- Jun 23, 2011
- 513
- 384
All of this! I am in the UK and first started following US teams back in 2008 when I bought access to the Worlds videos - no live stream, just full routines with music uploaded to the platform a few hours after the performance - for around $20 and you got access for the whole year. Great deal. Now, most of the kids I coach only know the big popular teams like TGLC, Senior Elite, SMOED etc and mainly from instagram and tiktok videos of stunts. Most of them have never watched a full routine. How is the sport supposed to grow internationally if it's not accessible to its audience. 13 year old kids can't buy a Flocheer subscription!Including banning videos posted by the public - including parents (aka free advertising) and not having free live streams and discontinuing televised broadcasts of Worlds, NCA and UCA. My kids got hooked not because of the small, very uncompetitive gym they were at, but because they saw WCSS live at competitions and watched teams like TGLC on television. If they didn't have exposure to those high caliber teams and only saw what was at local competitions, they probably would have lost interest quickly.
My family owns and shows horses - all of the live streams of horse shows are free. They are sponsored by the training farms - each farm chips in a small amount because they get to advertise. It would be a no-brainer to do the same for cheer - if it costs each gym $100 and they get to publish a 30 second video to advertise their gym it is well worth it and would cover the costs, but Varsity has the lock on everything and wants to profit from it so it would never happen.