School implements new live streaming system for athletics, other events
By Per Peterson
In an effort to give Panther fans who live far away a chance to watch their favorite teams, Tracy Area High School this year has graduated from YouTube and The Cube and is live-streaming all games played in the high school gym, and possibly football games as well.
The Panther Boosters have purchased a subscription to the Pixellot Streaming System to televise events. The cost of the system was $5,000. The move will give fans the ability to watch games online on their smart phone, tablet, computer and the new Apple TV app.
“The reason that we switched away from YouTube this past year is because the Pixellot that the booster club bought for recording in the gym will only stream to the NFHS (Network),” said the school district’s IT guru Craig Polkow. “We can still use our streaming software and manually operate a camera to broadcast like what we do at the football games with NFHS as well. The only downside of using the NFHS platform is that it will have a subscription that people need to pay to watch it online.”
The NFHS Network is a joint venture among the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), its member state associations and PlayOn! Sports. The NFHS is located in Indianapolis, IN; PlayOn! Sports is based in Atlanta, GA, and promotes itself as the nation’s largest high school sports media company.
A monthly subscription (30 days) is $9.95, a season subscription (120 days) is $25, and $50 will get you an entire year of high school sporting events (365 days). There is no charge for performing arts events or graduation and award ceremonies.
For more on this article, see this week’s Headlight-Herald.