2014 WEC Livestream

[Aysedasi]

OK. I give up and accept that unlike everyone else posting here, my motivation is entirely selfish whereas this thread is clearly for the selfless and philanthropic support of the WEC. Time for me to go........

[MGDavid]

Originally Posted by ATLFalconsFAN

I really, really don't understand some of the people here. I'm sure I'll get flamed for what I am about to say, but oh well.

You people (yes, I said you people) are on a motor sports forum, specifically it seems that a lot of you spend a lot of your time on a forum devoted to sports cars. It's 20 Euros! It's the same amount you would spend at dinner or the bar without thinking about it. Maybe if you're willing to shell out for the huge expense of 20 Euros for dinner you should go on a foodie forum or something instead.

When I was in high school I used to spend my own money to order pay per view boxing matches, because it was something I enjoyed. And oh ya, I didn't have a credit card either, I would offer to pay my parents a few bucks more in addition to the cost of the fight if they would let me use their credit card. No big deal.

Sure, it was free last year and that's great that it was. Well it's not free anymore and the cost is minimal anyway. I for one have no problem whatsoever giving money to them as it is something that I am passionate about and something that I get a lot of enjoyment from. I'm willing to get up at odd hours to watch the races and I am willing to pay a bit of money to do it.

Gotta question the level of some of these "fans".

I can understand your POV given your country flag, but over here we have the best TV in the world and it's always been 'free to air' so it's deep within our culture to not pay for TV. I know Sky have made a Bernie-sized fortune out of paid sport (mostly soccer) via satellite, but personally I've never paid to watch anything and never will. One of the benefits of the digital age is the wide dissemination of media at little or no cost. You say it's only €20 but it's only one series of a few races. I follow almost all motor sports, add up everything else they try to fleece us for and it's rapidly one or two hundred euros. If too many people pay 4 euros this year you can bet your bottom dollar it'll be 6 euros next year, and so on.

[deggis]

It sounds like this wasn't communicated to the manufacturers either before hand. Good job LMEM. Farce style points: 4.9/5.

[TzeiTzei]

Well, I suppose you could call me a casual fan, and i'm not gonna bother paying for this. Actually i'm quite ****ed by the way this was handled. I was looking forward to this season with new cars and all, and then a couple of days before the first race they announce that i would have to pay to see the races. If that's the way they treat their fans, then i'm not gonna become one.

[deggis]

Originally Posted by Aysedasi

I don't actually think keeping the stream free will make much difference either, personally.

Especially in past two years I've seen threads about WEC pop up in sports sections of general-topic forums. It is getting some word of mouth traction. This is quite a lot of difference imho, and live pictures is major contributor to this as listening to RLM and watching a live timing (oops... not anymore) is not quite the same thing.

[Aysedasi]

Originally Posted by MGDavid

.....but personally I've never paid to watch anything and never will.

Well done you for actually saying it. (And I'm not being sarcastic).

[Stahler]

Originally Posted by deggis

...but the bigger matter is that making the stream non-free is not going to grow the series...

Exactly. That's my concern. Not the necessity of paying for the official stream. If there won't be any Eurosport stream, I'll buy the season pass too. (what else can I do?)

[Mystery]

I'm not sure how having a free stream on daily motion ever helped. If people wanted to watch the WEC then thay'd have been no more or less able to than they are today. I just don't accept hundreds of new viewers happened to accidentally stumble across the free feed. It just didn't happen.

[Deleted]

Price tag for LM alone

ACO subscription 9,99€ - live streaming for sessions (which?) and LT
Eurosport Player subscription 5,99€* - entire month of Eurosport 1 & 2 incl all the sessions and shows + on demand

2 euros off from that if standing order

Now which one makes more sense, eh

[deggis]

Originally Posted by Mystery

I'm not sure how having a free stream on daily motion ever helped. If people wanted to watch the WEC then thay'd have been no more or less able to than they are today. I just don't accept hundreds of new viewers happened to accidentally stumble across the free feed. It just didn't happen.

No they didn't stumble across to Dailymotion, but they did see someone post the link on forums. Word of mouth. Right now doing to same makes the adventure stop at the moment the link clicker sees the price tag.

[Aysedasi]

Originally Posted by deggis

No they didn't stumble across to Dailymotion, but they did see someone post the link on forums. Word of mouth. Right now doing to same makes the adventure stop at the moment the link clicker sees the price tag.

That's an assumption which won't always necessarily be correct. People with little or no interest up to that point probably won't be on a forum anyway. If we're trying to drag them kicking and screaming from the feeder series, they'll probably be quite used to the concept of having to pay to watch - in fact, their first thought will probably be - "Is that all it costs to watch...?"

[Gingers4Justice]

Originally Posted by Chiana

Price tag for LM alone

ACO subscription 9,99€ - live streaming for sessions (which?) and LT
Eurosport Player subscription 5,99€* - entire month of Eurosport 1 & 2 incl all the sessions and shows + on demand

2 euros off from that if standing order

Now which one makes more sense, eh

Well how about you buy the Eurosport Player subscription, and don't buy the ACO subscription

For the record, I'm not a fan of this ill-thought-out idea. But by the same token, if it's really as bad as we're making out, then we can save our breath/keyboards because the product will be killed off by a lack of demand.

And when I say the product, I'm talking about the 2014 streaming service, not the series itself. Let's get a sense of perspective. It's been pointed out that the streams never pulled an impressive audience anyway, so any messing about with the service isn't going to do much damage, simply because there's not much too damage.

As for it not being free? Well the kids/fans that want it free will still watch it for free anyway, and that's still a way to introduce your friends to the sport. There'll always be a way. And the fans that would happily pay, will happily pay...

[Victor_RO]

I'm not satisfied with how this has been brought along and with the issues over the weekend, especially the fact that the season pass is not multi-platform. But I will say this: I'd rather pay for this kind of thing (streaming access for a series over a season) than pay for a year's cable subscription.

There's far too much stuff in a cable subscription that I will either never watch, or never want to watch; also, with competing companies on the market, stuff that you might want gets stuck on a channel which is exclusive (for TV) to a certain cable company. And even if I have a channel that broadcasts a series I want to watch, most of its broadcasts will be stuff I don't give a damn about. Rather than pay for a lot of junk I don't want, I would prefer cherry-picking events and series.

[Bandicoot17]

Originally Posted by Chiana

Price tag for LM alone

ACO subscription 9,99€ - live streaming for sessions (which?) and LT
Eurosport Player subscription 5,99€* - entire month of Eurosport 1 & 2 incl all the sessions and shows + on demand

2 euros off from that if standing order

Now which one makes more sense, eh

Well yeah but you don't get the onboard access and the marshaling system (which I imagine will be very useful come the races). I'd like to actually ask anyone who has payed whether this was working in quali and is it actually any good?

Onboard access would make it worth the extra fiver for me simply because the man in charge of the camera loves his pit shots and I'd rather watch onboards, (especially at night).

[Aysedasi]

Originally Posted by Bandicoot17

Well yeah but you don't get the onboard access and the marshaling system (which I imagine will be very useful come the races). I'd like to actually ask anyone who has payed whether this was working in quali and is it actually any good?

Onboard access would make it worth the extra fiver for me simply because the man in charge of the camera loves his pit shots and I'd rather watch onboards, (especially at night).

I must admit I didn't try to find out. I just watched the straight stream.

[Deleted]

Originally Posted by Gingers4Justice

Well how about you buy the Eurosport Player subscription, and don't buy the ACO subscription
.

Already have standing order for ES Player. Was speaking of the general bang for buck worth

Originally Posted by Bandicoot17

Well yeah but you don't get the onboard access and the marshaling system (which I imagine will be very useful come the races). I'd like to actually ask anyone who has payed whether this was working in quali and is it actually any good?

Onboard access would make it worth the extra fiver for me simply because the man in charge of the camera loves his pit shots and I'd rather watch onboards, (especially at night).

http://www.fiawec.com/live.html
"Be aware that The Onboard camera are not yet available on the WEB version."

Also you usually get Corvette onboard passes for free from Speed/Fox, some other teams have streamed as well

Eurosport offers 24 Minutes which is highly likely not part of the package due to it being ES property. Now whether or not we think that programme is **** is irrelevant, it is coverage nevertheless

Also since the site says "qualifying and race", what does that mean for the free practice, warm-up and Legends race...

---
Hate to nickipick further, but what's the point of the day/night mode being advertised? You can get extensions for your browser for free if you fancy that

[Bandicoot17]

Originally Posted by Aysedasi

That's an assumption which won't always necessarily be correct. People with little or no interest up to that point probably won't be on a forum anyway. If we're trying to drag them kicking and screaming from the feeder series, they'll probably be quite used to the concept of having to pay to watch - in fact, their first thought will probably be - "Is that all it costs to watch...?"

Yes, but social media (especially twitter) is excellent for spreading this kind of stuff, especially among the younger audience they want to target and probably draws in more new viewers than forums.
For instance tomorrow, at around 12 o clock there's gonna be a bunch of bored F1 fans who could start watching WEC, with the draw of Webber and noise and the fact it's at Silverstone (for the British fans at least) with a free stream they can watch for 10 or 15 minutes and hopefully they'll be drawn in and watch some more, and then they'll watch Spa etc. With a payed stream it's harder to get new fans or keep younger fans interested.

Again I'm looking at a relatively small sample of people, but they are people around my age, 17-18-19 years old give or take, who the sport are targeting. Le Mans is interesting! I saw a peak of interest around the Le Man race last year, with lots of these people watching, and that generated interest in the WEC, and now some of those are actually at Silverstone this weekend. That simply won't happen with a paid stream imo.

In someways I feel sorry for the ACO/FIA, they've cocked up but the premise behind the idea is good, as is the implementation at the track, where they have a big tent with ipads running the app, and it all looks really good. Telling fans on the friday before the race and not having a free stream on the PC is killer though.

[Deleted]

Yup I think this would've been fine if everything had stayed free for PC but there was app with some of these extra features that costed like 4 euros or something for the whole season

[FordCosworthPanoz]

If you think the people on this forum are ticked off about the decision just go to the much larger sample (60,000 plus) of fans on the FIA WEC Facebook page.

[porsche91722]

Well, I paid up and got a pretty average stream. Although we all whinged when the free stream was playing up, it cost us nothing, so we generally accepted it. However, it's a different story when you get sold the product and it doesn't perform as well as it used to (when it was free). Hopefully, they'll iron the bugs out and it will get better.
I wrote this article a couple of days ago.
http://porsche91722.wordpress.com/

[Rodger Davies]

Great to hear that the manufacturers are standing up to them on this one. No problem with charging (although with no 'on demand' option I won't pay because I can't guarantee being able to watch live), but it's the fact that they clearly stated their position over and over about free, live streaming only to announce the change of minds within 24 hours of the opening session that gets me, without even addressing it; just pretending all their previous announcements never happened.

[Dani Filth]

it would've been OK if they announced it now with a paying possibility for 2015 .. had the time to test the app .. check the interest
i don't wanna be a paying bugtester .. maybe just a bugtester

[Gingers4Justice]

Originally Posted by Rodger Davies

Great to hear that the manufacturers are standing up to them on this one.

Sorry missed that Rodger, what have the manufacturers said?

[Bandicoot17]

Originally Posted by Gingers4Justice

Sorry missed that Rodger, what have the manufacturers said?

They had an emergency meeting today with the fia. The LMP1 manufacturers are mainly mentioned. Apparently a solution is near. They obviously want people watching and a paywall restricts that.

[J Jay]

Originally Posted by Gingers4Justice

Sorry missed that Rodger, what have the manufacturers said?

Speed-King outlined it in this post. The manufacturers were apparently as well-informed about this as we were, and are unhappy in both the reasoning and the execution.

Having posted on here previously about how a series needs supporting, I would have considered this even as early as post-LM this year, if it didn't look like the utter rush job to "cash in" on expected new popularity.