Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon Stratis
The MSHSL has a contract with prep45 to webcast events, and the State Tournament is a MSHSL event. I don't know if you'll have to pay to view or not, I do know it's a subject that has come up before.
When you think about it, having that deal in place for most of the MSHSL activities completely makes sense. FIRST is probably the only one to have the sort of in-house experience live streaming events that we do.
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The "nominal" fee to watch a live state tournament stream is $6.97 per day. After Saturday, you can get 3-day access to view an "event" for $2.97; for the robotics tournament, the morning and afternoon sessions appear to be considered separate events. Prep45.com will also sell you a DVD of one of the sessions for $55.
You need a log-in account on the prep45 website to get access to the stream, and (unlike HBOGo) you can only have one device at a time streaming a paid feed. So grandparents in one city and aunt/uncles in another will have to pay separately.
The long-term deal between prep45 and the state high school league does bring in revenue to the organization, and it guarantees television/web streaming of certain state tournament events, regardless of whether there'd be enough paying customers to justify the production costs (the 2016 girls basketball Class A quarterfinal game between Sleepy Eye and Mountain Iron is available on-demand, in case anyone is interested).
But the deal has its fair share of detractors. Robotics is far from the first sport in Minnesota to have experience live-streaming games/events (our high school's hockey games have been streamed for several years now). And there's been more than a few conflicts (for example, when a hockey team is barred from streaming their section final game because the wrestling tournament is being streamed at the same time
). The prep45 deal is really comprehensive, and they are very aggressive in legally protecting the broadcast/streaming rights that they've paid for.
