Ad-supported revenue sharing streaming services are starting to gain a lot of momentum. Here's a good article to read to get a quick survey of the services available: https://www.fastcompany.com/90304498/20-great-free-streaming-services-for-cord-cutters
There's two main types of services... those that just have "on demand" videos of movies and TV shows and those that kind of emulate TV channels through live streams(though they sometimes have on demand functions). The"on demand" services are probably not relevant until a sports focused one is developed.
The service I'm going to focus most on is Pluto TV because it seems to be the one with the most momentum behind it. Others in the same live channel segment include Xumo, Roku Channel, and Stirr. Many of the channels are duplicated between the services which points to the possibility of making content available to multiple services.
Quick rundown about Pluto TV: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/pluto-tv-free-faq,news-27125.html
Wikipedia page is worth a look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto_TV
A list of channels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pluto_TV_channels
Watch Pluto TV Live in your browser for free. Comes on in an instant and no signup is required.: https://pluto.tv/live-tv
(Unsure what countries that works with. Pluto TV is also available in Canada and some European countries. I tested this in a German VPN and it redirected to their German front page... don't think you can stream German content in your browser yet)
The sports channels begin at 455: https://pluto.tv/live-tv/pluto-tv-sports
I'll focus on sports but the other channels are worth checking out to see what kind of content they're looking for. There's a surfing channel. There's a NFL channel showing old football games and documentaries. There's a MLS(Major League Soccer) channel showing old matches. There's a "Winter Sports" channel that currently seems focused on skiing and snowboarding. There's an outdoors/hunting/fishing channel. There is Fight Network for general combat sports(used to watch it a lot a few years ago for muay thai) and another network solely for Glory Kickboxing. There's a channel showing best of shows and pay per views of TNA Impact Wrestling. There's a sports betting channel. There's a couple college conference and university oriented channels.
I think figure skating would not only fit in but would do well against many of these other channels. I actually it would be in the top half of the current sports channels.
So what kind of content would be good to put on a channel.
The World Championships (including exhibition) - edited down to about the Grand Prix Final level of skaters... you could easily get at least an hours worth of content per year out of each discipline for most years after 1980ish(maybe a bit later) and at least a half hour for years before that. I'm going to put this at about 200 hours of good content though it's probably more around 300.
Grand Prix Final (including exhibition) - edited down to keep the flow going... at least 100 hours of good content... but probably more around 150.
The rest of the ISU archived events would be better shown in compilation rather than full events. The Japan Open and World Team Trophy could be interesting though. The junior events would probably best best as part of compilations but the ladies JGPF is often my favorite event of the year.
It would be interesting to see the old events with new ideal camera editing not chosen live. And maybe with a single stationary camera.
It would be nice to have the old film remastered(perhaps use AI upscaling).
Thematic compilations: Things like "Best of Yuna Kim" or "Journey of Yulia Lipnitskaya" or "The performances of the 2010 Olympic quad" or "Best skating of 1993", "Best galas of 1980s", "Best pairs skates of all time", "Best junior skates of all time", "Best skaters as juniors", etc, etc, etc. etc The possibilities are almost endless. This is where the skates from non-Worlds and non-GPF would be shown the most.
Skating Shows: Old Stars on Ice and Champions on Ice would be nice to have. Art on Ice. Japanese ice shows. Plushenko and Averbukh's shows. There's a lot of different ice shows to show and plenty of archives to go through. I really like the ice shows that are like plays... like Plushenko's Snow King... something like Nutcracker on Ice would be good to show during the Christmas season. There's the Holiday on Ice shows. It seems show skating is on an upswing in general(at least outside the US).
Professional Competitions: World Professional Figure Skating Championships, 90s cheesefests(Ice Wars, etc)
Reality TV Shows: There have been quite a few "dancing on ice" shows in many different countries and it might be possible to show them. The only one I've really watched is Averbukh's Ice Age Kids show and I'd love for that to be shown(maybe have an alternative English commentator and use subtitles or dub overs for the Russian speaking parts).
Current ISU events: JGP medal winners, Challenger Series top 6. Perhaps having this platform would give flexibility in creating new events.
Documentaries
Maybe a weekly news and interview show like the Icetalk podcast.
Figure skating has more than enough content to make a good channel. Every hour contains about 8-10 minutes of commercials. Which means about 20 hours a day of content. There's channel showing nothing James Bond movies, Dog the Bounty hunter episodes, Ru Paul's Drag Race episodes, Unsolved Mystery episodes, etc and figure skating can conjure up more content than that.
I do see a few problems though. I'm not sure how the music copyright situation works out. The ISU may not have an archive with commentary and would have to rely on working with past licensees. Before this year, I think Eurosport was the longest continuous license holder in English and perhaps getting access to their archives might open up the logjam for the current rights. The biggest issue may be rights holders not working together to put out the best possible content. Rights holders might be more willing to share content if they knew exactly where the money was going. Perhaps extra prize money to skaters... or money to help pay training costs to up and coming skaters.
As far as how money money could be made, I don't have a firm idea. But there is this anecdote: https://digiday.com/media/consisten...ng-incremental-revenue-for-video-programmers/
So three channels last year were making "mid six figures" and someone supplying content to one of Pluto's own channels was making between 50-100K. TBH, 50-100K is probably about what NBC is getting from their NBC Gold figure skating app directly(though indirectly they help build their brand).
Regardless of the money made, it'd be good to have a channel for the community building aspect of having a channel.
When people online talk about Pluto TV they often say it's good for finding something to lounge to in order to pass the time... or to be background noise. I think figure skating would be good for this and I think it can also be good for watching during workouts because you can stop paying attention and think about something else while listening to the music.
There's two main types of services... those that just have "on demand" videos of movies and TV shows and those that kind of emulate TV channels through live streams(though they sometimes have on demand functions). The"on demand" services are probably not relevant until a sports focused one is developed.
The service I'm going to focus most on is Pluto TV because it seems to be the one with the most momentum behind it. Others in the same live channel segment include Xumo, Roku Channel, and Stirr. Many of the channels are duplicated between the services which points to the possibility of making content available to multiple services.
Quick rundown about Pluto TV: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/pluto-tv-free-faq,news-27125.html
Wikipedia page is worth a look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto_TV
A list of channels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pluto_TV_channels
Watch Pluto TV Live in your browser for free. Comes on in an instant and no signup is required.: https://pluto.tv/live-tv
(Unsure what countries that works with. Pluto TV is also available in Canada and some European countries. I tested this in a German VPN and it redirected to their German front page... don't think you can stream German content in your browser yet)
The sports channels begin at 455: https://pluto.tv/live-tv/pluto-tv-sports
I'll focus on sports but the other channels are worth checking out to see what kind of content they're looking for. There's a surfing channel. There's a NFL channel showing old football games and documentaries. There's a MLS(Major League Soccer) channel showing old matches. There's a "Winter Sports" channel that currently seems focused on skiing and snowboarding. There's an outdoors/hunting/fishing channel. There is Fight Network for general combat sports(used to watch it a lot a few years ago for muay thai) and another network solely for Glory Kickboxing. There's a channel showing best of shows and pay per views of TNA Impact Wrestling. There's a sports betting channel. There's a couple college conference and university oriented channels.
I think figure skating would not only fit in but would do well against many of these other channels. I actually it would be in the top half of the current sports channels.
So what kind of content would be good to put on a channel.
The World Championships (including exhibition) - edited down to about the Grand Prix Final level of skaters... you could easily get at least an hours worth of content per year out of each discipline for most years after 1980ish(maybe a bit later) and at least a half hour for years before that. I'm going to put this at about 200 hours of good content though it's probably more around 300.
Grand Prix Final (including exhibition) - edited down to keep the flow going... at least 100 hours of good content... but probably more around 150.
The rest of the ISU archived events would be better shown in compilation rather than full events. The Japan Open and World Team Trophy could be interesting though. The junior events would probably best best as part of compilations but the ladies JGPF is often my favorite event of the year.
It would be interesting to see the old events with new ideal camera editing not chosen live. And maybe with a single stationary camera.
It would be nice to have the old film remastered(perhaps use AI upscaling).
Thematic compilations: Things like "Best of Yuna Kim" or "Journey of Yulia Lipnitskaya" or "The performances of the 2010 Olympic quad" or "Best skating of 1993", "Best galas of 1980s", "Best pairs skates of all time", "Best junior skates of all time", "Best skaters as juniors", etc, etc, etc. etc The possibilities are almost endless. This is where the skates from non-Worlds and non-GPF would be shown the most.
Skating Shows: Old Stars on Ice and Champions on Ice would be nice to have. Art on Ice. Japanese ice shows. Plushenko and Averbukh's shows. There's a lot of different ice shows to show and plenty of archives to go through. I really like the ice shows that are like plays... like Plushenko's Snow King... something like Nutcracker on Ice would be good to show during the Christmas season. There's the Holiday on Ice shows. It seems show skating is on an upswing in general(at least outside the US).
Professional Competitions: World Professional Figure Skating Championships, 90s cheesefests(Ice Wars, etc)
Reality TV Shows: There have been quite a few "dancing on ice" shows in many different countries and it might be possible to show them. The only one I've really watched is Averbukh's Ice Age Kids show and I'd love for that to be shown(maybe have an alternative English commentator and use subtitles or dub overs for the Russian speaking parts).
Current ISU events: JGP medal winners, Challenger Series top 6. Perhaps having this platform would give flexibility in creating new events.
Documentaries
Maybe a weekly news and interview show like the Icetalk podcast.
Figure skating has more than enough content to make a good channel. Every hour contains about 8-10 minutes of commercials. Which means about 20 hours a day of content. There's channel showing nothing James Bond movies, Dog the Bounty hunter episodes, Ru Paul's Drag Race episodes, Unsolved Mystery episodes, etc and figure skating can conjure up more content than that.
I do see a few problems though. I'm not sure how the music copyright situation works out. The ISU may not have an archive with commentary and would have to rely on working with past licensees. Before this year, I think Eurosport was the longest continuous license holder in English and perhaps getting access to their archives might open up the logjam for the current rights. The biggest issue may be rights holders not working together to put out the best possible content. Rights holders might be more willing to share content if they knew exactly where the money was going. Perhaps extra prize money to skaters... or money to help pay training costs to up and coming skaters.
As far as how money money could be made, I don't have a firm idea. But there is this anecdote: https://digiday.com/media/consisten...ng-incremental-revenue-for-video-programmers/
So three channels last year were making "mid six figures" and someone supplying content to one of Pluto's own channels was making between 50-100K. TBH, 50-100K is probably about what NBC is getting from their NBC Gold figure skating app directly(though indirectly they help build their brand).
Regardless of the money made, it'd be good to have a channel for the community building aspect of having a channel.
When people online talk about Pluto TV they often say it's good for finding something to lounge to in order to pass the time... or to be background noise. I think figure skating would be good for this and I think it can also be good for watching during workouts because you can stop paying attention and think about something else while listening to the music.
