First off thank you to Skyd for giving us this opportunity to communicate with its readership. This isn’t an article so much as it is a solicitation to the ultimate community to help us at NexGen Ultimate make live broadcasts a thing of regularity and not reserved exclusively for USAU Championship events.
Today we’re announcing our plans to start the NexGen Network (or NGN) and launching a Kickstarter fundraising campaign as the first step toward regular live broadcasts of ultimate. NGN is a new online television network that will present ultimate much like you were watching a major sports network with multi-camera setup, elevated perspective, instant replays and expert commentary. (See Kickstarter video below.)
The opening schedule calls for 12 games from two major regular college season tournaments, the Stanford Invite and College Centex, and takes place over the weekends of March 3-4 and March 17-18. Coverage includes three pool play rounds on Saturday and one quarters, one semis and the finals matchup on Sunday.
These first 12 games come with a catch—a $20,000 catch. We’re asking the ultimate community to help us put these first two tournaments on the air with our promise that we’ll be able to deliver more games and events in the future (think Easterns, ECC, Labor Day, WFDF World Championships, NexGen Tour, etc.) The long-term sustainable success for NGN requires a strong fan base that demands live ultimate—the kind of fan base that can help us raise $20,000.
Kickstarter, an all-or-nothing, reward-based fundraising platform for creative projects, is administrating our fundraising campaign. The way it works is you make a pledge to support NGN; we give you a reward (ex. $20 pledge gets you premium subscriptions to both tournaments) and no funds will be collected unless we meet our goal. Kickstarter has been used by other ultimate projects including the very cool looking “The Invisible String” and the currently fundraising “Chasing Sarasota” documentaries. (As of this writing “Chasing Sarasota” still needs a little more than $3,000 to meet its goal, so please consider helping them out as well.)
If you’ve ever wished you could watch ultimate on television then consider this a call to action. We’re asking you to head over to Kickstarter and start with a $20 pledge—essentially a pre-sale of our HD and on-demand premium subscription. While you’re there consider picking up a limited edition signed George Stubbs poster at the $100 level, branding a play of the game at the $250 level or throwing down to pick any pool play matchup of your choice at the $1250 level.
Thank you to everyone who has supported NexGen in the past and a thank you in advance to everyone who believes in and supports the creation of NGN and regular live broadcasts. If you’ve made it this far make sure to check out the campaign video below for some highlights from this year’s USAU Club Championships.
For more info and FAQ check out the Kickstarter page or feel free to contact us at info@ngnultimate.com.
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