By Gavin Kentch
I have some good news and some bad news about the “coverage” of last weekend’s epochal Loppet Cup races on a “broadly accessible” platform called “Outside Watch” that promised to provide live “streaming” of the races.
The bad news is that, from a technological standpoint, the coverage was not very good. In fact, for many would-be viewers, it was very bad. Think endless spinning wheels of death, an app that had worked well all season suddenly cutting out, and so on. Imagine if the Super Bowl were unable to be viewed on live broadcast television. Even the largely bulletproof Roger Goodell would be out of a job the next day.
The good news is that Outside Watch has acknowledged an “issue” here. In a Facebook post earlier Wednesday, USSS wrote, “There was an issue on Saturday’s broadcast of the Stifel Loppet Cup that crashed Outside Watch’s website. While Outside’s team responded immediately and restored service, we know that the interruption was frustrating for fans who wanted to watch the historic event. Outside has put in two backup mechanisms to ensure that this doesn’t happen again and apologizes for the issue.”
USSS then shared the following link to watch a re-broadcast of Saturday’s sprint race. Even if the stream worked for you the first time, you probably never did see what happened in that first women’s semifinal (because they showed an ad for the entirety of it 🤦), so here’s your chance:
This link should be valid through this Friday, February 23rd
Update: A different outlet actually did some real reporting on this. You can, and should, read Peggy Shinn’s story on the Cross Country Skier website here. Shinn talked with the chief entertainment officer at Outside, who to his credit comes off as quite apologetic. He notes that there was far more viewer demand for Saturday’s race than anticipated, and that the system was overloaded as a result.
(Note that I am quoted in this article. I would like to thank Devon Kershaw for teaching me basically everything that I know about the IBU’s model of consolidated broadcast rights. That is not sarcasm; I always appreciate background information that lets me sound smarter than I really am.)
The people speak
Am I going to let Outside Watch off this easily? Reader, I am not. Compiled here are some of the comments left on Outside Watch’s Instagram page as likely the most hotly anticipated cross-country ski race ever held on North American soil got underway and avid viewers were unable to, well, view it.
I have anonymized all comments here save the last one. That one came from this reporter, commenting as @nordicinsights. Notably, among the dozen Instagram users who liked it were two athletes on the U.S. Ski Team who had participated in this race, which, lol pwned Outside Watch.
A representative sample of reader comments:
Thank you for your own commercials every 5 minutes during the race. Really need to advertise your own channel? And repeat the commercials twice in the same break…. Only in America…..
Unbelievably annoying. Made me vow to NOT watch anything else on this outlet.
Epic fail @outsidewatch
Nice job Outside, you’ve had how long to prepare???
In addition to many named frustrations, we didn’t even get to see the award ceremony. The announcers were cut off mid sentence in their sign off!
Live stream was working just prior to the world cup coverage and now I’m getting a “this is unexpected..” error message. Is anyone able to watch it right now??
Embarrassing that you can’t have a working connection. Its 2024.
This was terrible. Shameful. Can you get it fixed for tomorrow?????
Not only was the stream down for the entire quarters, you blasted ads for the entire first semi, and your commentary is terrible. Just give us a play by play. This uninformed analysis of skiers and tactics is insulting and honestly just incorrect for the most part…
Your stream is broken and the event is unwatchable
Coverage in the US totally sucked. Why did they not cover the podium when Americans were on both on Sunday. Commercials at important times? We can watch European races with no commercials & podiums but not in our country? Pathetic
Ads during a semifinal race, are you kidding me? @usskiteam @loppetcup please choose a better steaming partner next time. The athletes, organizers, everyone deserves better.
@outsidewatch can you please fix the stream so it works?
Is the live stream not working?
@outsidewatch we are not able to watch the live stream. Will this be corrected?
Live stream not working @outsidewatch
Incredibly disappointed that the streaming is not working for this amazing event. Have been looking forward to this for months. Embarrassing that the streaming for the European world cups has worked perfectly and outside has screwed this one up so we can’t watch it
Super sad. Not to be on us ski and snowboard live, then the ball gets dropped
@outsidewatch Is showing commercials during during the 3 sprints instead of during the time between. Pretty horrible planning!
@outsidewatch the inability to watch this historic event is extremely frustrating. I’m sure you’re doing your best, but this is a huge disappointment at a time when there is so much momentum for gaining a stronger fan base in the US
An absolute disgrace from the start. Aside from the connectivity issues, who thought it was appropriate to use this event as a platform to incessantly push your own content rather than actually serve up a coordinated production of the actual event itself? I do not need to see an ad for Paddy O’s attempt to do donkey racing 100x when I am trying to watch a real race.
No one held a gun to your head to broadcast this. If you’re going to do it, then do it correctly. Bunch of total amateurs.
@outsidewatch Amateur hour, truly terrible coverage, missed heats, ads during women’s semi? What is wrong with you?
Strong work @outsidewatch, way to f–k this up. You should have know there would be a great number of people streaming this. 👏
every one of the athletes, coaches, and techs on the us ski team deserves better than a broken livestream for the most anticipated race at home in years.
Hey, f–k you outside ❤️. love how it take most of the race to get the stream working then you put ads in the middle of the heats
Fix the f–king stream assholes
[this reporter:] I have run my website covering American nordic skiing for two seasons now. I have never seen American ski fans more united than they are today in their belief that your coverage sucked.
^ The comment was liked by two current members of the U.S. Ski Team who had competed in this race.
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love project dedicated to publicizing American nordic skiing (since it sounds like Outside Watch needs the help, amirite). Last season’s GoFundMe is literally the only reason why I turned a profit in year one of Nordic Insights, and in turn the only reason why there is a year two of Nordic Insights for you to be reading now: I was okay with working for very little money to get this love letter to American cross-country skiing off the ground, but I didn’t want to lose money for the privilege of doing so. If you would like to support what remains a brutally shoestring operation, this season’s GoFundMe may be found here. Thank you for your consideration, and, especially, for reading.
It was obvious right off that Outside’s servers were overloaded. I assume this was way bigger than what they normally handle. What’s not been spoken to is why they had the contract, why this wasn’t covered under the FIS-related stream (e.g., Canmore). Did it have to do with the latter being able to offer it free? I thought FIS was now controlling TV rights.