As much as I was ranting yesterday about how horrible all of these streaming services are getting, there are some good sides to them as well.
If you want to check out the post, you can read it here. While that post dealt more specifically with professional and college events that are bouncing around the roulette of paid services out there like Amazon Prime, Peacock, Paramount, and Hulu, this post is talking more about high school sports.
If you were working for one of the companies that provide the equipment and service for streaming High School sports, you likely got slammed with a lot of work and a lot of profits when Covid hit.
Faced with the reality of not being able to have butts in seats at high school events, these services like Hudl and NFHS Network capitalized on being able to provide streaming services to schools. In fact, the latter did it virtually free because they knew they were going to get their money back from all the subscribers paying $12 per month to watch the events.
I'm one of those subscribers and it is amazing to be able to watch my niece who is four hours away play games from the comfort of my couch. Of course I would rather be there to watch her in person, but life doesn't often allow for that. These streaming services fill that gap.
Believe it or not, I think high school streaming events is one of the few good things that came out of the Covid pandemic. Think of all the grandparents and relatives out of state who get to watch their kids play sports now. Think of the parent that has to work late or can't get away from some other obligation.
On top of that, think of all the opportunities this gives programs for revenue, scouting, and fine tuning their own program. It's an amazing thing!
My one gripe about all these services is that there are just too many of them. It's fine when my niece has a home game, but when she has an away game, it's a mad scramble to find out if and where we are going to be able to stream the game.
Will it be on Youtube? Will it be on the NFHS service we already pay for? Will it be on some other service that we have to pay a monthly or per game fee for? Then you have the scams that I wrote about in this post.
If it's difficult for me to figure out, imagine what it must be like for my nieces grandparents. I don't care how tech savvy you are. It's a digital minefield out there.
I love the fact that I get to watch my nieces play softball when they are hundreds of miles away. I also love the fact that I will eventually be able to watch my other nieces and nephews play remotely when they get to that level.
Technology really is an amazing thing!
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That's a really a huge plus. While I think that most technological advancements have actually been a net negative thing for society, this is one of the good ones. It's great that they have this now.
Yeah, it's pretty awesome. I'm not a fan of having to be remote tech support whenever my in laws can't find the game, but my mother in law bakes me lemon bars, so I can't really complain!