There will soon be no need to travel around the UK every week to attend the matches of University of Edinburgh’s sports teams, as the University’s Sports Union (EUSU) announced the launch of their new website, UoE Sport TV. The platform gives students and supporters access to live streams of varsity sports events for £0.99 per month (£5.99 for people outside of the university), from rugby, football and basketball games to lacrosse, badminton or volleyball.
“The demand for streaming initially came from our clubs”, I was told by Emily, EUSU’s Events and Communications Coordinator, who has been leading the project. The latter took no less than “about 10 months” of work from EUSU and its partner, video streaming company Joymo Sports Media Limited. “The amount of staff/volunteer time required to manually stream each game” was the main challenge faced to implement this device.
Discussions between Joymo and a discussion group within EUSU eventually brought out a well-balanced mechanic: “automated sports-tracking cameras” have been installed, with a focus made on convenience. The devices indeed “require no manual operation, a crucial point given [EUSU] limited staff”, Emily explained. With close collaboration of the clubs involved, whose members are “responsible for managing the scoring and commentary” during the streams, EUSU aims at meeting “professional standards”, she stated.
“As subscribers are paying to watch, we are focused on delivering high-quality streams”, assured Emily. The price of UoE Sport TV’s subscriptions was in fact EUSU’s other priority: “Each stream incurs costs to upload and download content from the cloud, which is why we charge a subscription fee. However, we’ve kept the pricing low to ensure it’s affordable for students”. The creation of the streaming service was therefore made possible by an “initial investment” from Joymo, helping EUSU purchase the camera equipment and maintaining an as-low-as possible subscription fee.
Having been launched on October 7th, UoE Sport TV is still in its early stages, but EUSU is not short of ambitions to grow the number of subscribers and extend the scope of the dispositive. “In the long term, we would love to stream every home game our clubs play. […] We hope to bring in more clubs, including individual and event-based sports”, Emily explained, although “there are some technical limitations with outdoor facilities […], but we are exploring ways to overcome these”, she assured.
“Enhancing the visibility of university sports” and “encouraging greater involvement in sports throughout the year” is the main ambition of EUSU with the creation of UoE Sport TV, Emily concluded. The popular success of university sports, like the Scottish Varsity rugby match between University of Edinburgh and St Andrews proved, gathering 4,500 spectators, suggests that UoE Sport TV most likely has a bright future ahead.
“Pleasance, Edinburgh – geograph.org.uk – 3547970” by John Lord is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.