The Sunday Game

[Syferus]

I think I asked this before, but there seems to be a trend now of amateur cameramen streaming games on behalf of clubs/counties onto their web pages. Armagh is one, I think I saw it in Waterford as well or somewhere like that. Obviously it's a single camera and it's low cost, but would it be worth the GAA launching an online service where all games are streamed, and stored online. You could charge a certain amount per year, and allow viewers download complete games at their convenience. There'd be amateur or no commentary, although to be fair I'd prefer Eddie Moroney to Ger Canning, and obviously expectation would have to be set (via the price point I suppose) as to the quality.

I'd still subscribe to a service that allowed me download and watch Offaly v Fermanagh last Sunday, as long as the fee wasn't exorbitant.  In these days of facebook live streams etc, surely the technology for this exists.

You're essentially describing what GAA Go should always have been and not simply a crass dump of streams from Eir, RTÉ and Sky. I'm amazed that in their thirst for money the GAA haven't sought to expand their GAA Go service to their biggest potential market, Ireland, in such a manner.

[AZOffaly]

I think I asked this before, but there seems to be a trend now of amateur cameramen streaming games on behalf of clubs/counties onto their web pages. Armagh is one, I think I saw it in Waterford as well or somewhere like that. Obviously it's a single camera and it's low cost, but would it be worth the GAA launching an online service where all games are streamed, and stored online. You could charge a certain amount per year, and allow viewers download complete games at their convenience. There'd be amateur or no commentary, although to be fair I'd prefer Eddie Moroney to Ger Canning, and obviously expectation would have to be set (via the price point I suppose) as to the quality.

I'd still subscribe to a service that allowed me download and watch Offaly v Fermanagh last Sunday, as long as the fee wasn't exorbitant.  In these days of facebook live streams etc, surely the technology for this exists.

You're essentially describing what GAA Go should always have been and not simply a crass dump of streams from Eir, RTÉ and Sky. I'm amazed that in their thirst for money the GAA haven't sought to expand their GAA Go service to their biggest potential market, Ireland, in such a manner.

I'm thinking of a low tech version of Gamepass.

[Ball Hopper]

I think I asked this before, but there seems to be a trend now of amateur cameramen streaming games on behalf of clubs/counties onto their web pages. Armagh is one, I think I saw it in Waterford as well or somewhere like that. Obviously it's a single camera and it's low cost, but would it be worth the GAA launching an online service where all games are streamed, and stored online. You could charge a certain amount per year, and allow viewers download complete games at their convenience. There'd be amateur or no commentary, although to be fair I'd prefer Eddie Moroney to Ger Canning, and obviously expectation would have to be set (via the price point I suppose) as to the quality.

I'd still subscribe to a service that allowed me download and watch Offaly v Fermanagh last Sunday, as long as the fee wasn't exorbitant.  In these days of facebook live streams etc, surely the technology for this exists.

Or add the local radio commentary to the video...that shouldn't be too hard to time it right?

[seafoid]

I think.the television model is getting weaker as people move online.  Lots of kids don't watch any TV. 
There are big question marks over the long term future of RTÉ.
Some kind of online platform where resources can be put together might be the way forward. You could have a youtube channel for example.

[easytiger95]

I'm sure Monaghan and Kildare fans didn't mind the amateur camera work for their match yesterday as at least they got to see some footage of their match.

On the contrary, given  the nature of this thread to date I'd expect that a) the coverage wasn't long enough, b) it missed most of the key moments in the game, c) the camera work was amateurish, d) the analysis wasn't long enough, e) the analysts clearly didn't watch the game, f) local soccer gets better coverags and there's only 300 people at those matches, and g) RTE are c***ts.

Sky TV etc have created a beast whereby modern sports fans expect on-demand, high quality footage of their sport. In this case, these are unreasonable demands.

Not so, the difference between a Sky tv production and an Eirsport production is chalk and cheese.
That Tyrone Dublin game was a basic bog standard video production with dreadful audio quality which muffled the crowd atmosphere.
What can it cost to hire an independent video production company to at least match that quality?
or hire a production team  to cover a lower division game,  2 cameras, a sound engineer and a master engineer who edits and encodes the content for streaming/broadcast?
TG4 can easily manage high quality broadcasting of a sport event on a low budget, a fraction of what it costs Sky to do their thing.

Putting together a proper highlights package  for both codes  from all the divisions would take a sea change from traditional thinking
Norway has 5 sports channels, Iceland has 4 sport channels which cover most every football/basketball/handball game, some 140 live football games are broadcast in HD  each year and highlights  from the rest of the games.

Jesus more of it. Sky have champo - which usually means it is sunny, there is a good crowd and atmosphere, and you are not relying on flood lights without the sufficient power. There is a big difference between that and a murky winter's night in Omagh. Do you know the difference in audio between 8 thousand people and 20 thousand people?

They all - ALL - use the same OB companies to produce these games - it is the same equipment, it is just a question of how upscale you want your OB to be.

And here's the news, the Eir game had at least three cameras on it. TG4 use a minimum of three cameras for their live games - everyone does, it is the minimum you should use for a live game.

So, they use the same independent OB companies, the same equipment, in many cases the same pool of camera, audio, video replay staff - but in one case they were in the middle of winter, at a league game, the other it is the summer and championship. Lipstick and pigs.

Okay the lights could have been crap at Omagh but the rest of the comparison stands.
Eirsport's production costs are puny compared to Sky.
I do know the difference between capturing the sound of a crowd like Sky can manage  to great expense  and what Eirsport  can manage.
As you seemed to have missed my point  by a country mile I will repeat it.
My point countering Wobbler was that we do not expect a production like Sky manages to do.
The difference in costs between a Sky production and what Eirsport managed in Omagh is enormous.
We don't expect a Sky production for  the league 1 games  never mind for lower league game.
GAA fans would be quite content with the standard TG4 can manage.
And if a tiny populated country like Iceland  can manage to broadcast 140 live games from one sporting code with proper HD highlights from all the other games,  I think that's evidence enough that it's viable to do in Ireland.

No your comparison doesn't stand - because you said Eir was much worse than Sky - and that TG4 was able to provide the same standard as Sky (as highlighted above)

TG4 use the same equipment, same technicians, same OB companies as Eir do - and as Sky does when they are televising events in this country - and I know that the Eir spec is the same (and sometimes more elaborate than the TG4) set up for all League games.

So if you think fans would be quite content with the TG4 league set up, be advised it is nearly exactly the same technical set up for Eir games in the league.

[easytiger95]

I'm sure Monaghan and Kildare fans didn't mind the amateur camera work for their match yesterday as at least they got to see some footage of their match.

On the contrary, given  the nature of this thread to date I'd expect that a) the coverage wasn't long enough, b) it missed most of the key moments in the game, c) the camera work was amateurish, d) the analysis wasn't long enough, e) the analysts clearly didn't watch the game, f) local soccer gets better coverags and there's only 300 people at those matches, and g) RTE are c***ts.

Sky TV etc have created a beast whereby modern sports fans expect on-demand, high quality footage of their sport. In this case, these are unreasonable demands.

Not so, the difference between a Sky tv production and an Eirsport production is chalk and cheese.
That Tyrone Dublin game was a basic bog standard video production with dreadful audio quality which muffled the crowd atmosphere.
What can it cost to hire an independent video production company to at least match that quality?
or hire a production team  to cover a lower division game,  2 cameras, a sound engineer and a master engineer who edits and encodes the content for streaming/broadcast?
TG4 can easily manage high quality broadcasting of a sport event on a low budget, a fraction of what it costs Sky to do their thing.

Putting together a proper highlights package  for both codes  from all the divisions would take a sea change from traditional thinking
Norway has 5 sports channels, Iceland has 4 sport channels which cover most every football/basketball/handball game, some 140 live football games are broadcast in HD  each year and highlights  from the rest of the games.

Jesus more of it. Sky have champo - which usually means it is sunny, there is a good crowd and atmosphere, and you are not relying on flood lights without the sufficient power. There is a big difference between that and a murky winter's night in Omagh. Do you know the difference in audio between 8 thousand people and 20 thousand people?

They all - ALL - use the same OB companies to produce these games - it is the same equipment, it is just a question of how upscale you want your OB to be.

And here's the news, the Eir game had at least three cameras on it. TG4 use a minimum of three cameras for their live games - everyone does, it is the minimum you should use for a live game.

So, they use the same independent OB companies, the same equipment, in many cases the same pool of camera, audio, video replay staff - but in one case they were in the middle of winter, at a league game, the other it is the summer and championship. Lipstick and pigs.

Okay the lights could have been crap at Omagh but the rest of the comparison stands.
Eirsport's production costs are puny compared to Sky.
I do know the difference between capturing the sound of a crowd like Sky can manage  to great expense  and what Eirsport  can manage.
As you seemed to have missed my point  by a country mile I will repeat it.
My point countering Wobbler was that we do not expect a production like Sky manages to do.
The difference in costs between a Sky production and what Eirsport managed in Omagh is enormous.
We don't expect a Sky production for  the league 1 games  never mind for lower league game.
GAA fans would be quite content with the standard TG4 can manage.
And if a tiny populated country like Iceland  can manage to broadcast 140 live games from one sporting code with proper HD highlights from all the other games,  I think that's evidence enough that it's viable to do in Ireland.

And by the way, there is no great difference in expense between Sky's audio set up and what Eir would have used - the difference is the crowd number. 8 thousand people make less sound than 20 thousand.

[easytiger95]

I think I asked this before, but there seems to be a trend now of amateur cameramen streaming games on behalf of clubs/counties onto their web pages. Armagh is one, I think I saw it in Waterford as well or somewhere like that. Obviously it's a single camera and it's low cost, but would it be worth the GAA launching an online service where all games are streamed, and stored online. You could charge a certain amount per year, and allow viewers download complete games at their convenience. There'd be amateur or no commentary, although to be fair I'd prefer Eddie Moroney to Ger Canning, and obviously expectation would have to be set (via the price point I suppose) as to the quality.

I'd still subscribe to a service that allowed me download and watch Offaly v Fermanagh last Sunday, as long as the fee wasn't exorbitant.  In these days of facebook live streams etc, surely the technology for this exists.

Or add the local radio commentary to the video...that shouldn't be too hard to time it right?

Guys if you think that you can get people to pay enough to support the expense of a streaming and archive infrastructure (with a pay wall) of what is essentially shoddy footage then you have a better knowledge of broadcast economics than I have. As for the radio commentary, again, if it is so easy, try it.

(Hint - it's not. Syncing between a radio signal and video signals coming from two different sources would be a nightmare - you could do it after the fact, but then you are throwing in editing costs and time, on top of your already expensive premise. and if you do that, you might as well edit the actual footage down, because one camera footage is essentially unwatchable over 70 minutes)

What could work is the GAA taking over and televising their own league and championship games onto their own channel on a subscription basis. I always thought that would make the most sense economically, and they could leverage the coverage of the smaller games onto that channel.

[Syferus]

I think I asked this before, but there seems to be a trend now of amateur cameramen streaming games on behalf of clubs/counties onto their web pages. Armagh is one, I think I saw it in Waterford as well or somewhere like that. Obviously it's a single camera and it's low cost, but would it be worth the GAA launching an online service where all games are streamed, and stored online. You could charge a certain amount per year, and allow viewers download complete games at their convenience. There'd be amateur or no commentary, although to be fair I'd prefer Eddie Moroney to Ger Canning, and obviously expectation would have to be set (via the price point I suppose) as to the quality.

I'd still subscribe to a service that allowed me download and watch Offaly v Fermanagh last Sunday, as long as the fee wasn't exorbitant.  In these days of facebook live streams etc, surely the technology for this exists.

Or add the local radio commentary to the video...that shouldn't be too hard to time it right?

Guys if you think that you can get people to pay enough to support the expense of a streaming and archive infrastructure (with a pay wall) of what is essentially shoddy footage then you have a better knowledge of broadcast economics than I have. As for the radio commentary, again, if it is so easy, try it.

(Hint - it's not. Syncing between a radio signal and video signals coming from two different sources would be a nightmare - you could do it after the fact, but then you are throwing in editing costs and time, on top of your already expensive premise. and if you do that, you might as well edit the actual footage down, because one camera footage is essentially unwatchable over 70 minutes)

What could work is the GAA taking over and televising their own league and championship games onto their own channel on a subscription basis. I always thought that would make the most sense economically, and they could leverage the coverage of the smaller games onto that channel.

You're talking out of your arse a bit here. With scaleable cloud hosting you only pay for the bandwidth you use; if you assume it to be a small number then the cost is equally tiny. This all disregards the fact GAA GO already has the basic infrastructure to do all this in place already; it's a sunk cost at this stage beyond bandwidth.

Syncing a radio commentary to a video stream would be very easy, actually, and many sports services throughout the world already offer it.

[Rossfan]

What about Eugene McGee's mate up the mountain who wants to see Carlow V Laythrum?

[easytiger95]

I think I asked this before, but there seems to be a trend now of amateur cameramen streaming games on behalf of clubs/counties onto their web pages. Armagh is one, I think I saw it in Waterford as well or somewhere like that. Obviously it's a single camera and it's low cost, but would it be worth the GAA launching an online service where all games are streamed, and stored online. You could charge a certain amount per year, and allow viewers download complete games at their convenience. There'd be amateur or no commentary, although to be fair I'd prefer Eddie Moroney to Ger Canning, and obviously expectation would have to be set (via the price point I suppose) as to the quality.

I'd still subscribe to a service that allowed me download and watch Offaly v Fermanagh last Sunday, as long as the fee wasn't exorbitant.  In these days of facebook live streams etc, surely the technology for this exists.

Or add the local radio commentary to the video...that shouldn't be too hard to time it right?

Guys if you think that you can get people to pay enough to support the expense of a streaming and archive infrastructure (with a pay wall) of what is essentially shoddy footage then you have a better knowledge of broadcast economics than I have. As for the radio commentary, again, if it is so easy, try it.

(Hint - it's not. Syncing between a radio signal and video signals coming from two different sources would be a nightmare - you could do it after the fact, but then you are throwing in editing costs and time, on top of your already expensive premise. and if you do that, you might as well edit the actual footage down, because one camera footage is essentially unwatchable over 70 minutes)

What could work is the GAA taking over and televising their own league and championship games onto their own channel on a subscription basis. I always thought that would make the most sense economically, and they could leverage the coverage of the smaller games onto that channel.

You're talking out of your arse a bit here. With scaleable cloud hosting you only pay for the bandwidth you use; if you assume it to be a small number then the cost is equally tiny. This all disregards the fact GAA GO already has the basic infrastructure to do all this in place already; it's a sunk cost at this stage beyond bandwidth.

Syncing a radio commentary to a video stream would be very easy, actually, and many sports services throughout the world already offer it.

Well I currently only have 20 years broadcast media experience, 15 years of which was in sports broadcasting, including directing hundreds of the outside broadcasts we're actually talking about, as well as working on one particular venture which involved the streaming of three American high school football games to an encrypted site from Irish stadiums, plus a number of streamed specials from other venues.

Why are you assuming that it is a small number? AZ was talking about a hosting depository for club games. How many club games are we talking about each week? How long do we keep them up for so people can access them? Do we have an archive function so that streams from further back in the championship can be accessed? Or is it live only (meaning that really the only people who would pay for these specific games are at the game at the time)? Bearing in mind we are only putting out at 2MB our so, our storage might not be that bad - but you can't tell really can you? If it was doable, you would think someone would have done it by now?

As for GAA Go, they have the infrastructure to take a TV channel feed via fibre or satellite and to up load it. That is very different from taking multiple internet streams from grounds (by the way, good luck sourcing strong enough internet to do it from anywhere bar the Aviva or Croke Park) and then putting them back up on their site, without severe technical problems. People won't pay for something they can't rely on.

But then again, maybe, you're right. Maybe I'm speaking out of my arse - you certainly seem to be an expert on that subject.

[easytiger95]

Plus give me some examples of the sports services who are syncing live radio comms with live video pics (rather than making a commentary from the video available for radio). I'd like to have a look at that.

[Syferus]

Plus give me some examples of the sports services who are syncing live radio comms with live video pics (rather than making a commentary from the video available for radio). I'd like to have a look at that.

BBC regularly provide red button radio commentary for sports that BBC Radio are also covering.

You're also again showing you lack of knowledge of web hosting - the cost of storing video that's not being accessed isn't particularly high. The cost only really comes into it when that video is accessed at scale. Having an archive recording of a Mayo Intermediate group game is not going to cost much to host indefinitely because the viewership is going to be so low.

[Ball Hopper]

Plus give me some examples of the sports services who are syncing live radio comms with live video pics (rather than making a commentary from the video available for radio). I'd like to have a look at that.

BBC regularly provide red button radio commentary for sports that BBC Radio are also covering.

You're also again showing you lack of knowledge of web hosting - the cost of storing video that's not being accessed isn't particularly high. The cost only really comes into it when that video is accessed at scale. Having an archive recording of a Mayo Intermediate group game is not going to cost much to host indefinitely because the viewership is going to be so low.

What costs involved in uploading to youtube?  I'd imagine most viewers would be happy enough to see a game within a day or two of it being played.

[Syferus]

Plus give me some examples of the sports services who are syncing live radio comms with live video pics (rather than making a commentary from the video available for radio). I'd like to have a look at that.

BBC regularly provide red button radio commentary for sports that BBC Radio are also covering.

You're also again showing you lack of knowledge of web hosting - the cost of storing video that's not being accessed isn't particularly high. The cost only really comes into it when that video is accessed at scale. Having an archive recording of a Mayo Intermediate group game is not going to cost much to host indefinitely because the viewership is going to be so low.

What costs involved in uploading to youtube?  I'd imagine most viewers would be happy enough to see a game within a day or two of it being played.

YouTube makes its money entirely from ad revenue, apart from YouTube Red which is an ad free version with some exclusive shows. It's free to upload to. So you could host an archive on YouTube, and that's exactly what Connacht GAA do with games it streams from its CoE in Bekan, but I don't think a third party service wanting to add a paywall to said archives would be even possible. That'd be akin to hot-linking images - the host footing the bandwidth bill with no real advantage for them.

[DuffleKing]

Easytiger - you seem institutionalised with regards to what can and can't be achieved here.

The model of consumption of the national hurling and football leagues is ripe for a huge increase in exposure and awareness with a little sideways thinking.

I note that you dismiss the low tech corner shop approach in terms of demand out there but that is contradicted directly by the Armagh TV experience. People who cannot get to games have a proven appetite for that type of service. I don't know Armagh TV's numbers for a typical championship game but the success of the service has been overwhelming. These games are occasionally a 2/3 camera operation and often 1 fixed camera.

The point is that people know what they are getting with this service and pay for it.

The GAA need to more national leagues coverage beyond division one to a streaming service. The last two sundays I have switched on TG4 to find a live hurling match. I have no problem saying I have no interest but I would absolutely have paid a fiver on the spot to see Carlow Vs London or similar rather than division one hurling.

There are plenty of models out there for decent quality streaming platforms. The intervarsity streaming services in the states are a great starting example.

Every county team records their games now - that's already two per game. A lot of teams now use live footage through analysis feeds already. The cameras are at the grounds as are local radio commentary feeds. It is not beyond the wit of man to create an app that costs say £5 per weekend and gives you access whichever matches are online at the time.

The counties shell out £2-300 on covering these games. You simply cover this cost for them each week to guarantee the footage and you will achieve complete buy in. Another benefit is that like every other sport in the world you have a readily accessible video library of every team in the country for analysis purposes.

Now, all we need is someone in Croke Park with a bit of commercial and technical nous.