2024-25 GPF: Men's Thoughts? | Page 3 | Golden Skate

2024-25 GPF: Men's Thoughts?

I don't know about all these countries but I know from my own living experience that broadcast rights do not mean geo-blocking YouTube by default. I know this is the case in US but here I can watch most competitions both on Eurosport and YT, and sometimes even on another local TV channel, whichever I choose, it's been like that for ages. I guess it depends on the legal cultures and contracts.
Still, in the VPN era geo-blocking just does not mean much anyway - anyone can pretend to be anywhere they need and watch whatever they wish from wherever they happen to be.... I heard VPNs are also very popular in Russia recently which might be also relevant here..
Just saying.
Also I wouldn’t assume 1 view = 1 individual person lol. Plenty of fans view their favorite programs hundreds of times, and I don’t think it’s news to anybody that Malinin has fans. A view can also come from someone who was linked on social media who may or may not enjoy or finish watching the video… that counts as a view too. View counts are primarily a reflection of promotion and exposure, and Malinin has been heavily promoted since his first senior season.
 
The main nemesis is when the feds/venue organizers do not pay for their licenses... which is not the case at all in Canada. That's how and why everything is streamed and archived forever. Not sure what you mean here.
When YouTube streams that are like 6-7 hours long get blocked by SONY or whatnot because there is like a 20 second clip in the middle of hour 3 that triggered Canadian music rights watchdog. Then we have to wait for a while until ISU gets someone to block out the musical segment and replace it with silence. It's annoying. ISU should get some sort of grace pass from the YouTube to sort things out, not block stuff. Or can they just block out the music track themselves and then ISU can sort it out if they can play it or not in Canada.
 
Also I wouldn’t assume 1 view = 1 individual person lol. Plenty of fans view their favorite programs hundreds of times, and I don’t think it’s news to anybody that Malinin has fans. A view can also come from someone who was linked on social media who may or may not enjoy or finish watching the video… that counts as a view too. View counts are primarily a reflection of promotion and exposure, and Malinin has been heavily promoted since his first senior season.

All of this is possible, but most would be applied to all the skaters. We also can't discount "hate views" which I confess I've indulged in on occasion.

However, he generally has 10x as many views as many of his rivals at this event, and I don't think that's easily dismissed. He's garnering interest and bringing eyes.

Also, I was impressed with the number of young people shown in the crowd. Now, that could have been because that's where the cameraman chose to focus, and he may have chosen to do that because he was instructed to do so... but hopefully it's partly because this newer generation of skaters is bringing a new generation of fans. I hope so.
 
Also I wouldn’t assume 1 view = 1 individual person lol. Plenty of fans view their favorite programs hundreds of times, and I don’t think it’s news to anybody that Malinin has fans. A view can also come from someone who was linked on social media who may or may not enjoy or finish watching the video… that counts as a view too. View counts are primarily a reflection of promotion and exposure, and Malinin has been heavily promoted since his first senior season.
This is very true! But the truth is views can also be easily boosted if you have a PR agency working on it. I'm not saying they are here or not, he surely does have fans who watch and rewatch his programs, and click and all. But he also has the PR agency backup, and quite an aggressive one - as we could see in this recent interview - which I guess most of the others do not have, and generating views and interest is one of the main jobs of such an agency. I know many people will not like it here but this is just the backstage reality and such data should always be taken with a grain of salt.
Still, though the gap between Malinin and the rest of the pack is impressive indeed, the raw numbers are not really that big when compared to previous years, or the previous era, if you like :)
 
The main nemesis is when the feds/venue organizers do not pay for their licenses... which is not the case at all in Canada. That's how and why everything is streamed and archived forever. Not sure what you mean here.
You can get a license for a live event, but a different license is required for the right to replays in video. (That's the same problem that exists with Peacock and only allows replays of two days, then the videos are gone forever.)

Skate Canada 2019. Nam's FS. The Beatles. He had the skate of his career, right after Yuzu, and the crowd went insane. To this day, its still my fav Skate Canada Men's event.

On the replay, the channel owner on YouTube had to mute part of Nam's Program containing The Beatles Medley due to copyright. Every channel on YouTube, no matter who is playing Nam's program, either has total or partial mute. This video has the least amount of mute, but if you read the notes the person left for viewers, they even say 01:26:05 Nam Nguyen *1:26:401:27:55 - muted for copyright. The video is timestamped so when you hit play, It's Nam. Eventually, the music comes back on so anyone can enjoy the best part of Nam's program. That means not all of the Beatles Music was muted, just some of it. The best part of Nam's skate is with the music. Be patient while he skates in silence, the Beatles music will come back on. It's a fun skate to watch.


Go Nam! Such a party atmosphere, I loved it.

 
You can get a license for a live event, but a different license is required for the right to replays in video. (That's the same problem that exists with Peacock and only allows replays of two days, then the videos are gone forever.)

Skate Canada 2019. Nam's FS. The Beatles. He had the skate of his career, right after Yuzu, and the crowd went insane. To this day, its still my fav Skate Canada Men's event.

On the replay, the channel owner on YouTube had to mute part of Nam's Program containing The Beatles Medley due to copyright. Every channel on YouTube, no matter who is playing Nam's program, either has total or partial mute. This video has the least amount of mute, but if you read the notes the person left for viewers, they even say 01:26:05 Nam Nguyen *1:26:401:27:55 - muted for copyright. The video is timestamped so when you hit play, It's Nam. Eventually, the music comes back on so anyone can enjoy the best part of Nam's program. That means not all of the Beatles Music was muted, just some of it. The best part of Nam's skate is with the music. Be patient while he skates in silence, the Beatles music will come back on. It's a fun skate to watch.


Go Nam! Such a party atmosphere, I loved it.


Yes. It was a fun event. I think that was the first time yuzu managed a win at sci.

I think Skate Canada's dealing with such issues comes with their transparency policy which , if I am not mistaken is more recent.

There will always be exceptional copyright issues though and the Beatles is a good example of that.

In general, it is as simple as pay ALL licenses but there are some complicated examples where that's not sufficient.
 
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With Youtube copyright, my experience is that there are two options. You can mute the music in the video and let it be available to all watchers. Or, if it is a country specific copyright issue, you can block it from being viewed in those countries.

I'll go back to the example with Nam Nguyen's SCI 2019 free skate. There is a version that has the music available (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl07Ba0K1q4). I can watch it in Canada. However, I tried it in Opera with the VPN on. I think it's set to Norway since it showed the temperature for Oslo. It is blocked due to copyright by NBC/Universal. That's how that user opted to deal with the copyright issue.

So it depends on who is uploading the video and what they choose. With the ISU, I think they opt for the muting since that way they won't have to block an entire stream from multiple countries.

I think Skate Canada's dealing with such issues comes with their transparency policy which , if I am not mistaken is more recent.
Using Dailymotion probably helps with it too, I don't think they get the same level of attention as they would on Youtube there.
 
With Youtube copyright, my experience is that there are two options. You can mute the music in the video and let it be available to all watchers. Or, if it is a country specific copyright issue, you can block it from being viewed in those countries.

I'll go back to the example with Nam Nguyen's SCI 2019 free skate. There is a version that has the music available (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl07Ba0K1q4). I can watch it in Canada. However, I tried it in Opera with the VPN on. I think it's set to Norway since it showed the temperature for Oslo. It is blocked due to copyright by NBC/Universal. That's how that user opted to deal with the copyright issue.

So it depends on who is uploading the video and what they choose. With the ISU, I think they opt for the muting since that way they won't have to block an entire stream from multiple countries.


Using Dailymotion probably helps with it too, I don't think they get the same level of attention as they would on Youtube there.
I'm in the USA and no VPN. I saw: This video contains content from NBC Universal, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.
How would you know the block message exists if you could view the video with a VPN - or did you see the block message and then use a browser with a VPN to unblock and view?
 
I'm in the USA and no VPN. I saw: This video contains content from NBC Universal, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.
How would you know the block message exists if you could view the video with a VPN - or did you see the block message and then use a browser with a VPN to unblock and view?
I'd watched that video several times before in Canada without any issues. I got curious when you mentioned that every version of the skate you found had the music muted since I remembered that version. So I tested it out on a VPN to see if it was blocked in other countries. Turns out it's fine in Canada, but not Norway or the USA. That's how that channel owner decided to deal with the copyright when they uploaded it.

I'm using it more as an example of the options that Youtube gives channel owners with copyrighted material that the owner doesn't allow to be used. I've uploaded some videos to there, so I wanted to add some more information about the options it gives channel owners. Muting isn't ideal, but for the ISU it's probably better than blocking an archived livestream from multiple countries if it's one song that's the issue.

Here's what the music restrictions are for Youtube for more information:

 
With Youtube copyright, my experience is that there are two options. You can mute the music in the video and let it be available to all watchers. Or, if it is a country specific copyright issue, you can block it from being viewed in those countries.

I'll go back to the example with Nam Nguyen's SCI 2019 free skate. There is a version that has the music available (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl07Ba0K1q4). I can watch it in Canada. However, I tried it in Opera with the VPN on. I think it's set to Norway since it showed the temperature for Oslo. It is blocked due to copyright by NBC/Universal. That's how that user opted to deal with the copyright issue.

So it depends on who is uploading the video and what they choose. With the ISU, I think they opt for the muting since that way they won't have to block an entire stream from multiple countries.


Using Dailymotion probably helps with it too, I don't think they get the same level of attention as they would on Youtube there.
I have not uploaded anything on dailymotion or vimeo.. only youtube... but no pop music nor figure skating... i also haven't used the platform in a couple years so I may be out of date on some of the stuff...

Regarding the Beatles, I think I read somewhere at some point that there were copyright battles between the band members themselves... so when that happens, that could create problems with streaming and replay licenses.. just my guess... In the end, this topic seems to come back in every thread so I will bow out of it for now ;)
 
Also I wouldn’t assume 1 view = 1 individual person lol. Plenty of fans view their favorite programs hundreds of times, and I don’t think it’s news to anybody that Malinin has fans. A view can also come from someone who was linked on social media who may or may not enjoy or finish watching the video… that counts as a view too. View counts are primarily a reflection of promotion and exposure, and Malinin has been heavily promoted since his first senior season.

Yeah, no one is saying that it's individual people. It's individual views or clicks, but that's still something important, that someone even bothered to click. Like, how many times have we all just passed by and chosen NOT to click something, because we have absolutely no interest.

Also, I actually don't see much social media linking to YouTube directly these days. Instagram, twitter, etc. will embed their own gif clips or video formats within the post, but not really the youtube video or even the youtube link. These posts generally have their own view counts.
 
Canada is not excluded. So all 26 of us are watching it! CBC maybe still has the rights, but after a half-hearted attempt to GB YouTube channel for figure skating a couple of years ago for like the whole day (!), they probably decided it is not worth the energy and manpower, lol. Our main nemesis is the big music rights holders that block skating because of music skaters use.
Are you saying that rightholders demanding to be paid for the use of their property are nemesis? No, our nemesis are feds who pretend there is no problem and won't educate skaters and coaches or negociate with rightholders.
 
Neither he or Ilia are teenagers anymore! Both are 20 now. I believe the only teenager amongst the top senior men now is Kao Miura (19).

Maybe to give some actual stats of who people are watching, these are the Skating ISU YouTube channel view counts for men's SP / FS:
- Ilia Malinin: 23K / 35.9K views
- Mikhail Shaidorov: 8.4K / 5.9K views (honorable mention: 5.8K views for panda gala, lol)
- Kevin Aymoz: 2.6K / 3.3K views
- Yuma Kagiyama: 2.4K / 3.3K views
- Shun Sato: 0.8K / 1.3K views
- Daniel Grassl: 0.9 K / 1.2K views

The channel is geo-blocked in the US, so these are non-US viewers and does not include any other country that has broadcast rights (so I believe this will also exclude Japan, Canada etc), but it's otherwise a representative sample outside those countries. It's actually kind of nice, because it removes national viewership biases from the big feds.

Ilia has the highest number of views in the SP, FS, and gala across all disciplines. In fact, no one else really comes close to him, except for Shaidorov in the gala. Now, make what you will out of all of this. Despair or rejoice at the future of figure skating or do neither, because are view counts a measure of who should win or who is the better skater? Does a Marvel movie with mega box office win the Oscar? No, absolutely not, but it's a quick, easy barometer of interest and general popularity.
Are those numbers for real? Maybe the ISU Channel has been flagged by Youtube for violating a rule and they've shadow banned the channel and all the videos. Even the worst meal review videos do better numbers.
 
Are you saying that rightholders demanding to be paid for the use of their property are nemesis? No, our nemesis are feds who pretend there is no problem and won't educate skaters and coaches or negociate with rightholders.
Yeah, except the rest of the world can see these videos just fine except for Canada because our rules are the most convoluted or something. They had been paid and i am sorry of my heart doesn't go out to Sony when a junior skater from wherever is apparently not educated enough because they didn't spend enough time studying Canadian copyright. Musical copyright is insane. Like, you can't actually quote words from a song, just its title and artist, lol.
 
Yeah, except the rest of the world can see these videos just fine except for Canada because our rules are the most convoluted or something. They had been paid and i am sorry of my heart doesn't go out to Sony when a junior skater from wherever is apparently not educated enough because they didn't spend enough time studying Canadian copyright. Musical copyright is insane. Like, you can't actually quote words from a song, just its title and artist, lol.
I guess we are not watching the same things
..I don't seem to have the same issues.
 
Yeah, except the rest of the world can see these videos just fine except for Canada because our rules are the most convoluted or something. They had been paid and i am sorry of my heart doesn't go out to Sony when a junior skater from wherever is apparently not educated enough because they didn't spend enough time studying Canadian copyright. Musical copyright is insane. Like, you can't actually quote words from a song, just its title and artist, lol.
The skater has adult coach and fed that is able to secure legal advice. The competition is organised by fed that should set the rules on allowed music. It isn't about the skaters, it is about the feds who should have this covered.
 
I'd like to ask a question, do we have a section in GS that recollects the performances of the six competitors of all the men GPF so far with videos of short/free programs, list of scores for both programs and kiss&cry moments? I think it could be nice to have them ordered this way, put it I don't know maybe with internal sections, like men GPF from 1980 to 1990, from 1991 to 2001 and so on, could it be possibile to create such a thread?

I add as a thought of this event, that I liked to see the kiss&cry moments of this men GPF, the tense while waiting the scores, the joy and exultance, that was all nice to see as part of the event. There has been also some little disappointment, but I liked to see smiling faces despite this.
I saw a supportive team around Grassl, even if many points were taken away they motivated him, they didn't discouraged him.
I like when there's a team working this way, like Malinin's team and Shaidorov's team, too.
But again, I truly think Aymoz should work on his emotions. (I didn't like him so much honestly..:rolleye:). Of course his skating skills are very good. But he's too much emotive.. and this not always is a good thing for his performances. Please, control yourself on this....
It would have been so nice if Adam SHF were present, I admire his tenacious will and his high resilience. I wish him a speedy recovery from his injury. It was wise to not participate at this event, as to come back stronger for the next competitions! He's another of my absolute favorites:love:
 
The viewing numbers are really shockingly low, especially with all the PR involved. It seems something is not really working here. And don't tell me it is because it is such a niche sport. There are vids from previous GPs with much much better viewership. Not to mention that just over the last week more people went to Saitama to see Yuzuru Hanyu live than clicked the GPF winner's video for free on You Tube; as for the venue audience, tentatively speaking, twice as more went to see Yuzuru live than the entire GPF. Over the last week, again, tentatively speaking, more than 10 times more people actually paid to watch Yuzu skate live online than decided to click the GPF winner's video for free (in fact, it is probably way more cause, as noted by several posters earlier, one fan can generate many clicks, but only one payment, not to mention that clicks can be generated by bots, while payments must come from real customers). This is not just outselling, this is a landslide. These numbers may be buried down, drowned in silence, mocked, dismissed with all sorts of excuses, or may be at last put on the table for serious analysis and long-delayed learning exercise.
And don't tell me all these people are crazy or that the comparison is not fair. It is absolutely fair and moreover, it is necessary, if you want to understand what kind of skating the general public really wants to watch in large numbers. For this is just the general public voting with their legs and their credit cards, the best opinion survey you can ever possibly have. Why TPTB have chosen to be deaf to the public's voice and preferences for all these years remains a mystery to me. Stating that Ilia Malinin has an "unmatched artistry" on ISU social media instead, apparently is not enough to fool the public into believing it, especially while they still have other and better options for comparison.

The winner's and his team's response to UR calls are also shocking, showing a sense of entitlement and expectation to have his URs and other mistakes uncalled. I imagine the outcry if such complaints came from some other camp(s). But what is the source of this entitlement and these expectations, where do they come from, how were they born and how have they been fed? This should also be treated as material for analysis by anyone who seriously thinks about improving the position of this sport with the public and not just push a selected skater or few for a win or two.
 
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