I do enjoy supporting high school football but as the weather wanes and taking into account away games I am really enjoying watching these games streaming. I first got into it with a first mover in the industry called The Cube. They were acquired by Play On Sports who eventually worked a deal with the National Federation of State High School Associations and formed the NFHS Network. Here is the kicker. They were giving out free camera units to high schools to broadcast games ( football, volleyball, basketball, baseball, softball etc). The cool thing is these camera units operate without a human. There is AI technology that follows the game. So you can broadcast effortlessly. In fact some schools set it to broadcast automatically on a timer. The whole broadcast unit conects to the scoreboard and renders graphics automatically. These units arent cheap. The finished product is streamed live on the NFHS network live via app on device or units like Roku. For a price of course. $11.99 a month. Compared to other services like Netflix pretty steep if you aske me.
The reason why I subscribed is to watch my daughter's cheer and watch their high school games as they are 1 1/2 hours away from me. But the problem was the school didnt broadcast home games on the netwrok because they didn't have the equiptment I asked the school's athletic director why they didn't partake in the FREE camera units and I was told you must be a member of the NFHS for starters and the revenue sharing was a tad wonky. I am not sure, but NFHS membership would have run that very small school ( enrollment 300) more than their budget allotted. I found out that they went on to broadcast via YouTube for free !!
I have since noticed more and more schools dropping out of NFHS streaming and going their own route on YouTube. My pocketbook likes this.
Lockport, which was on the network, now broadcasts their games via YouTube. Link HERE.
It seems they are using the automated technology. You can see the camera making decisions and moving. The use of the scoreboard sucks though.
