I just learned this from an MC guy. To watch the playoffs, we'll have to pay the $12 or $13 fee, of course, but it's the dismal quality of the broadcast, not the the measly amount of money, that will have everyone flipping out at some point during the next three games. IHSA, NFHS, and the Ricketts family, which owns Marquee Sports, which owns NFHS, are incompetent and corrupt. These three corporate shysters care nothing about the experience of the fan, so prepare yourselves to be be confronted, right when the game is on the line, with the blue screen of death.
IHSA Sold Playoff Rights to NFHS
- Thread starter Silver Rain
- Start date
It has been that way for several years. A school can pay to broadcast the game for a few hundred bucks if it wants.
Last year MC streamed the BR playoff game through the Caravan Broadcasting but it was shown through NFHS, if that makes sense. So the quality of the game was still as it would be if shown through You Tube but if you wanted to watch it you had to purchase a months subscription to NFHS. They got the cash for it.
Where do you find that the Ricketts own the NFHS network? My research show that PlayON! Sports, Inc owns the NFHS Network. PlayON! Sports, Inc is funded by various PE firms such as KKR and PPP. It also owns GoFan.
I have been happily using NFHS networking for a couple of years. Gives me the opportunity to view my nieces and nephews games around the country.
The schools feed NFHS. Some production values are very good and others are just a static camera. No way NFHS could produce 10s of thousands events each month. Very often the quality of watch you are watching is dependent of the infrastructure at school. Watched my nephews football game at Valley Christian in San Jose last week (Nephew plays for Juniper Serra in San Mateo) and the quality was top notch with great student announcers and replay. Earlier watched my local public schools game and they had a robot camera following play.
IHSA selling the rights to playoff games is different story.
Teams can still do that but they have to pay NFHS and thst increases with round. In this instance York chose to pay to broadcast on their own stream. I wish more schools would to avoid the poor product NFHS has.
I think I read that the Marquee Sports Network, jointly operated by the Cubs and Sinclair Broadcast Group, a national sports network that owns hundreds of TV Stations, were having discussions with NFHS, but I guess it didn't go anywhere. How much do they charge to watch the Cubs now? It used to be free.
NFHS has managed to infiltrate high schools nationwide. They can put out a shoddy product and still make a lot of money. Comments on Reddit tend to be negative, most saying that NFHS overpromises and underdelivers. Everyone, including IHSA, knows that NFHS is technically inferior to YouTube.
Its kinda crazy that they charge the schools and then also charge the viewers. The fee for round one was $250. And schools are being forced to do that even if they have set up their own youtube or some other venue. Why are we forcing schools to use this option? Ihsa sold the rights for how much?
Agree 100 percent but im pretty confident we will see a viable challenger soon
NFHS Network is a partnership between NFHS, the local state organizations (ie IHSA), and PlayOn Sports.
PlayOn Sports got a bunch of VC money about 3 years ago during covid and put in Pixellot cameras for free to any school that wanted them. They grew from a staff of 50 to several hundred people. They own VNN, GoFan, and a few other things. The schools don't pay anything each year for the service and instead, actually get a revenue share of the subscriptions and ads.
As to technically inferior, their backend is all on AWS video services. Generally speaking, if you're having stream issues, it's either your local device or the people actually running the stream, not NFHS Network. The fiasco with IHSA playoff pairings episode was on the IHSA/the company they had doing their camera work.
IHSA didn't sell the rights to NFHS, it was always their rights in the first place. It's part of the partnership. The more successful the NFHS Network is, the more successful IHSA is.
PlayOn Sports got a bunch of VC money about 3 years ago during covid and put in Pixellot cameras for free to any school that wanted them. They grew from a staff of 50 to several hundred people. They own VNN, GoFan, and a few other things. The schools don't pay anything each year for the service and instead, actually get a revenue share of the subscriptions and ads.
As to technically inferior, their backend is all on AWS video services. Generally speaking, if you're having stream issues, it's either your local device or the people actually running the stream, not NFHS Network. The fiasco with IHSA playoff pairings episode was on the IHSA/the company they had doing their camera work.
IHSA didn't sell the rights to NFHS, it was always their rights in the first place. It's part of the partnership. The more successful the NFHS Network is, the more successful IHSA is.
How so? I watched on TV and there were zero issues. Were there different cameras for the NFHS feed?
You also say it's the users device or the people running the stream. So why can I watch a YouTube or Hudl feed of a team and it works just fine but when watching that same team in the playoffs on NFHS there's issues?
You have to hook the camera feed into a computer or dedicated streaming device which then pushes the video to NFHS. Essentially a splitter, but slightly more complicated. They do the same thing for the state finals.
I'd love to see an instance of that. If a school is broadcasting on YouTube, they aren't also running a Pixellot or manual NFHS broadcast. For Hudl, it's been hit or miss, because they're making use of the automated cameras in facilities just like NFHS and are having the same issues. Some Hudl broadcasts are manual feeds and as a general course, manual feeds look better. Despite what you think, you aren't comparing apples to apples. One stream could be on the school's Internet while simultaneously the other stream is on someone's hotspot. One is automated, the other isn't. One's got a bad camera, the other camera is brand new.
When people complain about the NFHS feed missing the middle 10 yards of the field or it's blurry on one side of a myriad of other things, those are camera issues. It's not specific to the service. Replace the camera, clean the lens, calibrate the focus, etc and the issue goes away. It's why I asked for people to tag me when they ser crappy streams because I can get those units flagged for repair/replacement and the going forward, things are better.
Always appreciate the insight. Does NFHS not perform maintenance on these cameras or run diagnostics on the feeds? I feel like at least having a maintenance schedule on the cameras would be fairly simple and if there's issues then contact the school and tell them to clean, calibrate, or adjust the cameras rather than waiting for them to be cleaned.
I don't know how they can get away with charging schools during playoff games to broadcast using their own formats if they can't consistently put out a quality product that they also charge the user for.
One of the old issues they had was that the computers that ran the cameras would get turned off or unplugged by people not knowing that the computer was for. They've since added monitoring such that an administrator gets notification that a device is offline so that it can get corrected. They also include stickers and stuff to mark cords with giant text saying "Don't unplug, livestream" or some such. Hudl avoided this issue by having their camera not require a computer. Instead the image is sent over the Internet and processed remotely. People are less apt to unplug a random network cord versus shutting off a computer.
The NFHS units now also run regular automatic tests to make sure that the camera fires up, gets a good signal, tests internet, etc. That stuff didn't exist last year. They're making huge investments into automating the automation. This still doesn't check for image quality issues. Focus and/or missing parts of the field aren't automatically flagged as of yet, but with the latest improvements in AI, I would think that that is coming.
I agree with you about the charging thing for playoffs. From IHSA's point of view, playoffs have the most views (generally), so subscriptions increase and they can also sell more ads because more eyeballs viewing. But if the camera is crap or the schools Internet won't support the stream, end users have a bad experience. NFHS tries to compensate for that by sending crews to all of the big games. Unfortunately the smaller classes tend to miss out, but it's an economic thing. More people are likely to watch the Maine South game versus the Althoff game, so it makes sense to send the crew to Maine South. There are only so many crews that they can tap outside of the schools that are broadcasting their own stuff.
I get not being able to send crews to every playoff game, but in order to have better odds at offering a better product would they ever consider tasking students to do this? I know there are number of schools where the production is run by students. I would think NFHS could have an online training that could provide credits for the students as they make sure everything goes smoothly.
NFHS doesn't really deal with kids. Usually everything is coordinated via the athletic director. I'll send this idea to my contacts. I point them to these threads from time to time so they can directly see what users are saying rather than just the aggregated reporting from support tickets.
I can’t point to a specific time where the broadcast was simultaneously playing through YouTube and NFHS. What I can say is when I have watched teams that use YouTube for the regular season I have never had an issue with receiving the feed. With NFHS I have seen it not want to pull the feed up or it seems as though it is “buffering”.
Do I understand you correctly that the schools themselves do not have the right technology to get it to NFHS servers but no issues sending it to YouTube?
To me it seems like NFHS servers cannot handle the influx of viewers come playoff time and handle that many people visiting their site or application.
The York broadcast is actually really good, I totally agree more schools should do it. It’s like a reasonable facsimile of a college broadcast. The announcers-in-training are armed with every cliche in the book and they question play calls. They actually have instant replay and they have that thing where they show the kid’s picture and little bio after someone makes a play. When it works there’s a score/clock footer. There are always a few technical glitches but that’s to be expected.
According to comments on Reddit, which extends far beyond Illinois, the problems begin at installation. The Pixellot cameras are installed by a local gaffer, not by an NFHS technician, and the gaffer may or may not know what he is doing. This saves money for NFHS, but, not surprisingly, the setup often fails. When it does, these Redditors say, NFHS doesn't provide support in a timely manner. Others say they never have a problem. Maybe, as groot says, the goal is for the system to be self-checking and self-repaing. But it's not there yet, and it may never get there, as NFHS, an ambitious company, continues to expand.
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We went through all of this on the Edgy podcast this summer. I suggest that some of you go back and take it for a spin. I certainly understand the frustration. I get frustrated too.
It's important to understand this, as one who's done these telecasts for years. You should have to pay to watch a product. Games on Weigel are free if you have an antenna, but most of you have a streaming service or cable. So you do in fact pay for them. Go to a game in person? You're paying admission. Stream games shouldn't be any different. You want the quality to be better? You should pay to get better quality. Price point is one thing, but free is another.
Think about this: some of you have Shaw Media AND Daily Herald subscriptions. Both share the same content, two subscriptions for the same content. We all need to be smarter consumers with the new world of non-linear media.
It's important to understand this, as one who's done these telecasts for years. You should have to pay to watch a product. Games on Weigel are free if you have an antenna, but most of you have a streaming service or cable. So you do in fact pay for them. Go to a game in person? You're paying admission. Stream games shouldn't be any different. You want the quality to be better? You should pay to get better quality. Price point is one thing, but free is another.
Think about this: some of you have Shaw Media AND Daily Herald subscriptions. Both share the same content, two subscriptions for the same content. We all need to be smarter consumers with the new world of non-linear media.
This year Morris home games were on Hudl, for free with no subscription, previously they were on YouTube with no fee. Both platforms offer great quality with no issues, so it can be done.
"You want the quality to be better? You should pay to get better quality." Are you saying NFHS is holding back and there is a better quality product they can provide?
I don't think most people have any issue paying for a service or product but when one service is being made the only option for playoffs it's not unreasonable for those paying to expect a quality product for what they're paying for. If there are schools that have constant issues due to one factor or another with their NFHS feed then that school shouldn't be made to pay to broadcast using the provider they used throughout the season for playoff games.
