teamline, you have to pay a fee, whether or not you are listening to the game on the Internet or over the telephone. This is from a school that does not charge admission to the game if you are fortunate enough to be in Atlanta and want to see the Emory home games in person.
(NYU and Chicago also audiocast games over Teamline, but those audiocasts are free if you are listening to them over the Internet.)
As a Brandeis fan, I have mixed feelings about Emory’s practices, considering that Emory uses student announcers on their video and audiocast. $10 a game might be fine if a professional sportscaster was doing the video and audio– considering that a trip to Atlanta at this time of the season is very expensive now (Simple airline round trip from Boston to Atlanta for the weekend of Feb. 15 to 17 is costing over $250 for the flights alone.)
I just wish that Emory would get a live stats machine so that I could get a free way to follow the games in Atlanta.
The live stats are something that the WIAC has done this year (well, except for Whitewater, for some reason, or, at least, I haven’t been able to find it on their website during home games). It’s great to be able to listen to one game and keep tabs on 3+ more. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t pay for a game unless it was a high profile game with national importance, like Pat and Q said above, or if it was a big game that Point or another WIAC foe was involved in. Typically, however, these would be overlapping.
To be true, though, I’d prefer that more schools actually did the live stats, because, while it’s nice to hear a good broadcast, there’s often times other “fluff,” especially during downtimes that live stats simply don’t have. If nothing is happening during the game, then no stats are being updated.
Now, this is no knock on color guys by any stretch of the imagination. Color guys make the broadcast IMO, but when I’m trying to keep track of 4 games at once, I just want to see what happened, I want the stats and the facts!
So, in other words, no, I wouldn’t pay for a D-3 game unless it was a unique situation. Conf Tourney games? It’s possible, NCAA tourney games, it’s probable.
Point, what if the service were priced about $100/yr and involved 5 home football games, your 24-28 home men’s and women’s basketball games, the home volleyball games and your home baseball and softball games? Are you now getting those broadcasts free, by radio or webcast?
Just trying to identify a “price point”. We know that the marketers are watching this site for entry into the market. Once the video streaming has been “commoditized”, then the price drops even more or packages of services are assembled.
I would love to see the WIAC assemble a “season ticket” for video streaming services. I think that is one of the conferences that moves this product for all of us D3 fans.
Thanks for your response.
Well… I’m in a bit of a unique situation, being a basketball alum, I get in free for home games, so I guess I don’t really count… Other than a few football games, and occasionally a women’s game or a baseball game, I didn’t (and haven’t) had time to follow the other sports teams at Point.
Right now, football, and men’s and women’s basketball games and baseball games are on local radio and the audio stream is webcast. There haven’t been video webcasts, but there have been select WIAC games shown this season on FSN North which were tape delayed. And Point’s student TV station used to broadcast select men’s and women’s home games until recent cutbacks.
From the sounds of it, it doesn’t seem that it would be that much work to get something like setup. I’ve seen Wheaton’s video webcasts, as well as some of the Penn Atlantic from last season and I enjoyed them, to be sure, but (and this may have just been because I was using an older computer) there were interruptions in the service as my player was “buffering”… It got to the point that it would have simply been easier to just hear the radio cast than have the entire broadcast chopped up.
Also another thought… I still live within 10 miles of UWSP’s home games and have been to almost all of them this season. If I were to move away, then I probably would enjoy being able to see the home games, but even now, it would be great to be able to see the AWAY games that I’m not able to travel to.
Live stats is great! The thing with it though is taht StatCrew (the company that produces the stat software nearly every college uses) costs a pretty penny! if it’s anything like it is here at Lynchburg College, the sports info budget is pretty tight, so some colleges might be years away before they get the statcrew basketball software that allows for livestats. we got it this year, but the laptop we have to do the stats is so crappy it probably woudln’t be able to handle doing the stats and putting it on the internet live. working on getting a new laptop though. fortunately the ODAC will pay for one new statcrew program every year (each sport requires a separate version on statcrew, although field hockey and soccer can basically use the same one since the stats aren’t really that much different), so we aren’t left entirely on our own.
I watched the Grinnell/Lawrence game of Friday night. I also checked the stats after the game.
First, Grotberg travelled on the 3 point shot that tied the game at the end of regulation. He got open off a roundabout and took three steps to get square to the basket. I’m sure the clock started late as well. Did you notice that the LU fans (you could hear them in the background) were required to correct the scorekeepers multiple times, both on score and on time? That was classic. Even the refs were listening as they were the only ones in the arena paying attention to details.
It is testament to the inadequacy of the officials that Grinnell had fewer personal fouls than Lawrence. How can this be–if you watched, all the Grinnell team does on defense is assault and foul. The refs are so tired of it they just stop calling it. Then an LU foul is called on a ticky tack play.
If I was the Miwdest Conference, I would ask Grinnell to find a new conference, this System ball is just crap, whether you win or lose.
I thought the Penn stream was good by the way. Darby looks like a nie, well lit gym. Too bad the refs couldn’t see in it.