You may have noticed just how many college track meets are being webcast. This weekend alone there are six: USC at UCLA, the Oregon Relays, the Arkansas Twilight, the Cardinal Invitational, and the A-10 and Big East Championships. All but the first are being done by subscription-based campus services.
The Big East Championships are $9.95 for a one-weekend pass, but the others are oriented towards season-long all-sports subcribers who are fans of a single school. Most of them offer a one-month pass at right around $10.
I’d love to be able to watch a few events from a bunch of different meets every weekend. But I wouldn’t pay $50 a week for the opportunity.
An opportunistic entrepreneur could take advantage of the situation and arrange to be a middleman. He’d pay college webcast services maybe 50¢ or $1 per person he signs up. For some larger fee, maybe $50 a year, track fans like me would be able to watch track meet webcasts from those college services. The track fan comes out ahead, being able to watch many more meets for his money than otherwise possible. The colleges come out ahead, because while the marginal revenue per person would be lower, they’d still see revenue from people like me who would otherwise never pay up in the first place – and they’d get their money regardless of whether or not I watch their meets. This plan could be done for other low-publicity sports such as swimming, wrestling, and so on, where colleges are more likely to get viewership from fans of a particular sport than of their particular school.
Somebody, do it. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s still money waiting to be made.
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