Flo Sports

[Ron Boerger]

A tweet from Bob Quillman, who has contacts deep within D3 basketball:

I've received notes from 11 D3 head basketball coaches, so far, who say their stream viewership is down anywhere from the 40% to 80% after moving to Flo.

I believe @d3datacast  has received similar messages.

Yes, let's be sure to cut off over half of prospective student athletes and supporters for that $30K a year.  If you miss out on *one* new student across your entire program as a result - all sports combined - you just cost yourself that $30K at your typical private college.

[jekelish]

Having seen my alma mater decline to join the SCAC Flo effort last year, I can only hope that it continues to do so should the SAA unwisely chase the few dollars offered to most conferences so far. 

Given what a high quality production the Tiger Network is (I've gotten to look inside their control room/studio, it's legit), I'd be shocked if Trinity ever jumps on board unless they had absolutely no other choice from a conference contract standpoint.

[blue_jays]

When a significant change happens that is going to positively impact a segment of people and negatively impact another segment of people, getting the opinions of both segments of people to tell the complete story is literally Journalism 101.

Again, it's a press release.  The only intent is to shape the narrative that this is good; they do not want to give space for another opinion.  The point is to try and convince people this is good for everyone.

Do you hear yourself? It's NOT good for everyone. People are telling you, directly, that this is NOT good for them.

That's the other side of this shift of the entire model of D3 sports — ignoring those voices is journalistic negligence

Frankly, journalism has nothing to do with it. The employees putting out these press releases (SIDs/Athletic Communications) are being told to announce the deal, put in a nice quote that makes the endeavor sound positive, and that's that. I bet the majority of SIDs oppose these Flo deals, but it's not their job to push back. Their AD tells them what to do, and they do it. Just like any other job under the sun, you do what your boss tells you to do, or you no longer have a job.

If you want a journalistic callout of Flo, look to the local city newspaper or the university student newspaper. But don't put any of this on the hardworking SIDs, who bust their humps with 60-80 hour work weeks 9-10 months a year, doing everything they can to serve the student-athletes.

[Ron Boerger]

[...]

If you want a journalistic callout of Flo, look to the local city newspaper or the university student newspaper. But don't put any of this on the hardworking SIDs, who bust their humps with 60-80 hour work weeks 9-10 months a year, doing everything they can to serve the student-athletes.

+1

Not to mention they are paid a pittance.  They have enough to deal with without being involved in this conversation.

[IC798891]

Frankly, journalism has nothing to do with it. The employees putting out these press releases (SIDs/Athletic Communications) are being told to announce the deal, put in a nice quote that makes the endeavor sound positive, and that's that.

If you want a journalistic callout of Flo, look to the local city newspaper or the university student newspaper. But don't put any of this on the hardworking SIDs, who bust their humps with 60-80 hour work weeks 9-10 months a year, doing everything they can to serve the student-athletes.

I'm not talking about SIDs at all. I literally never have. I have absolutely no idea where this talking point is even coming from.

I'm talking about the literal D3 sports website we're using, reporting both sides of this issue, rather than just regurgitating the Flo Sports talking points in their "reporting" of 2024. There are people commenting on here, on X, everywhere this is announced, that they don't like it. And all we got was Ryan's piece — which was well-written and very well sourced (from one side).

[IC798891]

Also, to make this clearer:

I think Ryan wrote a VERY good article. My criticism is not of his work. It's just frustrating to see a very clear divide between what's being reported and what it seems like I'm reading seemingly everywhere

[Pat Coleman]

Ryan did write a very good column.

[Kuiper]

Since people are mentioning it, I thought it would make sense to re-post the link to the article from Ryan Scott of D3hoops.com, which discussed this issue in February of 2024 right after the NEWMAC joined the Landmark as the two DIII conferences with FloSports deals.

Some of the data and concerns may be out of date by this point, but the way that administrators are slicing the data and thinking about the concerns is probably the same today.  As someone noted in calling it one-sided, you have to take some of the quotes and presentation of data with a grain of salt.  Administrators from schools in FloSports conferences are generally trying to make the decision look good, while administrators from schools that were at that point outside the FloSports world are offering explanations why they aren't going that direction.  Even more telling, some of the latter are now in conferences that have joined Flo, so I imagine they are changing their tune (see, e.g., the quotes from the Case Western administrator).  Nevertheless, I think the article is worth a read.

A few takeaways (quotes are from Scott's article) and points of my own:

1.  Money for the tech and people to run the broadcasts was (is?) one incentive for doing a Flo Sports deal 

Schools do all of the streaming work themselves - cameras, sound, announcers etc - whether they do a Flo Sports deal or not.  Schools with money and strong support from the school do it well and their schools look good.  Schools without money do it poorly, if at all, and their schools look second (or third) rate.  Administrators don't like that. 

There's a general consensus that broadcasts need to improve — for enrollment, for constituent relations, for the ability to monetize them — and that means more work for athletic department staff. This is the first key factor.

One selling point is that the Flo Sports deal will allow schools to spend more on the technology for cameras, pay the people who make the broadcast run smoothly etc

"Broadcasts rely on people, more than just technology," adds Lycoming Associate AD for Communications Joe Guistina. "When you commit to broadcasting three events at once, as often happens on a Saturday, you need three laptops to run production, often multiple cameras at each event. You might spend, at minimum $20,000 just for basic equipment, but you need people to run all of that equipment. In the most basic two-camera system you need 4-5 people to run a broadcast for each event."

"That [FloSports deal] has helped a lot," says Guistina. "No one likes to pay for something that was free, but a lot of the initial shock has faded away already. We've been able to buy two new cameras, lots of cords and smaller equipment, pay the play-by-play people more, and I've been able to give my [part-time] assistant a raise."

So, when people complain that $30K is a drop in the bucket, I think some schools and athletic departments may look at it as the growing cost of streaming and tech upgrades and this being one way to pay for it.

2.  Tech was (is?) also a barrier to doing the Flo Sports deal

People are more forgiving for the awful quality of the broadcast when it's free.  When it costs something, they expect more.

Guistina confirmed that FloSports has not required much additional work on his part, but with a paid subscription comes the pressure to improve performance — after all, everyone wants the presentation to be the best it can be.

That was at least one argument in the NACC for not doing the Flo Sports deal, at least at that point.

The inherent pressure for a specific level of broadcast is what's kept some conferences from accepting a broadcast deal. The Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference, comprised largely of small private schools in Wisconsin and Illinois, decided against going with FloSports, at least at this juncture.

"I was in favor of the idea," says NACC Commissioner Jeff Ligney. "The level of investment we would have had to make right away — in cameras, equipment, and especially training — was prohibitive.

The WIAC claims to have had a similar problem

while the WIAC is wildly popular, given the size of the institutions and their place within local communities across Wisconsin, the level of and investment in broadcasting varies nearly as widely across the membership.

"We've had the WIAC Network for a year now," notes Harris. "There were some very basic standards the first year and those will increase gradually. We're putting ourselves in a position where we can consider all options."

My guess is that FloSports' "quality requirements" are pretty minimal and restricted to things like the technical specifications of the video so that it can be hosted on Flo's platform without too much degradation in quality. 

I tend to think that when the stream goes down or other problems develop, that is more often a local site problem than a Flo Sports problem, but the irony of this as a reason not to do the Flo Sports deal is that viewers are more likely to blame Flo than the school, which inadvertently means that schools that take the Flo money and don't spend it on upgrades are getting away with delivering a crappy product and diverting the blame to Flo.

3.  "Exposure" is a vague concept and there's a lot of different ways to think about that

The question when it comes to viewership data is who, when, and how long

The WIAC, which admittedly has larger enrollments than most DIII schools, feels like they have very robust viewership in the 40 minute or more crowd, which isn't a whole game, but is probably a half or close to it in many sports.

"Last year we had 450,000 unique views of 40 minutes or more for our events and we're on pace to top 500,000 this year," reports WIAC Commissioner Danielle Harris.

Landmark sources report drops in viewers after they signed on with Flo

No one I've encountered will report raw viewership numbers and the Landmark does not openly share them, but anecdotally, a school can generally expect a 60-70% drop off in total views moving from free to subscription viewing. Boldvich reports "a number close to that range," although for sports outside of football and basketball, where there is less interest outside the immediate fan base, "it's a lot closer to 50%," rather than 60%. Other league sources confirm the same.

They are comfortable with that, however, because one of the main areas for exposure - prospective athletic recruits - which is the heart of enrollment at many small DIII schools, was less a concern for them.  They negotiated for free viewing after the Flo exclusive access period and they don't think recruits necessarily watch in real time.

The Landmark has also negotiated the rights to have free on-demand replays of all their events after 72 hours of FloSports exclusive access, and schools get up to 120 seconds of free highlights for use and distribution on local and social media.

"I'm not sure how many recruits are watching games live anyway," Boldvich posits. "We are paying extra to keep our Landmark Network operational to give people as much access as they want after the fact."

The national viewers, by contrast, may have been the people who only watched for short periods and just for the score or to watch for a play or two.  I guess that's exposure, but I'm not really sure how meaningful that exposure is for the school.

"So many of our free views were just someone tuning in for a play or two, to check the score," says Boldvich.

The initial reports were that Landmark's viewers dropped, but the full game viewers remained constant:

"With the subscription model almost all of our viewers are watching the entire game and the number of people watching entire games haven't decreased all that much."

My guess is those full game viewers are the parents, alums, dedicated fans of the schools.  If the recruits are watching the non-live footage, then you're really only left with fans of other schools who might be watching future opponents or because the outcome might affect their schools' relative positions in the standings etc.  Not sure if that exposure is what administrators are seeking.

Having said that, for many of these schools, just having familiarity with their name is meaningful and I presume that people who drop in and out of a broadcast can help spread the word or can notice the beautiful facility etc and that can leave a favorable impression.  On the other hand, if someone watching track or wrestling on the Flo network sees an ad for a game involving your school, that probably provides some brand exposure too.

In any event, the entire article is worth your time and most of the issues it addresses remain relevant today.

A couple of points of my own:

4.  Fundraising is the unknown variable in all of this

Many people suggest that they would rather pay the school directly and not Flo or that the school could fundraise rather than charge.  Couple of reactions:

a) Paying the school directly puts a target on your chest.  Ask Rochester.  People who don't want to pay for things they have had for free typically don't feel differently depending upon who is charging (unless it's the little girl down the street selling lemonade).  Joining as part of a conference defers some of those complaints.  I'm sure every school is telling some alum that they went along because others were pushing it.  Only in the SCAC were there holdouts and a couple of those schools left the conference and one holdout already gave in (Texas Lutheran).

b) My guess is the concern in fundraising is that there are a limited number of dollars and donors will shift funds, rather than non-donors becoming donors.  It's also hard to budget a regular operating expense with soft dollars.

5.  I think the students is the craziest part.

My guess is very few students sign up for Flo, so why force them to pay?  The optics are really bad.

[Gregory Sager]

and it's the nine presidents and their cabinets who call the big-picture-policy shots in the CCIW, not the league office in Naperville.

True of most conferences for something at this level, and that point belies the thought that CCIW SIDs would magically know everything. The Flo MO is to tell conferences to keep this away from their SIDs, ever since the NACC SIDs got the proposal killed in their conference.

There's no "magic" to it. It's simply good administrative policy to consult with the employees who have the most firsthand knowledge of an aspect of corporate function before making a radical change to that corporate function, if for no other reason than feasibility. F'rinstance, Ryan's been laying out the financial specs for FloSports vis-a-vis how many subscribers it's going to require per school. Well, the people who have the hard data on how many eyeballs are watching a school's sports webcasts are the SIDs / directors of athletics communications.

With regard to the SID revolt in the NACC, the CCIW's braintrust in Naperville was interested in PPV as well -- I'm assuming FloSports, but I don't know for sure that that was the vendor in question -- but the CCIW's SIDs raised a hue and cry about it. I don't know if the commish's interest in PPV was nixed or simply tabled by the league's presidents, but I do know that there's been a plan in the works for about a year now to go with an umbrella site for the nine schools' individual networks to continue their free streaming, like what the WIAC has.

[IC798891]

Excellent post by Kuiper, one part I want to clarify is the fundraising aspect of it, since I've mentioned it a lot.

You're not necessarily asking people all scattershot to kick in some cash.

You're identifying the rising costs of providing these broadcasts as an institutional need, setting up something that can be contributed to, and identifying people that may contribute to it, based on various factors.

To give an example, Ithaca's Park School of Communications often has students earn opportunities to travel somewhere for professional development or have their work featured somewhere. Those trips cost money. So the school created a dedicated fund, called the "Special Opportunities for Students Fund". And every year, their annual Giving Day pitch includes a call out to that.

That's the same model you could use, to get the $30,000 for your sports broadcast costs, or sports information costs, or whatever this FloSports money is.

You say, "Hey, costs of providing these broadcasts have increased, we'd love to be able to provide them for free so we can showcase our student-athletes — and broadcasters — to as many people as possible and share in our [Team Nickname] pride. Just like we've done for so many former great athletes and broadcasters over the years. Would you be willing to contribute to this fund to make that a possibility?"

Maybe it wouldn't work! Not all my ideas do! But I think FloSports is being presented as the only possible solution to the legitimate problem of budget issues.

After all, isn't the whole point that these die-hard fans/parents/alumni are in fact, willing to pay? Why do we need FloSports to be the one getting the money? Rather than allow their constituents to give money to an outside entity, why don't schools encourage that money to go into an endowed fund that can grow that contribution over years, decades?

That's how you establish relationships.

And we may think that it's not some big deal if some casual fan doesn't watch your games. But you never know what connection causes people to feel connected to your institution. The biggest individual gift in the history of Ithaca College came from an individual who had zero ties to IC and in fact, never once set foot on campus in his life. He simply ran into an IC professor in Greece, starting talking about student films, and he decided to give money to help fund them. And endowment was established, it led to the biggest individual gift in school history, and it still gives the school significant money every year.

[Kuiper]

Excellent post by Kuiper, one part I want to clarify is the fundraising aspect of it, since I've mentioned it a lot.

You're not necessarily asking people all scattershot to kick in some cash.

You're identifying the rising costs of providing these broadcasts as an institutional need, setting up something that can be contributed to, and identifying people that may contribute to it, based on various factors.

To give an example, Ithaca's Park School of Communications often has students earn opportunities to travel somewhere for professional development or have their work featured somewhere. Those trips cost money. So the school created a dedicated fund, called the "Special Opportunities for Students Fund". And every year, their annual Giving Day pitch includes a call out to that.

That's the same model you could use, to get the $30,000 for your sports broadcast costs, or sports information costs, or whatever this FloSports money is.

You say, "Hey, costs of providing these broadcasts have increased, we'd love to be able to provide them for free so we can showcase our student-athletes — and broadcasters — to as many people as possible and share in our [Team Nickname] pride. Just like we've done for so many former great athletes and broadcasters over the years. Would you be willing to contribute to this fund to make that a possibility?"

Maybe it wouldn't work! Not all my ideas do! But I think FloSports is being presented as the only possible solution to the legitimate problem of budget issues.

After all, isn't the whole point that these die-hard fans/parents/alumni are in fact, willing to pay? Why do we need FloSports to be the one getting the money? Rather than allow their constituents to give money to an outside entity, why don't schools encourage that money to go into an endowed fund that can grow that contribution over years, decades?

That's how you establish relationships.

And we may think that it's not some big deal if some casual fan doesn't watch your games. But you never know what connection causes people to feel connected to your institution. The biggest individual gift in the history of Ithaca College came from an individual who had zero ties to IC and in fact, never once set foot on campus in his life. He simply ran into an IC professor in Greece, starting talking about student films, and he decided to give money to help fund them. And endowment was established, it led to the biggest individual gift in school history, and it still gives the school significant money every year.

On the first point, my point was simply that athletics donors have limited funds and athletics has broader institutional needs.  If you identify streaming as an institutional need, the worry might be that traditional donors would simply shift from funds needed for other priorities, rather than increase their donations or start giving when they did not before.  There are some things that move people to give more/or for the first time - retirement of a beloved coach, building a new facility, etc - but I don't know if streaming is one of them.  Maybe parents would do that, but the worry would be they just compensate by reducing their contributions to the team fund for trips/uniforms/equipment/asst coaches etc.  Again, I don't know if schools even tried to do fundraising and fell short, but I'm guessing this is the way the administration is thinking. 

Totally agree on your second point about donations coming from unexpected sources.  At schools I've been associated with, some big gifts came from non-alums.  Most often, though, they were restricted gifts for things like you mentioned.  Unless they were locals who lived near campus, they are giving for one specific thing your school did that interested or excited them.  Nevertheless, you have to have to have some kind of contact for them to find you and become interested in you and sports can provide that entree.  That's why schools like the TV ads during sporting events touting all the things they do on campus besides sports.  Of course, there can be a darkside of streaming live events, like a school's coach behaving boorishly on the sidelines and creating a negative impression of a school, but I'm guessing the potential positive outweighs the negative.

[jekelish]

Since people are mentioning it, I thought it would make sense to re-post the link to the article from Ryan Scott of D3hoops.com, which discussed this issue in February of 2024 right after the NEWMAC joined the Landmark as the two DIII conferences with FloSports deals.

Some of the data and concerns may be out of date by this point, but the way that administrators are slicing the data and thinking about the concerns is probably the same today.  As someone noted in calling it one-sided, you have to take some of the quotes and presentation of data with a grain of salt.  Administrators from schools in FloSports conferences are generally trying to make the decision look good, while administrators from schools that were at that point outside the FloSports world are offering explanations why they aren't going that direction.  Even more telling, some of the latter are now in conferences that have joined Flo, so I imagine they are changing their tune (see, e.g., the quotes from the Case Western administrator).  Nevertheless, I think the article is worth a read.

A few takeaways (quotes are from Scott's article) and points of my own:

1.  Money for the tech and people to run the broadcasts was (is?) one incentive for doing a Flo Sports deal 

Schools do all of the streaming work themselves - cameras, sound, announcers etc - whether they do a Flo Sports deal or not.  Schools with money and strong support from the school do it well and their schools look good.  Schools without money do it poorly, if at all, and their schools look second (or third) rate.  Administrators don't like that. 

There's a general consensus that broadcasts need to improve — for enrollment, for constituent relations, for the ability to monetize them — and that means more work for athletic department staff. This is the first key factor.

One selling point is that the Flo Sports deal will allow schools to spend more on the technology for cameras, pay the people who make the broadcast run smoothly etc

"Broadcasts rely on people, more than just technology," adds Lycoming Associate AD for Communications Joe Guistina. "When you commit to broadcasting three events at once, as often happens on a Saturday, you need three laptops to run production, often multiple cameras at each event. You might spend, at minimum $20,000 just for basic equipment, but you need people to run all of that equipment. In the most basic two-camera system you need 4-5 people to run a broadcast for each event."

"That [FloSports deal] has helped a lot," says Guistina. "No one likes to pay for something that was free, but a lot of the initial shock has faded away already. We've been able to buy two new cameras, lots of cords and smaller equipment, pay the play-by-play people more, and I've been able to give my [part-time] assistant a raise."

So, when people complain that $30K is a drop in the bucket, I think some schools and athletic departments may look at it as the growing cost of streaming and tech upgrades and this being one way to pay for it.

2.  Tech was (is?) also a barrier to doing the Flo Sports deal

People are more forgiving for the awful quality of the broadcast when it's free.  When it costs something, they expect more.

Guistina confirmed that FloSports has not required much additional work on his part, but with a paid subscription comes the pressure to improve performance — after all, everyone wants the presentation to be the best it can be.

That was at least one argument in the NACC for not doing the Flo Sports deal, at least at that point.

The inherent pressure for a specific level of broadcast is what's kept some conferences from accepting a broadcast deal. The Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference, comprised largely of small private schools in Wisconsin and Illinois, decided against going with FloSports, at least at this juncture.

"I was in favor of the idea," says NACC Commissioner Jeff Ligney. "The level of investment we would have had to make right away — in cameras, equipment, and especially training — was prohibitive.

The WIAC claims to have had a similar problem

while the WIAC is wildly popular, given the size of the institutions and their place within local communities across Wisconsin, the level of and investment in broadcasting varies nearly as widely across the membership.

"We've had the WIAC Network for a year now," notes Harris. "There were some very basic standards the first year and those will increase gradually. We're putting ourselves in a position where we can consider all options."

My guess is that FloSports' "quality requirements" are pretty minimal and restricted to things like the technical specifications of the video so that it can be hosted on Flo's platform without too much degradation in quality. 

I tend to think that when the stream goes down or other problems develop, that is more often a local site problem than a Flo Sports problem, but the irony of this as a reason not to do the Flo Sports deal is that viewers are more likely to blame Flo than the school, which inadvertently means that schools that take the Flo money and don't spend it on upgrades are getting away with delivering a crappy product and diverting the blame to Flo.

3.  "Exposure" is a vague concept and there's a lot of different ways to think about that

The question when it comes to viewership data is who, when, and how long

The WIAC, which admittedly has larger enrollments than most DIII schools, feels like they have very robust viewership in the 40 minute or more crowd, which isn't a whole game, but is probably a half or close to it in many sports.

"Last year we had 450,000 unique views of 40 minutes or more for our events and we're on pace to top 500,000 this year," reports WIAC Commissioner Danielle Harris.

Landmark sources report drops in viewers after they signed on with Flo

No one I've encountered will report raw viewership numbers and the Landmark does not openly share them, but anecdotally, a school can generally expect a 60-70% drop off in total views moving from free to subscription viewing. Boldvich reports "a number close to that range," although for sports outside of football and basketball, where there is less interest outside the immediate fan base, "it's a lot closer to 50%," rather than 60%. Other league sources confirm the same.

They are comfortable with that, however, because one of the main areas for exposure - prospective athletic recruits - which is the heart of enrollment at many small DIII schools, was less a concern for them.  They negotiated for free viewing after the Flo exclusive access period and they don't think recruits necessarily watch in real time.

The Landmark has also negotiated the rights to have free on-demand replays of all their events after 72 hours of FloSports exclusive access, and schools get up to 120 seconds of free highlights for use and distribution on local and social media.

"I'm not sure how many recruits are watching games live anyway," Boldvich posits. "We are paying extra to keep our Landmark Network operational to give people as much access as they want after the fact."

The national viewers, by contrast, may have been the people who only watched for short periods and just for the score or to watch for a play or two.  I guess that's exposure, but I'm not really sure how meaningful that exposure is for the school.

"So many of our free views were just someone tuning in for a play or two, to check the score," says Boldvich.

The initial reports were that Landmark's viewers dropped, but the full game viewers remained constant:

"With the subscription model almost all of our viewers are watching the entire game and the number of people watching entire games haven't decreased all that much."

My guess is those full game viewers are the parents, alums, dedicated fans of the schools.  If the recruits are watching the non-live footage, then you're really only left with fans of other schools who might be watching future opponents or because the outcome might affect their schools' relative positions in the standings etc.  Not sure if that exposure is what administrators are seeking.

Having said that, for many of these schools, just having familiarity with their name is meaningful and I presume that people who drop in and out of a broadcast can help spread the word or can notice the beautiful facility etc and that can leave a favorable impression.  On the other hand, if someone watching track or wrestling on the Flo network sees an ad for a game involving your school, that probably provides some brand exposure too.

In any event, the entire article is worth your time and most of the issues it addresses remain relevant today.

A couple of points of my own:

4.  Fundraising is the unknown variable in all of this

Many people suggest that they would rather pay the school directly and not Flo or that the school could fundraise rather than charge.  Couple of reactions:

a) Paying the school directly puts a target on your chest.  Ask Rochester.  People who don't want to pay for things they have had for free typically don't feel differently depending upon who is charging (unless it's the little girl down the street selling lemonade).  Joining as part of a conference defers some of those complaints.  I'm sure every school is telling some alum that they went along because others were pushing it.  Only in the SCAC were there holdouts and a couple of those schools left the conference and one holdout already gave in (Texas Lutheran).

b) My guess is the concern in fundraising is that there are a limited number of dollars and donors will shift funds, rather than non-donors becoming donors.  It's also hard to budget a regular operating expense with soft dollars.

5.  I think the students is the craziest part.

My guess is very few students sign up for Flo, so why force them to pay?  The optics are really bad.

This is, top to bottom, an excellent post and basically nails every issue. I will say, the need for upgrades to technology, infrastructure, and personnel is, at least in the first year for many of the smaller schools, so high that there's either zero profit or even leaves schools in the red. Obviously, that money helps bring departments up to speed, but I've talked to a few different people at various schools who've moved to Flo and they've said that, after what they've needed to invest, they've had zero revenue and in some cases lost money. And the product isn't necessarily any better than what they were doing better, for free.

I'm not a big fan of this, in general. But I also recognize it's where D3 seems to be moving. I just don't understand how it's sustainable for Flo, at this point, if I'm being totally honest. Especially as we move forward with them having lost the Big East. I don't know what their big money-maker is at this point, because it cannot be D3.

[IC798891]

On the first point, my point was simply that athletics donors have limited funds and athletics has broader institutional needs.

I feel like I must not be explaining myself when I ask this question. I'm going to try one last time, with apologies to everyone, because maybe there is something *I'm* missing in the answers. I'm not always the sharpest tool in the drawer

If a college is saying "Hey, we need money to defray the rising athletics streaming costs that we provide to our supporters"

And if that college's supporters are saying "We're willing to give money for the ability to watch the college's athletic streams"

It seems the shortest distance between the two points is just: Supporters give their money to the school, earmarked for this specific purpose.

Why are we inviting a third party in at all?

[Kuiper]

On the first point, my point was simply that athletics donors have limited funds and athletics has broader institutional needs.

I feel like I must not be explaining myself when I ask this question. I'm going to try one last time, with apologies to everyone, because maybe there is something *I'm* missing in the answers. I'm not always the sharpest tool in the drawer

If a college is saying "Hey, we need money to defray the rising athletics streaming costs that we provide to our supporters"

And if that college's supporters are saying "We're willing to give money for the ability to watch the college's athletic streams"

It seems the shortest distance between the two points is just: Supporters give their money to the school, earmarked for this specific purpose.

Why are we inviting a third party in at all?

It may be that we are speaking past each other on this point.  I'll say it this way:  Assume I generally give $100 to the school's annual fund for athletics and my team fund.  Since my disposable income hasn't increased, I'm not upping my athletic department or team fund gift to $200 this year because you've started a streaming fund.  I'm just reallocating some or all of my $100 gift to that fund, which means the athletic department or team falls short on funding what they usually get with my $100.  The only way that doesn't happen is if I up my gift or some new people give.  There are some funding campaigns that bring out new donors or bigger donations, but they may think streaming isn't one of them.

[Gray Fox]

On the first point, my point was simply that athletics donors have limited funds and athletics has broader institutional needs.

I feel like I must not be explaining myself when I ask this question. I'm going to try one last time, with apologies to everyone, because maybe there is something *I'm* missing in the answers. I'm not always the sharpest tool in the drawer

If a college is saying "Hey, we need money to defray the rising athletics streaming costs that we provide to our supporters"

And if that college's supporters are saying "We're willing to give money for the ability to watch the college's athletic streams"

It seems the shortest distance between the two points is just: Supporters give their money to the school, earmarked for this specific purpose.

Why are we inviting a third party in at all?

It may be that we are speaking past each other on this point.  I'll say it this way:  Assume I generally give $100 to the school's annual fund for athletics and my team fund.  Since my disposable income hasn't increased, I'm not upping my athletic department or team fund gift to $200 this year because you've started a streaming fund.  I'm just reallocating some or all of my $100 gift to that fund, which means the athletic department or team falls short on funding what they usually get with my $100.  The only way that doesn't happen is if I up my gift or some new people give.  There are some funding campaigns that bring out new donors or bigger donations, but they may think streaming isn't one of them.

Plus, as I mentioned elsewhere, if you have an employer match, they lose that too.