[cadandcookies]

I agree 100%. There's a bigger picture here than page views and RCAs.

Because of game day, this year I got to introduce some of our seniors to watching and keeping up with other events-- last Saturday, I walked in on our build crew taking a break from working on the robot to eat popcorn and watch Howell District event. Unrestricted, public streams are quickly helping my (and, I believe, other teams) realize exactly how global the competition is-- I doubt that many of our students would have been able to name even four regionals that we don't attend, but now they're sourcing improvements to our practice robot from watching teams in California, Michigan, and the east coast.

I'm not a developer, and my team doesn't run any streams, but there are huge benefits for letting anyone (whether it's TBA or WatchFIRSTNow, or some other site I haven't heard about) aggregate streams. Compared to the disadvantages (page views? ad pennies?), it doesn't seem like much of an argument.

FIRST is built on those funny words: "coopertition," and "gracious professionalism." Compete if you want to, but it's a long shot to say that exclusive webcasts help anyone in FIRST.