CFL+ Streaming Woes

[Sir Blue and Gold]

Lets review the facts: It's a free stream. You're not owed top-tier production for CFL pre-season games. No one promised you crisp HD broadcasts on demand. Your weird logic to justify your annoyance is silly. Fans with three second attention spans aren't watching CFL pre-season games.

You're free to get in your car or hop on a plane and buy a ticket. Too expensive? Stupid idea? Unrealistic? Guess why the league doesn't have cameras and crews with Dazn level streams for all the games? Duh.

Why isn't it: look what a cool thing the league was able to do with a very small budget and almost no infrastructure so super fans could see some of the preseason? But no -- it's fire somebody what a joke, it didn't work the first time. 

[TBURGESS]

The tight shots on every play were horrible. Can't see what anyone but the QB is doing. Give me a much wider angle please. 

[Pete]

It may be free but its still representing the cfl. Just a few suggestions vs criticisms
1 get 1 more camera angle, right now when theres a field goal they show a picture of a helmet
2 instead of showing the same commercial (how many times di we need to see McManus flex) just keep the camera on field.
3 fix the timing issues theres no reason to cut back late from "this is a commercial break"
 I do appreciate being able to watch the games and kudos to the cfl for that
 

[Blueforlife]

Lets review the facts: It's a free stream. You're not owed top-tier production for CFL pre-season games. No one promised you crisp HD broadcasts on demand. Your weird logic to justify your annoyance is silly. Fans with three second attention spans aren't watching CFL pre-season games.

You're free to get in your car or hop on a plane and buy a ticket. Too expensive? Stupid idea? Unrealistic? Guess why the league doesn't have cameras and crews with Dazn level streams for all the games? Duh.

Why isn't it: look what a cool thing the league was able to do with a very small budget and almost no infrastructure so super fans could see some of the preseason? But no -- it's fire somebody what a joke, it didn't work the first time. 

People are allowed to complain about something that didn't work and also chime on what they think could be improved.  Continous improvement is important even for a free product.  Constructive criticism helps anyone improve.  Yes don't expect the world but also needs to work at a certain basic minimum acceptable standard.  I didn't try but would have been frustrated if it didn't work for me.

[TecnoGenius]

Lets review the facts: It's a free stream. You're not owed top-tier production for CFL pre-season games.

Why isn't it: look what a cool thing the league was able to do with a very small budget and almost no infrastructure so super fans could see some of the preseason? But no -- it's fire somebody what a joke, it didn't work the first time.

In my world and in my philosophy, if you're going to do something, you do it right.  You don't half-butt things.  I do stuff like this for a living and I would have never let this occur.  And I have probably 1/100000 the budget the CFL had for this.

If your philosophy and job let you produce failure, good for you.

Maybe part of the ire is we used to get half the games on TSN, as it should be.  Now reduced to 2.  Generally leagues work to improve their product.

Saying "not owed top-tier production" (which I never even said) is a straw man, because the main beef here is people couldn't even get on the stream, some for 30 minutes!  Read the GDT here, and then in Riderfans, this was the reality.  I couldn't care less about the production, I just want myself and others to be able to get in.

And clearly more than just the "uber forum fans" were hitting the stream, otherwise the web server wouldn't have been overloaded!

[Jesse]

I'll never not understand not airing all preseason games. It's not free. We all pay for TSN to watch these games. The CFL is the only reason TSN gets my money.

If these specific games draw less eye balls and sponsors, you can scale back the production value a bit, but shutting it off completely is pretty unacceptable.

I'm semi-grateful to the CFL itself but putting something online, but it's a joke that it came to this at all.

[Sir Blue and Gold]

In my world and in my philosophy, if you're going to do something, you do it right.  You don't half-butt things. I do stuff like this for a living and I would have never let this occur.  And I have probably 1/100000 the budget the CFL had for this.

If your philosophy and job let you produce failure, good for you.

Maybe part of the ire is we used to get half the games on TSN, as it should be.  Now reduced to 2.  Generally leagues work to improve their product.

Saying "not owed top-tier production" (which I never even said) is a straw man, because the main beef here is people couldn't even get on the stream, some for 30 minutes!  Read the GDT here, and then in Riderfans, this was the reality.  I couldn't care less about the production, I just want myself and others to be able to get in.

And clearly more than just the "uber forum fans" were hitting the stream, otherwise the web server wouldn't have been overloaded!

Here's the crux of the entitlement. Of course you could. But you don't. So you come here to complain. People who say this never can, by the way. The more you know the more you realize things are complicated and budgets are important and there's usually good reasons for issues and most of the time it's a strategic tradeoff between money, time and payoff.

But of course, you're the expert in this scenario.

[Waffler]

I am not complaining about the scoreboard camera, better than nothing which is the other option. The feed should be able to handle the demand though. Easy to predict it would be hammered, 2 games on at the same time, the entire province of Sask tuning in and most of Manitoba. This is where there are a lot of hardcore fans, the casual fan being less likely to stream.

[Blueforlife]

Here's the crux of the entitlement. Of course you could. But you don't. So you come here to complain. People who say this never can, by the way. The more you know the more you realize things are complicated and budgets are important and there's usually good reasons for issues and most of the time it's a strategic tradeoff between money, time and payoff.

But of course, you're the expert in this scenario.

I believe you are on the losing side of this argument and others have made some good points on why.  Never settle for good enough, always push to be better.

No need to take shots at techo, he had a legitimate concern backed by others.

We want this league to grow and will help point out the warts along the way that if cured could help build this Canadian institution.

[ModAdmin]

Here's the crux of the entitlement. Of course you could. But you don't. So you come here to complain. People who say this never can, by the way. The more you know the more you realize things are complicated and budgets are important and there's usually good reasons for issues and most of the time it's a strategic tradeoff between money, time and payoff.

But of course, you're the expert in this scenario.

The CFL is a professional organization.  Their business is to provide entertainment that draws fans to the games.  Issues like this do the opposite.

[theaardvark]

Its a free stream, sure.

If you aren't going to put out a top notch product, or at least put an effort into it, why do it at all?

And while a tone of potential new fans are streamers, I would suggest the vast majority are not.  You have multiple TSN feeds with actual paid commercials, why not ultilize them?

And, CFL, why would you put 3 games on one day?  If you want to stream, or televise, that is bad.  If they are not to be broadcast at all, put them all at the same time if you like. But choose one or the other.

Preseason is just that, preseason.  Its a free spot on the bingo card, you can run games in Ft. McMurray, Victoria, Halifax, Quebec City, London, even Toronto, to try and get new eyes on the game.  Compensate teams for reduced gate and travel costs, and actually promote the league.

[Sir Blue and Gold]

Its a free stream, sure.

If you aren't going to put out a top notch product, or at least put an effort into it, why do it at all?

And while a tone of potential new fans are streamers, I would suggest the vast majority are not.  You have multiple TSN feeds with actual paid commercials, why not ultilize them?

And, CFL, why would you put 3 games on one day?  If you want to stream, or televise, that is bad.  If they are not to be broadcast at all, put them all at the same time if you like. But choose one or the other.

Preseason is just that, preseason.  Its a free spot on the bingo card, you can run games in Ft. McMurray, Victoria, Halifax, Quebec City, London, even Toronto, to try and get new eyes on the game.  Compensate teams for reduced gate and travel costs, and actually promote the league.

Maybe next year they won't and we can all go back to listening on the radio.

[Throw Long Bannatyne]

Its a free stream, sure.

If you aren't going to put out a top notch product, or at least put an effort into it, why do it at all?

And while a tone of potential new fans are streamers, I would suggest the vast majority are not.  You have multiple TSN feeds with actual paid commercials, why not ultilize them?

And, CFL, why would you put 3 games on one day?  If you want to stream, or televise, that is bad.  If they are not to be broadcast at all, put them all at the same time if you like. But choose one or the other.

Preseason is just that, preseason.  Its a free spot on the bingo card, you can run games in Ft. McMurray, Victoria, Halifax, Quebec City, London, even Toronto, to try and get new eyes on the game.  Compensate teams for reduced gate and travel costs, and actually promote the league.

Agree on many of your points, problem is the CFL is too focused on just getting by, not preparing for the future.

[Sir Blue and Gold]

The CFL is a professional organization.  Their business is to provide entertainment that draws fans to the games.  Issues like this do the opposite.

First, the CFL's main goal, like any business is to make money (you do that through maximizing profitable activities and minimizing costly ones, especially if there' s a low likelihood of ever seeing a return). Second, find me a single fan who struggled with the free pre-season stream and because of that has decided to cut back on their CFL spending as a result. You can't because the statement isn't true in the slightest.

What is true is that it isn't the best experience and the league knows it since it's obvious to literally everyone. You'll get no disputing of that fact from me. The key thing to understand is that it's very likely an extremely lightweight efficient way to get some sort of pre-season coverage for teams that play outside of Ontario since TSN doesn't want to fly people around for pre-season games because there's no money in it which is the crux of the issue.

The reality is the next best option is not to do it at all which is far and away a more likely outcome than higher production values. Guaranteed and without question.

[Blue In BC]

The Rider game was still up yesterday and I was able to watch the game from the beginning. On game day I couldn't get the streaming until nearly half time.

If at 1st you don't succeed there is always that 2nd chance.