I signed up. They need to gather a bunch of money by Feb 7 to do this. They say they won't charge your credit care if they don't raise the money.
The not charge thing is how Kickstarter works I believe. They don't let people collect funds unless they actually reach their goal.
The sad part is that they were depending on getting some thresholds of followers/tweets/likes to get their funding, and they didn't hit those thresholds. I think there is a decent contingent of people who would pay $10 to watch all 4 games at the Algarve. I just don't know that social media was enough to reach them all to hit the thresholds. Of course if social media was the only advertising you were going to do for your livestreaming than not hitting your thresholds probably means you wouldn't get enough purchases. It is too bad they could not get US Soccer to put in the USWNT news or blog, so email it to the USWNT supporters club. If they hit those lists I think they could have hit their thresholds. As it is if they can get more of the USWNT members especially Abby, Morgan, Pinoe then they may have a chance. But their followers who might have bought a streaming ticket if they knew about it, might not get onboard with Kickstarter funding. I want to see this, so I put my money in.
I pledged. Hope they get it done. And agreed that the price they're asking is more than reasonable, around $2.50 per match. It sucks that broadcasting rights are so damn expensive, especially for delayed broadcasting, but I guess it's a pretty inelastic market. Bastards.
The reality is that the broadcasting rights are incorrectly priced. There is no buyer willing to pay them. Hence why they are never shown. Also I was wrong above when I said I wished the USWNT blog/news would have mentioned them, it already did. So that wasn't enough to put them over the threshold. http://www.ussoccer.com/News/Womens...NT-Placed-in-Group-B-of-2013-Algarve-Cup.aspx
One of the problems is the time frame. With something like this ull see the interest build as Algarve approaches. That's the way pay per view is. While some people may buy it ahead of time most people wait for the last minute. Also, they might have gotten a boost from the Scotland matches but the Kickstarter will be over by then. At this point barring some other investor bailing them out, Im thinking if the kickstarter fails, the rights may be passed. Eurosport has the rights to the European teams so if Al Bann cant go they may get the rights to broadcast the US games that way. I dont know if Al Bann has paid for the rights and will try and sell them to recoup that money or hasnt and will give up the rights.
The support that the NTs got during the mens WC, WWC and Olympics you'd think that there would be Companys in the US that would buy the right or joint in buying the rights for the the Algarve Cup.
Filed under crazy ideas. The eight league owners should throw Al Bann the money and turn it into a four match promotion for the NWSL. It would be chance to get the message out to the faithful. Each team could put together promo spots to be shown before after and at half time. SHow the uniforms, hear from the players, look at the venues...stuff like that.
Hurry though. The Kickstarter campaign's goal is 130,000 pounds and as of 9:10 a.m. EST on Sunday, February 3, 2013, it has raised only 6,418 pounds. They need the remaining pledges by 1:00 p.m. EST, Thursday, February 7, 2013.
I know they originally had financial backers, but the kickstarter campaign would have a better chance of working if they had more time to get word spread about it.
Nobody is thinking about watching the Algarve Cup in March the first week in February. They would have needed a Super Bowl commercial to get people thinking about this now. I tweeted Jeff Kassouf hoping Equalizer would run a story.
Nice piece on Philly Sports Live http://phillysportslive.com/watch-the-uswnt-at-the-2013-algarve-cup/
It should have said that if a person donates a certain amount he or she can be rewarded by being able to watch the webcast (at least 2 pounds for one game, at least 6 pounds for all four USWNT games). As of 6:04 a.m EST on February 6, 2013, Al Bann Media has pledges of just 6,961 pounds (it needs 130,000 pounds). So all the people out there start pledging. The pledge drive has just 30 hours to go.
I see ALBann has given up on the kickstarter and is trying something else. They also said Eurosport has the rights to show US v Sweden in Europe
I got some news. Al Bann has cancelled its media pledge drive. It means that it won't accept any more pledges and won't collect the previous pledges.
Plan B appears to be to get enough Twitter followers to be taken seriously. As far as I can tell from this notice, they need at least 30k Twitter followers by Monday in order to be able to do the broadcast. If you're not following @AlBannMedia, make sure you're doing so.
Again, the time frame is crazy. A lot of WNT fans r headed for or in Jacksonville. (14000 and counting) Hopefully they get some players to retweet this. I know they tried that with the kickstarter.
Maybe we need to get some fans to make signs about following Al Bann on twitter and have them hang them and show them during the live game feed.
START: "we are the only company who has rights to uswnt matches on Algarve Cup 2013 and we will show them cheaply, but not live, cause live rights are too expensive." -> "we are the only company who has rights to uswnt matches on Algarve Cup 2013 and we will show them cheaply but investors went away so we need 130k pounds in one week", -> "well, actually we are not the only company who has rights to uswnt matches on Algarve Cup 2013 and we will show them live (suddenly not too expensive?), still we have exclusive rights for America, but we need 30k people declare to pay 10$ in three days." (!!!) What will be next? Hey, I may be narrow-minded cagy fool, who got no idea how media business works, feel free to enlighten me...
Goff of the Washington Post has claimed that there's another effort underway but neglected to give any details.
Someone posted a feeler in the other thread in the USWNT section that it would be pay per view at $14.95 a game.
Goff's mentioned it again just a couple of hours ago: "Deal reached for Algarve Cup women's tournament in Portugal to appear on pay-per-view (TV & online). Details in coming days."