NEC Front Row was designed for the Northeast Conference this past year in order to obtain a centralized viewing for all of the conference games for easy access.
NEC Front Row was created by both Ron Ratner, an Associate Commissioner of the Northeast Conference, and KJ Cardinal, one of the Co-Founders of the Pack Network. The two have been working on the website for the past two years and have been able to get just about all of the twelve teams in the conference to hop aboard and work with NEC Front Row to stream the broadcasts for free through www.necfrontrow.com.
“I look at this as the 1.0 version of NEC Front Row,” said Ratner. “I think anything that we can do to put us (as a conference) on the map is good for us.”
So far, ten out of the twelve Northeast Conference schools are working with NEC Front Row.
The two schools still in contracts with their current online streams are Robert Morris University with RoMo TV and Monmouth University via HawkVision which are powered by the company NeuLion. However, MU students will still be able to see the Hawks road games through NEC Front Row via streams of the home team that they visit, unless the game takes place at Robert Morris.
Cardinal commented, “We are really eager to get Monmouth and all their live events onto the site because we know that they are doing a great job… they are really trying to put forth the most professional product on the board.” Cardinal also stated that this a great thing for this website overall, since other schools will strive to be like Monmouth and help create a better product that will make NEC Front Row look that much better. Currently the price to view games on HawkVision ranges from $7.95 per month to $69.95 for an athletic year and a single game can be purchased at $6.95.
NEC Front Row will broadcast all of the games on the website for free.
Even though the home games for the Hawks will not be broadcasted, Michelle Rosenhouse of the women’s golf team is excited to watch games through NEC Front Row.
Rosenhouse, who believes it will help the conference, said, “I think it will bring the NEC more respect by having a broader way to look at it as a whole.” Both the women’s and men’s golf teams will have sections on the site mainly featuring on-demand footage such as interviews with each teams members. The website will feature as many sports as possible, including men’s and women’s basketball, baseball, football, soccer, field hockey, golf, lacrosse and track & field just to name a few.
Even broadcasters, like Craig D’Amico who works for the NEC, are excited about this new portal for Northeast Conference information.
“It will help me with all my broadcasts that I have coming up, I think it is great for the fans, great for the broadcasters so I think it turned out tremendous,” D’Amico said.
From the very beginning there was a lot of excitement even from the Presidents of the NEC. Ratner said that the general feeling among the league’s teams is, ‘Let’s do this, let’s be cutting edge, let’s be at the forefront of this.’ The only other league to have done something like the NEC Front Row is the Horizon League.
There are also plenty of features to go along with the website.
One of the features is their Break-In feature, where an alert would come onto the screen showing that a game coming to a close is very exciting and the feature encourages the user to tune in for the action.
NEC Front Row also focuses on a heavy interaction with social media. Users are able to tweet from the website while watching the game as well as interact while using Instagram. Finally, the Control Room feature, “Looks awesome,” according to Ratner. “Basketball season hits and there is a Thursday night where you could potentially watch up to six games at the same time on one screen.”
Ed Waite, captain of the MU men’s basketball team, is excited for the season as well as the fact that NEC Front Row will help fans follow the team. “I think that it is great for our fans because now they get to watch us even if they can’t make it out to the game on a stormy night.” Waite also said, “Everyone that I talk to says they are excited for this season. So I guess we will have to see once the season starts.”
Cardinal calls it “an advantage to fans” and for the league as well. Cardinal also said, “The biggest hurdle to overcome was getting most of the schools on the same page.” Moving forward, the two have plenty of plans for the site, but in the near future their biggest item of business is getting out an iPhone and iPad application within the next month so that streaming can take place through the mobile devices.
Cardinal and Ratner both mentioned that they were planning to do High Definition webcasts for NEC Front Row and debut them during the championship games.
So the next time you cannot make it to an event, hop on over to www.necfrontrow.com for all of your Northeast Conference action.
IMAGE TAKEN from necfrontrow.com
