A Quest for the Ultimate Live Broadcast Experience
For the past few years as the parent videographer for my teens’ basketball and soccer travel teams, I’ve been trying to entertain and engage their greatest fans, aka grandparents and working parents.
My tech stack started with shaky iPhone recordings, moved to an action gimbal with an extended battery to stop the iPhone from dying at halftime, then graduated to live streaming over a wireless connection. Despite uneven video quality, emails started flowing from families seeking the streaming links for each weekend’s games, interspersed with appreciative thank you’s.
And so the inspiration came to see how far current off-the-shelf technology could be pushed to maximize the entertainment and family-bonding value of the viewing experience for our families. After exiting my last venture in summer 2019, I found the time and tendencies to tinker with hardware and software in ways I hadn’t since 25+ years ago as a wandering graduate student.
Through the fall and winter, I experimented with 10+ combinations of cameras, streaming platforms, conferencing apps, and camera mounts, including a homemade “helmet cam” –
and a “cam helmet” –
(protects the camera from the stray game ball and outdoor elements)
Each successive approach had pros and cons, innumerable fits and starts, but gradually the audience experience improved and expanded to the point where, as a serial entrepreneur, the natural question came to mind: can a business be made out of this?
I explored different systems for broadcasting youth sporting events: Hudl, BallerTV, NFHS/Pixellot, Veo, CrowdCast, easylive.io, Facebook Live, YouTube, etc, but found none that delivered the viewing and production experience I was seeking. Through feedback from audiences and teams and my own experiences and desires as a parent viewer and videographer, the ideal video system attributes began to emerge:
- Fast setup of multiple portable cameras mounted high – An excellent entertainment experience, particularly one that families will be willing to pay for, is best enabled through multiple cameras placed at different positions and angles and high above the floor to avoid blockage from passersby such as referees. And, setup and takedown of all the cameras should take less than 10 minutes because a youth team travels to different venues and, at tournaments, teams often must move quickly from one court or field to the next to stay on schedule.
- Portable high-speed internet bandwidth – Many existing systems rely on the game venue having fixed-line internet wifi or ethernet to provide the needed streaming bandwidth and reliability. However, the quality and availability of local internet often leave a lot to be desired. Ideally, the system should carry its own internet connectivity via 5G wireless service, with the option to also leverage local wifi when available.
- Remote camera control and virtual video production – It’s often not possible nor affordable for the videographer or commentator to attend the game in person. Game attendance restrictions during the height of the pandemic were unwelcome reminders. In addition, the cost of deploying qualified staff on-site is usually prohibitive. By virtualizing the control of the cameras and video production through cloud technology, staff can be located anywhere, akin to how the 2020 Democratic National Convention was produced, or how ESPN announcers worked games from their homes during the pandemic.
- Game context – We take for granted when watching a broadcast sporting event on TV that contextual information like the game score, time left and key stats will be shown. One realizes how core game context is to the total entertainment experience after watching a few games without it. In early iterations of my live streaming, I didn’t show the score and would frequently get texts from viewers asking what it was. Not a great experience and, unfortunately but understandably, common to the vast majority of existing approaches. Some try to address through artificial intelligence (AI) methods, but the error rates are not acceptable. Others enlist persons at the game to convey the score and time, but their availability and accuracy are uneven at best.
- Human videographers and commentators – For creating an entertainment and family-bonding experience through live action video, systems relying solely on AI to track the action have high error rates (see this comical example) and don’t achieve the entertainment value provided by trained and artful videographers and commentators: where to point the camera during a timeout, zoom on a player’s expression after making a key play, the grandparents’ pride when Zoey is called out by name. You get the picture.
- Low cost per game – The challenge is how to create a compelling sports entertainment experience, with elements normally found in pro broadcasts such as for the NBA, at a cost low enough for games with tens of viewers, rather than thousands or millions. The costs add up: wireless internet, cameras, cloud services fees, and, in particular, qualified videographers and commentators.
The Search for Teen Entrepreneurial Education
During these same years, I have been seeking ways for my teens, now 14 and 16, to experience and learn entrepreneurship. They’ve enjoyed creating charity fundraising events (e.g., a virtual youth concert during the pandemic) and being in various entrepreneurship camps. However, these activities did not deliver the vast majority of experiences which practically all entrepreneurs must go through to build an actual business and successfully run it. For example, the “Shark Tank” startup camp model can be effective in teaching how to ideate an offering, interview experts and potential customers, and develop and deliver an investment pitch, but these comprise less than 5% of what it takes to start and run an actual business. Some such activities and issues:
- creating a minimally-viable product or service customers are willing to pay for,
- building a scalable product or service to serve, say, 100+ customers,
- what to do when a key team member leaves,
- how to negotiate and draft a contract,
- what to look for in a financial statement and the general ledger,
- how to build and motivate a team, especially through the tough times,
- how to build market awareness, engage prospects, and sell,
- what to deliver for free versus what to charge for,
- what regulatory and compliance requirements must be met…
This is the rest of the entrepreneurial iceberg below the water surface that’s difficult for existing youth educational programs to convey. This notion was further validated during conversations with other entrepreneurs parenting teens. A light bulb lit when one fellow healthcare entrepreneur said that the most he ever learned about building and running a business was from working in his university’s student-run laundry service, rising from doing the laundry, literally, to becoming a leader making key decisions. It’s learning by doing, making mistakes, and course correcting, all while receiving a fair wage. And, college student-run businesses are proven at scale. Some paid apprenticeships and internships share some of these characteristics as well.
In thinking about what an age-appropriate, entrepreneurial work-learn experience might look like, an immediate question is why aren’t there more teen-run businesses with scale, say exceeding $100k/year in revenue? I haven’t done deep surveys of this question, but some guesses based on my own experiences and observations:
- lack of capital,
- lack of mentorship,
- undeveloped cognitive, emotional or relationship skills to perform critical tasks a real business requires,
- limits on the hours and nature of allowable work set by teen labor laws,
- busy schedules, etc…
If one assumes that teens need some level of adult mentorship and financial support to start and run a business, then how should roles and responsibilities be divided between teens and adults to achieve both an excellent learning experience and a sustainable business? Without knowing the answers, I began to hear encouraging success stories, such as a 9 year-old who, with the help of his parents, built a successful online business selling entertainment boxes to families during the pandemic. Feeling it was achievable, I then started to feel that a sandbox was needed to try different approaches, learn, and refine towards a model that is repeatable and scalable.
The Search Meets the Quest
“Two great tastes that taste great together”
– Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
blazio sports is blazio’s first sandbox to create a business run by teens, mentored and supported by their parents, to deliver the ultimate live broadcast experience for youth sports. Teens are paid to learn and operate the business. Financial sustainability is helped by the lower wage scale common for working teens, while their tech savviness and even sports broadcasting skills garnered in high school bring value to the business. Their parents, if willing and able, draw upon their diverse professional knowledge and experience to mentor in different areas of the business. Their kids come to better understand and appreciate what their parents do for a living (finally!).
Parents and their teens sign a nondisclosure and contractor agreement with the company, which enables them to see confidential information, such as financial and accounting statements. This enhances business decision-making and, most importantly, teen learning. The company complements the experience of running the business with structured and practical webinars and readings in entrepreneurism and business operations using the company itself as the main course material. For instance, a Finance 101 webinar examining the company’s latest financial statements. A session on legal contracting which dissects the structure and terms of a draft partnership agreement that’s in negotiation. The program design principle is to trust the teens and parents with this level of transparency to deliver a unique and reality-based learning experience. So, even if a particular business does not ultimately survive, the learning value is undeniable and even enhanced, because one usually learns more from being in a failed business than being in a successful one.
Why I Am Doing This
We certainly want blazio sports to deliver outstanding learning to teens and create a profitable offering that delights customers. However, my overriding motivation for taking this next entrepreneurial leap stems from the George Floyd tragedy and anti-Asian sentiments and violence, their lessons, and the actions they have inspired citizens and organizations to take. Both social/racial inequities and the deep ideological divides in our country are strongly rooted in a basic lack of empathy and shared experiences between people who are different from each other. Rural vs urban, red vs blue, white vs non-white, and the rest. Many of us live within our echo chambers, and entities on different sides of these divides leverage social media and other avenues to even further divide us. This is not new, but is damaging at a level not seen since perhaps the McCarthy era or the Civil War.
What is certainly new due to the pandemic is the accelerated rise and prevalence of virtual relationships. I helped start a non-profit to address the PPE crisis during the pandemic without ever meeting my co-founders in person (still haven’t), relying solely on Zoom, mobile phones, and email. Every day, credible startups are being created by virtual teams connecting people, especially young people, who may never physically meet. Billions of dollars are now being transacted in partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, and so forth without the principals ever stepping foot in each others’ offices.
We are actively recruiting teens and parents from diverse parts of Chicagoland to help get the business off the ground. We will not need to drive to each other’s neighborhoods (the Eisenhower Expressway 90 is THE worst in the nation for congestion/mile) to meaningfully collaborate, drive progress, and get to know each other as people, 360 degrees. I’ve personally seen the power of diversity in youth sports, such as AAU basketball teams drawing teens equally from well-heeled suburbs and neglected and violent neighborhoods. They are brought together to work towards a common goal, as a team, quite simply.
The magic of mutual understanding, lifelong empathy, and sister/brotherhood across stubborn boundaries is most possible during the teen years. If we as an organization are successful, we believe this is the greatest impact we will have. It will not be visible on a financial statement, but we will certainly know it when we see and feel it.