It has been a year since the Little East Conference (LEC) rolled out FloCollege (Flo) as its sports streaming program. The program has improved an already established streaming program at Keene State and added features to KSC broadcasting.
The Owls Media Network had previously broadcast live on YouTube, with control over all aspects of the broadcast. The implementation of Flo came with changes to how broadcasts operate for Keene State athletic games, and the same goes for schools across the LEC.
Junior Carson Flake is a member of the Owls Media Network broadcast crew and is currently interning in the Keene State Athletics Department as “community engagement”. The junior does everything from directing the broadcast, running the replays and calling the games. He spoke on the differences between the YouTube streams and the current FloCollege program.
“[YouTube] was super simple because everything that we put out was what we wanted it to be. We never had a third party that we had to work with,” Flake said. “So now, what’s different is we produce everything, and we send it to Flo. Then Flo takes it and sends it to the people that are watching it.”
Some of the implementations from Flo had already been done by Keene State. Aspects such as replay, commercials and several commentators were in the FloCollege transformation but had been used in the YouTube broadcasts done prior. Associate Athletic Director Abe Osheyack says that while Keene State was ahead of the LEC, Flo has been able to add to the KSC broadcasts.
“We purchased two replay machines, learned how to use them and trained the staff how to use them. We were probably headed in that direction anyway, even if we had stayed with Hudl or some other provider that was not a pay-per-view broadcaster,” Osheyack said. “Replay has added huge value to our broadcast; I think it’s something the students and staff enjoy doing.”
A feature that has recently been used through FloCollege is the clipping feature. Flake spoke on the new aspect and how it benefits the broadcast.
“You can basically take the broadcast, and they’ll let you live clip. Say you wanted to post something on social media right away. So [the event/play] happens, you can go into Flo and clip exactly out of that broadcast, pull it, download it and post it within seconds of it happening,” said Flake.
Flake also shared his thoughts about the new way that Owls Media Network runs ads throughout athletic events. Opposed to the few local ads that were included in the YouTube broadcasts, Flo now requires two minutes of ads that are chosen by Flo.
“From their end, it’ll play a very generic ad, like a T-Mobile ad and we just click for how many seconds we want. So we know it’s going to play for 45 seconds, but we literally can’t do anything,” Flake said. “We choose when the ad is placed, but we’ll get fined, I believe, if we don’t play enough ads per hour.”
FloCollege is a pay-per-view system and according to previous reporting by the Equinox, the prices have not changed a lot since its implementation last fall. There has been a family plan added for groups to purchase and split up the cost; that plan is $12.99 a month. Ryan Hearn works in the athletic department as the athletic communications specialist and he spoke about the effect that pricing may have on viewership.
“Anytime you go from free to pay-per-view, the numbers are always going to be down. They recently raised the price too,” Hearn said. “That’s completely separate of us in a lot of ways. Whatever they charge is… we’re tied to them in that regard.”
The revenue collected by the athletic department through the FloCollege partnership has created job opportunities within the department. The athletic communications department had been staffed by two part-time employees and has now been upgraded due to the pay-per-view sponsorship.
“We were able to take the money from Flo, combined with some dollars we had here and turn those into two full-time, benefited positions. So we were able to hire Ryan and Kyle Biermann at some positions that paid them some more, gave them full-time benefits, healthcare, etc,” said Osheyack.
Jacob Enscoe can be contacted at
jenscoe@kscequinox.com
