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Minutes for SB13 - Committee on Education
Short Title
Permitting certain local broadcasters to provide broadcast services of a school's postseason activities notwithstanding if the state high school activities association enters into an exclusive broadcast agreement for postseason activities.
Minutes Content for Mon, Jan 23, 2023
Chairwoman Baumgardner opened the Hearing. The Revisor gave a brief overview of the bill. (Attachment 1)
Proponent Oral Testimony:
Dr. Tom Hawk of Manhattan, KS was one of the sponsors for this bill. The main purpose of this bill is to remove the barrier of exclusive contracts facilitated by the Kansas State High School Activities Association (KSHSAA) which prevents local broadcasters from continuing to offer their services when their local schools attend post season events.
Dr. Hawk told of his brother living in western Kansas who was ill with leukemia but was well enough he wanted to stay up to date as a fan of Colby High School sporting events. He suggested to Open Spaces Sports to video stream the games, not just audio broadcast. That way he could see the events and also get some color commentary since Open Spaces Sports knew the athletes and followed the local seasons. Open Spaces Sports did, not charging a viewer fee, but instead used the radio broadcast model of finding advertisers.
KSHSAA entered into an exclusive contract with National Federation of High School Sports (NFHS) to do video streaming of post season and championship events. That meant the local broadcasters who provided service during the regular season could not stream video of post season play.
Dr. Hawk's major concern is with the exclusive contract of an out of state company. It also has evolved into preventing local broadcasters from video streaming regular season away events if the hosting school has a contract with NFHS.
Dr. Hawk requested the Revisor to draft a similar bill to Oklahoma's bill. However, it was discovered that while the State Board of Education has oversight over KSHSAA, it is the legislature that created the organization and has some statutory authority.
Local broadcasters feel the major issue is not having KSHSAA provide this service for school districts, the issue is the exclusion of the local Kansas broadcasters. These local Kansas broadcasters follow the teams through the regular season and provide excellent service and are then not allowed to provide the service for post season or out of town events.
Dr. Hawk thinks an amendment is needed for this bill addressing the out of town events. Even without an amendment, the bill does attempt to fix this problem of post season play and provides a level playing field for our Kansas local businesses. (Attachment 2)
Richard Epp, Owner of Open Spaces Sports, Inc. supports this bill explaining that local businesses sponsor the games, allowing them to promote their companies to a larger audience while enabling grandparents, brothers, sisters, other relatives, and former players worldwide to watch when they cannot be there in person, free of charge. Coaches use this service as a scouting and recruiting tool. Players use it to go back into the archives to see what they need to do to improve their skills, and they can get a DVD of all the games to remember their sports career and to use as a recruiting tool to further their athletic endeavors.
The exclusive contract that KSHSAA has in place prohibits Kansas Broadcasters from covering teams that have been covered all year regarding post season play and championships in volleyball, basketball, and wrestling.
Open Spaces Sports sole purpose is to provide a quality service to their communities and to give student athletes the coverage they deserve. Please support SB13 to allow companies across Kansas to cover regular season and post-season along with NFHS. (Attachment 3)
Kody Epp, Open Spaces Sports, Inc. explained that Open Spaces Sports began live video streaming of sporting events in 2009 and in those years has covered approximately 10,000 events and a countless number of student athletes in Kansas. Open Spaces supports other companies in our state who offer similar video streaming services because that promotes the students even more and gives multiple video-viewing options for people to choose from.
Open Spaces pays leagues for the ability to stream league tournament games but it is not exclusive to Open Spaces Sports. A fee is paid to KSHSAA for every post season event they cover. Open Spaces believes in the spirit of competition.
When KSHSAA's exclusive contract with Play On! Sports ended, they reached out to Open Spaces Sports and another broadcasting company to see if they could provide the state championship events coverage. Both companies joined forces to cover all classifications championship events and asked to make it non-exclusive. KSHSAA would only agree to exclusive. Open Spaces Sports reluctantly agreed and had a three year contract. KSHSAA then signed with NFHS.
Mr. Epp continued to tell of Open Spaces Sports struggle with KSHSAA and NFHS. In 2022, he had a conversation with state legislators but feared the contract between KSHSAA and NFHS would move to regular season events with contracts that individual schools had signed. That fear came true this current 2022-2023 school year when Open Spaces Sports was not able to stream a regular season wrestling tournament because the host school had a contract with NFHS. Open Spaces Sports tried to cover the event with audio streaming. NFHS uses an automated camera with no commentary. It is the commentary, combined with the video that best serves as promotion of our youth.
It is hoped this bill will not pertain to only post season events but also include all public school regular season events as well. (Attachment 4)
B.J. Harris, owner of Harris Media Services LLC, commented that student athletes use the off season for preparing for the regular season, the regular season is an opportunity to make the playoffs, and the playoff is where all that hard work can pay off. It is the same for broadcasters who cover those student athletes night in and night out.
As a small business owner, every opportunity to showcase your product and provide exposure for your customers is crucial. For broadcasters, this means putting advertisers in front of the biggest audiences possible. KSHSAA exclusive contract prohibits that from happening. There have been times they deferred to NFHS and they did not cover the event so the event was not covered at all which left families and fans without a way to watch their teams.
KSHSAA is a member based organization and those members have made it clear they prefer to partner with local broadcasters and not the NFHS network. Support of this bill will give Kansas Broadcasters a chance to capture the biggest moments for the student athletes. (Attachment 5)
Allison Mazzei, President, Kansas Association of Broadcasters (KAB), spoke in support of this bill saying high school sports networks such as the NFHS have begun targeting schools for exclusive rights to stream and in some cases, broadcast their games. KSHSAA owns the rights to postseason and can therefore implement exclusive agreements.
The postseason partnership with NFHS Network means they have first right of refusal to stream championship games. This has had negative effects for broadcasters, as well as those who want to watch games remotely. NFHS charges a subscription fee to watch. Even when NFHS elects not to broadcast a championship game, it prevents the local broadcasters from streaming the game.
NFHS takes away revenue from local, Kansan-owned businesses to a company headquartered out of state. Exclusive agreements with "Home" schools should not govern or serve to restrict the broadcast rights of "visiting" teams and their media partnerships. "Visiting" schools should have the same rights to broadcast or stream their team's games, as those extended to the home school.
KAB enthusiastically supports this bill so long as it is expanded to include visiting team rights during regular season. (Attachment 6)
Justin Fluke, Owner/President of KNZA Radio Group and Chairman of the KAB Board, started adding the video streams to broadcasting in 2012 and has partnered with local schools on all platforms to provide a service and also involve many students every year to give them education and real-world experience in the broadcasting and growing video production industry. So many times over the past 10 years, these students and our business have not been allowed to broadcast post-season games and state events involving their school that they had covered all year because KSHSAA has an exclusive contract with NFHS. Students, loyal family and friends are forced to a pay-per-view platform as their only option with broadcasters who are not connected or personally invested and haven't covered and seen their team play.
Local broadcast companies loose important revenue from local advertisers who also want to support and be part of these broadcasts. KNZA Radio Group strongly supports this bill and believes there should be no exclusive agreements that prohibit any local broadcaster from being able to cover a regular or post-season activity.(Attachment 7)
David S. Morrow, Principal, St. Francis Community High School, has received from community members expressions of their thankfulness for being allowed to watch their student-athletes compete. In post-season competitions, however, many of these fans have been deprived of that opportunity unless they pay a subscription to the NFHS network. Our community members have not only been deprived of hearing familiar, trusted voices give play-by-play analyses of these events, they are also subjected to the fallibility of the NFHS broadcast. Open Spaces Sports has had a remarkable record of dependability, and any fan in our area of the state could count on their broadcast being not only professional but reliable as well.
No entity like the NFHS network should have a monopoly on this crucial service at the high school level. Considering the issues many fans have had with the NFHS broadcasts, the bill would solve the problem of paying for a service that is of dubious quality. (Attachment 8)
Grant Neuhold, Executive Director, Kiowa County Media Center, says the Media Center is a non-profit organization with a mission to engage, support and empower our communities with multimedia technology education and training. One of the most prominent ways to fulfill the mission is teaching sports broadcasting to both students and adults. Great pride is taken in the work done in education and also in the ability to provide high quality coverage of area athletes for fans local and all over the world.
It is really disappointing to be able to do this for most of the season and then when the games matter most, the Media Center has to tell fans it can no longer be the broadcast provider for them. There will be an educational process of how to watch the games and it will now cost them money. These broadcasts are forced upon viewers and the quality is not close to what it has been for them all year. Why make it difficult for fans to watch their players by forcing them to watch a game provided by a national organization that has no connection to the teams or players?
It is hoped that the Kansas Legislature will be able to make the easy decision of allowing local broadcasters to do what they love so much, for the teams they love so much for when it matters to everyone the most. (Attachment 9)
Proponent Written Only Testimony was submitted by:
- Dustin Bell, Parent of Student Athletes (Attachment 10)
- Will Bixenman, Athletic Director/PE Teacher/Coach, Wheatland High School (Attachment 11)
- Emily Bradbury, Executive Director, Kansas Press Association (Attachment 12)
- Spencer T. McKee, Senior Business Development Manager, Lennox International, Colby High School Alum, Family Member and Fan (Attachment 13)
- Marty Melia, Retired Radio and Television Broadcaster (Attachment14)
- Sara G. Miles, Digital Media Instructor, Beaver Broadcasting Network Advisor (Attachment 15)
- Charles F. Moser, Attorney, Moser & Mangan Law Office, County Attorney for Unified Greeley County & Wallace County (Attachment 16)
- Travis Smith, Athlete Director, Golden Plains USD 316 (Attachment 17)
- Valerie Wark, Open Spaces Sports, Inc. (Attachment 18)
- Josh Woodward, ED.D., Assistant Superintendent, Perry-Lecompton USD 343 (Attachment 19)
Opponent Oral Testimony:
Bill Faflick, Executive Director, Kansas State High School Activities Association (KSHSAA), stated that KSHSAA's mission is to serve Kansas students by providing leadership for the administration of education based interscholastic activities.
Since 2011, the KSHSAA has engaged in a media rights contract in order to feature Kansas Students participating in any of the 34 athletic, academic and performance activities sponsored by the KSHSAA.
Since 2019, the KSHSAA as partnered with the NFHS Network, as they were the only media partner willing to support all activities, at all levels of participation.
The Network covers all production costs for all events and supports school (student) broadcast programs.
Besides the KSHSAA, 186 member schools are partners with the Network. The Network returned $108,000 to those schools this past year and $290,000 since inception.
Events not picked up by the Network are available to other broadcasters.
The right to enter into an exclusive media agreement is supported by the 7th Circuit Court in the Gannett case.
The KSHSAA respectfully requests the Committee not support this bill.(Attachment 20)
Also included in Mr. Faflick's testimony is a copy of the Live Video Via Webstream KSHSAA Post Season Activities Agreement (Attachment 21), Media Rights Agreement (Attachment 22), KSHSAA Post Season Activities Television Broadcast Agreement (Attachment 23), Radio & Internet Audio Broadcast KSHSAA Post Season Activities Agreement (Attachment 24), Website screenshot to subscribe to NFHS Network (Attachment 25)
Discussion followed.
The Fiscal Note for this bill is included with Testimony on the Legislature website. (Attachment 26)
Chairwoman Baumgardner closed the hearing.
The meeting was adjourned at 2:30 PM. The next meeting will be January 24, 1:30 PM in room 144-S.
