Live Streaming Webcast Coverage of USSF Division II Pro Soccer Planned for 2010 Season
USSF Division II Pro Soccer will feature a service of live streaming webcasts this year according to Barclay Kruse, Chief Communications Officer for the NSC Minnesota Stars soccer team. This news is contrary to a statement made by Rochester Rhinos owner Rob Clark on the “Kick This” radio show out of Rochester New York last weekend. Clark stated that he didn’t think the service would be available this year.
“We had a conference call with USSF yesterday,” said Kruse. “They confirmed that there would in fact be a league-wide webcasting platform, and they promised the specifics in a couple days.” Kruse says the USSF has narrowed it down to a couple of vendors but they are still working on making a final decision.
The NSC spokesperson said one interesting aspect of the new plan is viewers won’t go to the USSF website but would instead go directly to the team website to get the online feed.
“I can guarantee that there will be free webcasts of Stars games, both home and away,” said Kruse. “The service will be much like last year’s USL Live which was offered by the USL and executed by each team and NeuLion. The level of the production will be determined by the home team, so it may be inconsistent, much like USL Live was.”
“Webcasting has been one of my personal innovative projects at the NSC over the past 3 years,” Kruse stated. “We were prepared to offer our own webcasts of home games on the Stretch Internet platform if the USSF Division II Pro League and its teams had not made this decision. The NSC has the ability to produce our own webcasts on our existing platform. We use Stretch Internet to webcast about ten of our youth soccer and hockey tournaments each year – USA CUP, NSC Cup, Schwan Cup, Stick-it to Cancer hockey and All-American Girls Hockey.”
Kruse said that the USSF has sent out a set of broadcasting standards that teams must meet. Even though the NSC already has some equipment, Kruse said the new standards will mean that team will need to purchase about $14,000 worth of equipment which will include 3 new and improved cameras and a Tricaster which is a piece of production equipment that allows camera switches and prerecorded segments.
Kruse said the NSC also looked into having North Metro Cable do production of the broadcasts again. He says even though the NSC is very familiar with the quality of North Metro it was not something they could afford this year. Kruse said he thought the $20,000.00 North Metro was asking for 15 home games was actually quite reasonable. But the NSC would need sponsors to underwrite that cost which he doesn’t believe they can put together in the current recessionary business climate and on such short notice. However, he didn’t rule it out in future years.
“Unfortunately, North Metro isn’t interested in going into this as an entrepreneurial venture,” said Kruse. “They learned from their experience with the Thunder that they can’t sell enough commercial spots to make it work. They would love to work with us, but we were going to have to cover their production costs. It’s just a money issue, and we completely understand. The NSC partners with North Metro on many different projects, and there is a high degree of respect between both organizations.”
“For the Stars, we would love to work with North Metro 15 to produce home game webcasts, because they offer production equipment and personnel beyond our means,” continued Kruse. “They have a production truck, four-camera set ups and 2 instant replay machines. If we had North Metro 15, the Stars webcasts would probably be among the highest-quality productions in the league.”
“We are currently trying to sell a sponsorship to underwrite North Metro 15’s production costs, but to date we have no takers,” said Kruse. “We’re not giving up though.”
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Fantastic news!
Let’s wait for the announcement
hugely exciting news – the webcasts over the past couple of seasons only intensified the love i had for my team
BQ, thanks for the report. I had just asked you about this the other day. How timely!!! You know, I sleep well every night knowing that Inside MN Soccer is busy covering all the soccer news that is important to me while I sleep.
I dig the openness of the NSC about this.
Matt, that is one thing they have promised from the get go.
Is Zlatan still around? I need to budget how many beers I need to buy for the hesitant fans of pro soccer in Minnesota. Perhaps things are starting to sound better? Seriously, haven’t heard as many questions and criticisms as of late. Wonder if things have gotten better, or if there has been a loss of interest.
Very good stuff, I like watching the away games.
Also, the ability to preview the last game of the team you’re about to play next makes watching the live match that much more exciting.
Thank You
NASL, USL, USSF
Web casting will be great so we can watch replays on our phones while in the beer garden.
@thesuperrookie – About criticism . . . we only need a GK and one more field player and we have 11. One way to keep costs down in the first year may be to have no subs.
Sorry Chris, the equipment that is the minimum required by the NSC will not allow for instant replays. That was one of the really cool things about North Metro as they had two replay machines in their production truck.
Sorry super-rook, as usual, I saw some negative outcomes from Kruse’s comments. Still can’t sell sponsorship. Might be a an extremely red-book year for the NSC. I am not a hesitant fan, I am a realist. When my schedule places me in MN this summer and the Stars are at home, I will be there cheering. I just don’t want to see all this energy put into something that is unlikely to have sustained success. I would rather see more effort and emphasis around the NPSL as I think their model may be more successful in 2nd division soccer in the US right now…developing players. It should be a league for college (all divisions) and some HS and pro players to come together to improve. I would rather see areas that can put together a 1st division team focus on that…although it looks as if we may not see much MLS this summer.
Zlatan,
I appreciate you being a realest and I would even consider myself one as well.
In the writing of this article I spoke to Kruse and he explained that in most cases the numbers just aren’t high enough with any online broadcast of this sort to outright sell ads. So while you may have a point that the Stars are new or that the sport is soccer, the reality is it’s tough to sell sponsorships for ANY online broadcasts of this sort with the type of numbers it draws.
Another issue is that the bulk of people watching the game are away fans. So the situation is not cut and dry.
What is a possibility is to get a sponsor for the Stars (the NSC has a number of good sponsors lined up) and part of that sponsorship package may include the online TV service. The folks at NSC are pretty creative in their approach to these things.
So I think your statement “Still can’t sell sponsorship” while true in this instance, is somewhat misleading and may be more about getting an ample amount of time to put a proper strategy in to place.
In the future perhaps a league run service could have a big National sponsorship that would be relevant for most markets showing the service. With continued advancement and strategy, perhaps a Vancouver broadcast will somehow allow the visiting team ads from their market. There are a lot of possibilities.