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Why This Div. III Conference Is Going All-In with Hudl

Sep 01, 2022

3 Min Read

The Commonwealth Coast Conference is excited about its streaming potential.

The New England-based Commonwealth Coast Conference had been searching for a one-size-fits-all video solution for nearly a decade.

With so many different needs among its member schools, commissioner Gregg Kaye equated the problem to chasing his own tail.

“The issue really has always been, if you have five schools that use Coke and five that use Pepsi, how do you get everyone on the same page?” Kaye said.

Enter Hudl. For years, a number of key member schools had been using Hudl products end to end for video analysis of their teams.

As more and more members came together to go in on a conference-wide athletic department package, the decision for Kaye came easy. Above all else, his duty as commissioner is to make decisions in the best interest of the conference. When member schools’ athletic directors talk, he listens.

“I'm not in a position where I can tell institutions how to spend their money, so I take my marching orders from them,” Kaye said. “Our institutions viewed it as an opportunity to save some funds if everyone was on the same page. And all of our schools were on the same page."

Why is the conference so excited about getting everyone on an athletic department package? There’s many reasons, but the two biggest were:

One invoice

Managing multiple invoices from multiple vendors can get messy — and expensive. For member schools using multiple services, Kaye said getting them to understand the financial benefit of having one invoice under the Hudl umbrella was about “putting the whole puzzle together.”

“It comes down to, what is our bottom line going to be for institutions?” he said.

With a one-stop shop like Hudl that can cover filming, analysis and streaming, it makes the athletic director’s job easier — and saves them on budget.

It also gives them more muscle in another area of small college athletics that’s imperative in the digital age — sports communications. Alumni from the CCC live all over the country, and want to keep tabs back home. Streaming provides another way for them to stay connected to the college they’re proud to call their alma mater.

Streaming potential

Livestreaming games are paramount at the Divison III level, especially when considering how many alumni and parents tune in from afar. You want to have a reliable, customizable livestreaming solution that looks and feels professional.

That means having more than one camera angle to bring you the action. It means sleek graphics on-screen. It mean quality audio that, whether it’s the announcers or the game’s atmosphere, makes you feel like you’re there.

Several CCC members were already working with Hudl, formerly BlueFrame, which had a track record of standing up quality conference networks among other conferences around the northeast, including the Little East Conference, Middle Atlantic Conference, and Presidents Athletic Conference.

With its peerless livestreaming solution aboard, schools are excited about the monetization potential. Hudl’s flexible monetization puts the power in schools’ hands, whether it’s paid subscriptions, pay-per-event options, free ad-supported content, or some combination. Hudl can end up paying for itself and then some, in an athletic department where every line on the budget counts.

This also opens up more possibilities for how they want their production delivered to households. As Kaye notes, it’s not as simple as watching on a computer screen. Fans following along on a Hudl broadcast can watch on Apple and Android devices, as well as streaming apps like Roku and Fire TV.

“From my perspective, it’s not so much the tradition of someone sitting at their laptop opens us up and watch games, but about having a presence on smart TVs and stuff like that,” he said.

Want to see how an athletic department package buoys your whole conference? Learn more about Hudl’s offerings for small college programs.

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