ISU figure skating streams might be switched to pay-per-view platform

[alexocfp]

Of course you do realise that this imaginary rich philanthropist setting up these wonderful competitions may not agree with you - or me for that matter - as to what would bring in the punters? They might love the Zagitova rule and axels. And hate quadmeisters, or ice dance, or teenage artistic emoting, or whatever.

It’s me and @DoubleBass philanthropist so he doesn’t love the Zagitova rule.

And I can confirm the philanthropist loves quads and can’t wait for the 5T one day. The philanthropist can hate ice dance and men‘s skating and even pairs. Since I don’t follow those anyway, and we can take the money we save from those disciplines and give more to the ladies.

I’m an expert in spending other people‘s money. Haha

 

[mrrice]

And then they wonder why figure skating is declining in popularity...

I've been saying this for years now. If I have a difficult time finding an event, I can promise you, my friends and casual fans will have a VERY difficult time. To have to jump through hoops to watch an event is something we will do. However, I don't think casual fans will do the same. If I can watch the Super Bowl, or World Cup by simply picking up my remote, there's no way I'm signing up for some service I know nothing about.

 

[alexocfp]

I've been saying this for years now. If I have a difficult time finding an event, I can promise you, my friends and casual will have a VERY difficult time. To have to jump through hoops to watch an event is something we will do. However, I don't think casual fans will do the same. If I can watch the Super Bowl, or World Cup by simply picking up my remote, there's no way I'm signing up for some service I know nothing about.

These types of services aren’t catered to the casual fan to begin with. It’s just an attempt to monetize the super fan.

 

[4everchan]

you can look at what is happening with LIV golf... and you will have a model for a new league... not sure it would solve any problems whatsoever.

 

[beachmouse]

I don’t follow diving or synchronized swimming so I can’t comment on the competency of the scoring or judging system.

Diving is as straightforward as you can get in a judged sport- is the approach correct? Did the athlete complete the required movements in tuck/pike/straight position? Was the entry vertical and with as little splash as possible? No wiggle room and not really room for artistic interpretation like you get in figure skating or some of the gymnastics disciplines.

Common to have US high school and US college teams to be combined swimming and diving for easy facility use. If you do 2-3 of those seasons and pay attention during the diving break and don’t just spend that time gossiping in the bleachers, you‘re got enough diving knowledge to predict Olympic or World Championship scores with about 90% accuracy. (I did all four years of high school and all four years of college swimming and can predict diving judge scores with about a 95% accuracy rate.)

There’s the occasional mumble about a Chinese judge trying to press judges to give her athletes more 10.0s on a dive instead of 9.5s but those tend to be more of a one off and you don’t get allegations of judging blocks or placement trading like you do in skating.

 

[alexocfp]

you can look at what is happening with LIV golf... and you will have a model for a new league... not sure it would solve any problems whatsoever.

LIV golf got the attention of the established golf league though. Didn’t take them long to announce no cut events at the PGA tour and surprise surprise, the PGA suddenly found more money for purses under their pillow.

Especially in individual sports, having choices instead of a cartel isn’t bad. Everyone makes more money.

 

[alexocfp]

Diving is as straightforward as you can get in a judged sport- is the approach correct? Did the athlete complete the required movements in tuck/pike/straight position? Was the entry vertical and with as little splash as possible? No wiggle room and not really room for artistic interpretation like you get in figure skating or some of the gymnastics disciplines.

Common to have US high school and US college teams to be combined swimming and diving for easy facility use. If you do 2-3 of those seasons and pay attention during the diving break and don’t just spend that time gossiping in the bleachers, you‘re got enough diving knowledge to predict Olympic or World Championship scores with about 90% accuracy. (I did all four years of high school and all four years of college swimming and can predict diving judge scores with about a 95% accuracy rate.)

There’s the occasional mumble about a Chinese judge trying to press judges to give her athletes more 10.0s on a dive instead of 9.5s but those tend to be more of a one off and you don’t get allegations of judging blocks or placement trading like you do in skating.

This explains a lot, thanks.

The big wildcard is artistic interpretation components. There is no wrong answers when judging art.

 

[TallyT]

LIV golf got the attention of the established golf league though. Didn’t take them long to announce no cut events at the PGA tour and surprise surprise, the PGA suddenly found more money for purses under their pillow.

Especially in individual sports, having choices instead of a cartel isn’t bad. Everyone makes more money.

{there is money but a lot of it is at the minute going to one person and he's left competition anyway...}

Ahem. Golf is an immensely rich sport remember, they had hundreds of millions to throw around. When Kerry Packer set up World Series Cricket in the seventies (my dad was a test fan, so we heard aaaaallll about it) it definitely woke up and changed cricket forever, but Packer had a huge TV and media empire to work with and TV doesn't have anything like the domination it did then. Would a shakeup and threat to ISU hegemony be good for the sport? Absolutely yes. But in the meantime while we wait for karma, there's still this little matter of the paid subscriptions.

 

[alexocfp]

I know we are piling on the ISU but let’s give credit where credit is due. They did manage to tackle some major issues this season.

They were able to get the new fax machine installed. And they were able to change “ladies” to “women“ for their competitions.

 

[alexocfp]

{there is money but a lot of it is at the minute going to one person and he's left competition anyway...}

Ahem. Golf is an immensely rich sport remember, they had hundreds of millions to throw around. When Kerry Packer set up World Series Cricket in the seventies (my dad was a test fan, so we heard aaaaallll about it) it definitely woke up and changed cricket forever, but Packer had a huge TV and media empire and TV doesn't t have anything like the domination they used to. Would a shakeup and threat to ISU hegemony be good for the sport? Absolutely yes. But in the meantime while we wait for karma, there's still this little matter of the paid subscriptions.

The paid subscriptions scheme will be a massive disaster. Who is going to pay to watch events without an on demand feature?

And that’s not taking into account the fact that the ISU 14k modems might not be able to handle the 4 people simultaneously trying to watch their pay per view events.

And even if it’s functional, there is already a lot of ill will for this endeavor.

And they won’t have an idiot like me on board that purchases all sorts of steaming sports services (I mean who besides me pays a yearly fee to watch the Moldovan football league?) because why will I pay for a service when the best product for the discipline I love, and where all my favorite skaters for the most part are, is provided to me for free (live and on demand) on YouTube?

 

[TallyT]

The paid subscriptions scheme will be a massive disaster. Who is going to pay to watch events without an on demand feature?

And that’s not taking into account the fact that the ISU 14k modems might not be able to handle the 4 people simultaneously trying to watch their pay per view events.

Oh I agree with you, but how long have they signed the contract for?

 

[alexocfp]

Oh I agree with you, but how long have they signed the contract for?

No idea, but I’m sure the people here that are well versed in the deal will tell us.

 

[beachmouse]

The paid subscriptions scheme will be a massive disaster. Who is going to pay to watch events without an on demand feature?

Look at Formula 1, where the rights holders know that hey, it’s a truly global sport in the 21st century and their fans simply need to be able to watch races on demand over breakfast rather than get up at 2:30am local to watch live coverage from Austin or Singapore or Bahrain.

 

[TT_Fin]

For me is it not issue, if I get TV quality stream and archives. But I will watch less for sure and without archives or bad streams, nothing. I pay about 13 €/month from Finnish internet TV channel, which allows me to watch Finlandia Trophy, qualifications for national and nationals, including also synchro. But I get more with it. There is also other sport, the basic cost I am not so interested to sport they show, but other family members can watch those. The basic cost is 9.95 €/month without ads, and I can watch also some other programs than sport. With ads it would be cheaper. As I have included sport to my package is 3 €/month more. But expect qualification for nats with has less cameras the rest have TV quality stream. And if ads and skaters will be missed, absolutely no. Edit, a good feature just noticed it once again when I just turned on the local channel I mentioned: it always asks "do we start from beginning or do we jump direct to live broadcast". I like this a lot. There is now a synchro, not even nationals but some kind of smaller national competition.

 

[CoyoteChris]

You know they want your data as soon as they offer free credit if you complete a profile.

Anyway - the event is now over and there haven't been any more major glitches after that black screen during one ice resurfacing. I had it on on both Chrome and Safari and at one point Chrome did start having issues (warning me it wouldn't work in this browser and to swith to Safari), but then it continued normally. I shut it down at that point and only left Safari on.

I was still only able to rewind five minutes, no more.

I tried to restart the whole thing now and I'm getting this amazing message:

"Oh no!​

The live event has finished, or the video has been removed by the publisher. Check out The Ice Skating Channel's channel to see what else they have on Recast"

However, the event has just finished so maybe they'll upload it in a while.

Let us know! It takes awhile for ISU to put an event on replay but not long.

 

[CoyoteChris]

It’s me and @DoubleBass philanthropist so he doesn’t love the Zagitova rule.

And I can confirm the philanthropist loves quads and can’t wait for the 5T one day. The philanthropist can hate ice dance and men‘s skating and even pairs. Since I don’t follow those anyway, and we can take the money we save from those disciplines and give more to the ladies.

I’m an expert in spending other people‘s money. Haha

Are you by any chance a carrerr politician?

 

[CoyoteChris]

You'd think things would have changed at least a little bit after Cinquanta left in 2016, but noooooooooo.....

It's like figure skating is the Cinderella of the ISU. I don't know much about the history so need to ask some dumb questions: has the USFSA or any other federation tried to push back in any significant way? And does the ISU actually get any revenue from speed skating?

"Speedy" Cinquanta was a speed skater who wanted to limit ice dancing to one dance. Some how certain powers kept him in office in a volunteer job for ever till he accrued multiple villas on the Riviera....and he did their bidding. After the Salt Lake City debacle, there was an attempt to overthrow the ISU...you can read about all of this it in Olympic Judge Jon Jackson's book, On Edge.
So yes, Federations do try and push back...like trying to get Team USA their Oly medals....I will leave it at that so I dont keep accruing political violations....

 

[kolyadafan2002]

If we truly want to nip this idea in the bud, there's one easy way:

Don't watch competitions with the paid isu stream.
I know it hurts to miss your favourite skaters, but when ISU notices stream numbers being miniscule they'll take notice.

 

[pearly]

Let us know! It takes awhile for ISU to put an event on replay but not long.

It's available and seems to be working normally. The several minutes of black screen are still there.

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

Not going to get involved in the debate, because I would basically just be repeating what most of you guys have been saying. (i.e. "I'm not paying!"; "the ISU haven't a clue!"; and "the governing of figure skating needs to be split from the governing of speed skating!")

But, I just went to the IFS Magazine's Twittter page after seeing a post in another thread, and I found something interesting. Their most recent post (from 17th February) was a link to the ISU's Annual Survey (didn't even know they had one!)

https://survey.alchemer.eu/s3/90524447/ISU-Fan-Survey-2023-Newsletter

Sorry, but it was only open from 09:00 GMT on 16th February 2023 to 17:00 GMT on 23rd February 2023.

Realising that this latest development was probably related to it, I decided to go through it, out of curiosity.

Sure enough, one of the pages was entitled "Watching Ice Skating". And went as follows:

1. "How regularly do you currently watch Ice Skating events live?"
   (Please select one option)
   • Every competition
   • Just highlights
   • More than 5 events a season
   • Between 2 and 5 events a season
   • Less than 2 events a season
   • Just the Olympic Games, every 4 years
   • Never - Why?
   
   
   If you picked anything other than "Every competition", "Just the Olympics" or "Never", the following question appeared:
   
   
2. "Which ISU events do you watch regularly?"
   (Select all answers that apply)
   • World Cup
   • Junior World Cup
   • Grand prix
   • World Championships
   • European Championships
   • World Junior Championships
   
   
   I take it "World Cup" is the Senior GP Series; "Junior World Cup" is the Junior GP Series; and "Grand prix" is the GP Final.
   
   But, imagine an official survey from the sport's governing body not getting the names of the events that are held in their name correct!
   
   
   The next two questions only appear when you select something other than "Never" for question 1.
   
   
3. "How do you watch Ice Skating?"
   (Select all answers that apply)
   • TV
   • YouTube
   • Recast
   • Streaming platform - Please specify
   • Other - Please specify
   
   
4. "Have you heard about the Ice Skating Channel on Recast?"
   (Please select one option)
   • Yes
   • No
   
   
   The next question was always on the page:
   
   
5. "Would you like to have access to one destination for all Ice Skating coverage?"
   (Please select one option)
   • Yes
   • No
   
   
   And this final question appeared if you selected "Yes":
   
   
6. "Would you be prepared to pay an annual subscription or would you prefer to pay event-by-event?"
   (Please select one option)
   • Subscription
   • Pay per view

Notice also that they did not acknowledge that there are other services that skating gets streamed on, such as DailyMotion or National Federations' own services. It's only YouTube or Recast.

So, it looks like they have been planning this for a while, and decided to use this survey as a means to find out what people thought of it. But, without giving us the option of saying "No, we want it to stay free on YouTube"

CaroLiza_fan