Grand Forks' primary sports streamer supports push for fee

May 17—GRAND FORKS — Ryan Cunningham of KNOX Radio is Grand Forks' primary provider of live online video streams for sporting events.

As the Grand Forks School Board considers a unique plan to charge for companies to stream regular-season games, Cunningham and KNOX likely stand as the most impacted if the proposal is approved.

The fee will not apply to radio broadcasting or television production. The revenue it generates will go to the general athletics fund.

Although the proposed change was made public at Tuesday's Grand Forks School Board meeting, Cunningham and Grand Forks Public School officials had already spoken throughout this past sports season about changes that would give Grand Forks officials more control over sporting events and who covers them.

Cunningham supports the plan, hoping it will prevent instances like what occurred at a Grand Forks Central boys hockey game Dec. 5. The Knights hosted Fargo Davies at Purpur Arena.

"Press space at Purpur Arena is somewhat limited as it is," Cunningham said, "and a web streamer from Fargo showed up — not a company, not a credentialed member of the media — and I think five athletes were in the press box taking up probably about three-quarters of the space. Those types of things have led us, and others, to go to different places to broadcast.

"I think what the school district is looking for is some control over those types of situations. They need to know who's going to be covering their games and get a little bit more clarity on that instead of being surprised by some of those situations."

Entities will need to submit a proposal to the district. All streamers are expected to cover at least 25 games, including Grand Forks Central vs. Red River rivalry games across all sports, Grand Forks district Activities Director Mike Biermaier

said at the School Board meeting Tuesday.

The rights fee wouldn't create an exclusive relationship with a streaming provider, Biermaier said, but it sets a bar for the minimum number of games to be streamed. Biermaier also said he doesn't intend to prevent family members from broadcasting on a platform like Facebook Live.

"We won't be controlling that," Biermaier said.

Biermaier hasn't yet determined a specific price for the rights fee. His hope is the district and those who want to stream games will collaborate and come to an agreement the School Board will approve.

"I believe that media are charged $500 a game to do a state tournament," he said, "and I believe in Minnesota in Section 8A, they charge $500 a game for playoffs. That would be the unreachable ceiling. It's going to be less than that. From there, I need to know from the media companies how much value is in it for you? What can you afford? That's not the most important piece for me. By far the most important piece for me is developing a partnership with them so we get more games streamed."

Viewers will not be charged to watch the streamed events.

Cunningham and KNOX, which is owned by Leighton Media, will need to make changes if the company's proposal is accepted by the School Board, Cunningham said. KNOX typically broadcasts about 60 regular season games. Under this proposal, Cunningham said KNOX will look to get to 75.

This would require KNOX to likely hire more people and purchase more streaming gear.

KNOX currently has three part-time employees who operate cameras for streams. All are students in Grand Forks. Additional play-by-play broadcasters would also be hired to spread the workload, but Cunningham is still supportive of the change.

"That fee takes a step toward making sure that the people that are there and occupying space are legitimate members of the media doing a legitimate job to cover the product the way that it should be," he said. "If this is a step in that direction, I think it's a healthy step."

Grand Forks is the only known school district in the state pursuing a plan to charge to stream regular season games. Biermaier mentioned in his School Board presentation that Bismarck is considering a similar approach. A Herald message seeking information from Bismarck's activities director wasn't returned this week.

"I'm OK being the guinea pig because I really firmly believe that this is a great partnership that's going to happen," Biermaier said. "It's not about the money. It's about everyone understanding what our job and our role is. It's also going to detract some of those offshoots from saying, 'Well, I don't want to pay. I'm just going to go and do three games.' Well, that's not what we want. We want a partnership."

The deadline for submitting a plan to Grand Forks Public Schools is 3 p.m. on June 4. Biermaier then plans to send a final draft of a proposal to School Board members by June 6 ahead of a June 10 School Board meeting, at which he'll be seeking final approval.