VNN’s Max Kuik gives a 15-minute rundown on livestreaming to your VNN site, showing what livestreaming looks like and covering our three partner options for streaming – Rapid Replay, Justagame, and the NFHS Network.
Katelyn Kasella: Hey everyone, thanks for joining us for our webinar today where we are going to be talking about all things livestreaming. As you guys know, we’ve recently kicked off live streaming across the VNN network, and we’re super excited about that. So today I’m joined by Max Kuik, and he is here to share a little bit more about livestreaming. He’s going to show you what it looks like on your site, he’s going to run through some of our partner options for streaming, and he’s going to show you just how easy it is. So thank you so much for joining us Max!
Max Kuik: Yeah thanks very much for having me, I’m excited to be here, excited to show all you guys kind of what we’re able to do. Yeah, livestreaming is something that you know, schools have been doing for a little bit now, but really took off this past school year. Just with the limitations on how many people can physically come to the games, wanting to make sure that everybody is able to watch that normally would want to. And so yeah, you know many schools started livestreaming, felt that was important.
And we felt it was really important to make that an option for you guys as well. And just like everything else that VNN kind of tries to do for you guys and keep it all in one spot to integrate livestreaming as well. So I’m just going to share my screen here real quick, and show you guys where this lives.
So I have De Soto sign up right here, this watch tab right here, is where all things livestreaming are going to live, regardless of which of our sources you use. It’s all going to stay right here and then when you guys are live, it will show up right in this main section right here. If you have something scheduled the next one will show up right here. Any additional schedules will be there, and then any of the past livestreams that you guys make available will be here as well.
KK: Awesome that’s super cool. I love how integrated that is. What are are some of my options for streaming?
MK: Yeah so the first one that we partnered with was NFHS. Many many schools around the country have them for good reason. Those pick slot cameras are awesome, whether they’re in the gym or the football field, they do a great job, they provide a good stream, so we wanted to make sure that integration was an option as well. So any school, any VNN school that has NFHS, we’re able to very easily connect that account to this watch tab just like De Soto has right here. So if you have NFHS and that’s not connected, reach out to use and we can get that set up for you super quick.
There are a couple of other options that we worth with. Mainly Rapid Replay and Just a Game. And both of those provide a little bit of flexibility that NFHS doesn’t necessarily have in the sense that you can stream more events that don’t have those pixlr cameras. Think baseball, track, tennis, soccer, any events that don’t have those pix lock cameras, have the option to do free or paid streams, and have the option to stream from like a smartphone or a tablet, or a huddle focus camera that you guys might have or something like that.
KK: And for those options would it be straight onto the site rather than clicking a button and having a new tab?
MK: Yep. So both those options, I’ll do a demo of it in just a second here, but both those options are going live right in this same section. When you go live, it’ll show up under this watch tab or this watch page just like NFHS does.
Cool. So what I’m going to do here is I’m going to share my phone screen, where I’m going to go live from one of these options, and just show you guys how simple it really is. So bear with me while I get this all set up. So this is my phone screen you’re looking at. What I’m going to do is I’m going to go to the Rapid Replay app, and just do a test live stream. Staging the site we have here, just so you guys can see how easy it is. So when I click on this test live stream button, the first thing that comes up is whether I want to physically stream just from this device, my phone right here.
So if you’re the AD and you’re personally at the game and that’s how you want to set it up, that’s perfect. Now if you’re the AD and you yourself are not at the game, maybe a coach or a parent, a trusted parent, or somebody is there, and you want to invite them to stream from the game, you can do that just by clicking this invite somebody. We’re just going to stream right from this phone, and then you do have the option of either streaming with sound or without sound.
We wanted to be sure that if it’s just like, a parent or somebody that’s in the stands with everybody else, that if it is some raucous fan sitting around them that you don’t have to worry about that audio being put on your school website as well. So you have the option to stream without sound. I am going to stream muted for this example. And then you just flip it, click continue, and I’m going to click start. Now there is a little bit of a delay, I would say roughly 30 seconds or so, and what this does is it accommodates weather, it accommodates any lower signal your phone might have, just so that if there are any hiccups in cell service or wi-fi, that it can cleanly just navigate right through it.
So I’m going to load this, and it should be live on the site by now.
KK: Awesome. If this was a real live stream, would we be able to see any other information like scores?
MK: Yes absolutely. So both of these options will have the ability to implement a scoreboard right on there so that anybody that’s watching your stream can see the score right on the heads-up display right there. As you can see I am, this is coming right from my phone that you’re seeing. There’s a little bit of delay, but again just that easy clicking, going live, and streaming right to the phone. I’m going to end the stream.
KK: So if there was multiple events happening at my school, could we have someone in the gym, someone on the field, like all going live and it all being streamed to my site?
MK: Yep. That is definitely one of the advantages of these other two options outside of NFHS, is that you can do multiple streams at a time and they would all live under these live events. If you have multiple going on they would live underneath there. You can do different camera angles for the same event, these provide a lot of flexibility where and when you guys are actually able to stream.
So that was Rapid Replay that I just showed you. For all intents and purposed, Just a Game is exactly the same, it’s just a different app. So this is what Just a Game looks like when it’s live on a site, this is the home. Looks very similar to the other, two live events show up here, any upcoming or current live events show up down here and then have the option for replays as well. We do have just a quick YouTube video right here to show you what going live on Just a Game looks like, so you can see it’s very comparable to Rapid Replay.
So it starts with just finding the app in the app store, that’s what it looks like, download real quick, you just have to sign up with your email and then put in your password and all that information, then once that’s done you’re set up to go live. Make sure you have good connection, and then you press that red button and you’re able to start streaming. It’ll let you know when you’re live, and then you see the scoreboard that’s showing up on the live feed.
You can zoom in, you can pan around, it makes it a really professional good looking stream so that your community is able to see everything thats going on.
KK: Sweet, these are both really cool options. Can you tell me a little bit about pricing?
MK: Definitely. So to start, like I mentioned earlier, for those of you who already have NFHS, we can connect that NFHS account to your VNN website, it doesn’t cost anything. So if that hasn’t been done, just reach out to either our support team or your account manager and we’ll get that set up for you. The other options are a few different pricing levels, basically depending on what a school is hoping to do. So with both of the options, there’s a free option which basically allows you to stream anytime, however many live events at a time you want, however all events are pay-per-view for the parent or the community member. And there’s a small profit share.
And then there are a couple different levels. Mid-level, where you do have the option to either stream for free or add a paywall on your end, which have a higher profit split, and what this is really good for is people who want as much flexibility as possible. Maybe they want to still stream some of the lower level events for free, but they don’t want to necessarily stream everything for free. If they’re still trying to sell tickets for fans actually getting into the stadium, they don’t want to make it super easy, they want to be able to add a paywall.
And then there are some high level options, which basically we see schools who are looking to maximize their revenue as being good for them, because we do a much higher profit split with them to make sure that they are getting as much money as possible from the individual pay-per-view streams. And one thing to add as well, both Just a Game and Rapid Replay, the soon you guys sign up, they’re actually free to the end of this school year.
KK: Perfect sounds like a great option for graduation coming up soon. Okay, there’s just a couple questions that came to me through your presentations Max. The first one is, you talked about with both JAG (Just a Game) and Rapid Replay, you can stream from an app, you can stream from a lot of devices, do either of them have a camera option?
MK: Yes so currently JAG does have the option that where you guys can purchase a camera specific for that platform. In addition, both of these options if you guys have like a huddle focus camera, or a number of other camera equipment, we can pull the feed right from there. And we know we talk about some specifics when we’re talking to you specifically about one of these.
KK: And you did mention that a lot of schools are using YouTube to stream for free right now, so what’s kind of the benefit for them to switch over to one of our partners versus YouTube?
MK: Yeah that’s one of the most common questions that we’ve been getting. One of the biggest benefits I’d say for one, you know with these streams they live right on this VNN platform just like everything else that we try to do with you guys, so just keeping it all in one location is definitely a big one. But another big one is having the ability to potentially pay for these streams next year. So a lot of schools did not want to charge for streams this year, understandably, because not many people could go to the games. However, the majority of the feedback that we’re getting, is that next year they want to continue to stream, but they also want to be able to sell tickets, and they don’t want to provide a free stream for people if they just don’t want to pay for a ticket.
So having the ability to add a paywall, especially for some of your varsity events, upper level events, is definitely a big benefit. And then also multiple streams at a time, multiple camera angles, just having a software that’s designed specifically for athletic streaming.
KK: Awesome okay. Well those are the only two that came to my mind, I saw a couple questions come in while we were doing this webinar, but we are going to do individual reach outs and touch base with all of you guys after we wrap up today. Max, is there anything else you want to add or can you tell our customers what their next step is if they’re interested in getting started with livestreaming?
MK: Yeah definitely. So if you guys are interested, I would encourage you to reach out to your account manager and they’ll be able to provide you with any specifics as far as which option is best for you, some of the different pricing levels, etc.
KK: Perfect. Okay awesome, all right. Well we’re going to wrap up there for today, but as always a recording will be available afterwards, and we’ll ahve it on the YouTube channel, we’ll get that link out to everybody, we appreciate you guys all attending today and learning more, and we’re super excited about what’s to come.
MK: Awesome thanks Katelyn!
KK: Thank you Max!