This year, sports fans from all across the state or even the country can now tune into Ponies sports games. Using a new alternative way to watch sports games that has been set up by the athletic department. With the help from Hudl, the Pony Sport Network (PSN) has been put together.
The PSN is a new website set up by the athletic staff. It is a website that streams all the sports games that are available in one place for a small fee. The games are streamed with Hudl cameras to the PSN.
“Over the past few years we’ve tried to make different opportunities available for our community to see games online. We are trying to stream it more to one platform, kind of a one-stop shop, a place that all fans can go to watch the stream of games,” Athletic Director Nate Cox said.
One big plus of having the PSN is that fans can watch 11 different sports throughout the three sports seasons during the school year. Fans can watch sports like football and girls and boys soccer in the fall and boys and girls lacrosse in the spring.
“They all have a camera system,” Amanda Gahlon, the athletic director’s secretary, said. “The cameras on the indoor and outdoor courts that help us stream the games.”
There is a small fee to watch a stream of a game. The PSN has three subscription levels: fans can pay $5 to have access to a single game, $30 to have access to all sports streamed for a month, or $100 for access to every game streamed all year.
“We decided to make the single game price the exact same as the price of a ticket,” Cox said. “ It is as if someone was coming to the actual game.”
The Hudl cameras that are used to stream all of the games were installed a few years earlier for the use of coaches and athletes. This is the first time the cameras have been used to stream sports games though.
“The Hudl cameras are a great tool,” Cox said about streaming games and for filming them for coaches to use afterward.
Like most things in the beginning stages, the PSN is not complete. Right now 11 different sports are streamed on the site, which is a good amount, but the PSN is missing some very popular sports, such as baseball.
“One of the things we are hoping to do is add baseball and softball to the platform by the spring of 2026,” Cox said.
One big difference with the PSN is that there is now a secondary way to watch a lot of sports that didn’t have streaming before, such as lacrosse and track. Though that could cause a small loss in ticket sales, it was a popular opinion that the sales wouldn’t take a hit.
“I don’t think it’s gonna have much of an impact,” Beau LaBore the head football coach said. “The people that want to go are going to go, and the people that either can’t go, or do not want to go, now have a way to at least stay in tune with the teams.”
With this new way of watching sports the reach of sports has never been larger, 11 streamed sports and more to come the PSN allows fans to never miss a game again.
This story was originally published on The Pony Express on August 29, 2024.