Where is the line between fraud and brilliant marketing?
Scott Valor, friend of BeachGrit and passionate supporter of surfing, was home watching the latest women’s CT webcast. It is not strange, for have you seen the state of their surfing? It is better than yours, mine and Dusty Payne’s combined. But he witnessed something strange as the webcast rolled on. No advertisements! Just 1-3 minutes of static nothing in between heats! And Scott Valor picks up in his own words…
“Ok, you caught me. I’m watching the women’s event, but they are ripping.
What I don’t understand is why they say we’ll be right back after a commercial break, then we are treated to 1-3 minutes of a repeat wave video and a written announcement that they will be back after a commercial break.
But no commercials. None.
Are you getting that? Is this some sort of payback to the viewer for shitty Rio (as in: We know Rio sucked, so here is a commercial free event before we throw up a pay wall for blown out Huntington Beach…)”
Just wondering.”
So now, there you have it. What do you think? Do you think the WSL is sucking in more viewers with unlimited freedom and then, POW, paywall? Do you think they will use the women’s tour as the guinea pig?
Bait and switch is, officially, a form of fraud in the United States.
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well, as long as they keep using the same tech that’s giving us today’s wonky video feed, I’m in!
They are doing a live feed to the web and to broadcasters – broadcasters require they take breaks to input their domestic commercials. It’s up to WSL if they want to run commercials from source during these breaks or not. it’s been a decade since anyone in the content business things web PPV has any legs. This is such a waste of Beach Grit’s time and wild speculation with no substance….get back to being sarcastic with some base of facts. The actual read you should have by not seeing in-show commercials other than Samsung is they are lacking revenues and if we want webcasts at the level of production they are doing we should be worried and we should expect to see more commercials if we want the show to go on.
It’s the freemium -> addicted -> $$$ cycle
For Rio, & now Fiji, the webcast had little to no commercials in Australia. The odd Samsung ad but mostly just a filler as you’ve described above. So if the States Rio webcast had commercials & the Aus didn’t I assume Boneroni is on the money – no ones interested.
Maybe for editing when they run it weeks later on ABC or whatever.
If they were really giving us a gift, there would be no looped wave for 2-3 minutes. They would just stream the contest. My guess is that it has more to do with them failing to find sponsors.
give this man the cigar,
https://goo.gl/y5njN1&kyby
Yep. Though one would think they’d put that nifty new Santa Monica office to work churning out some quick edits to fill the dead air.