V8 Supercar have just made a substantial sporting announcement. Fans of motorsport are now able to watch all of the action from every race during the Championship season, live and ad free with a new streaming service V8SuperView. Apparently the recent trial of the service went well and is now set for prime time.
You can try the streaming service for free this weekend while the V8 Supercars are in Auckland (12-14 April 2013). After subsequent access will then require a subscription. This is great news ahead of the upcoming round in the United States.
Two package options are available, with the full portfolio including every Championship and Dunlop Series race. "I encourage fans to head to v8supercars.com.au and watch the world’s best touring car races on V8SuperView. Each race is streamed live in high quality with no ad breaks, which of course means non-stop commentary and action," V8 Supercar CEO David Malone said.
"Now we are in full control of our digital rights we can offer fans this amazing new service at a fantastic rate. For a 2013 season pass our fans will pay just $49.95 for the V8 Supercar and Dunlop Series bundle.
An exclusive pre-race show to V8SuperView subscribers will be hosted by V8 Supercar presenter Riana Crehan. The live stream includes full coverage and commentary from regular anchors Neil Crompton, Matthew White, Mark Skaife and Aaron Noonan.
V8SuperView is currently browser based and will be available on the desktop, tablet or mobile. Video streaming is provided by Brightcove, an established video provider, so fingers crossed the streaming will hold up to the undoubtedly heavy load both domestically and internationally. V8 Supercars is also leveraging Brightcove’s Zencoder Live Cloud Transcoding service, an open API for live video encoding in the cloud.
"Brightcove is thrilled to be partnering with V8 Supercars," said Mark Blair, Vice President of Media Solutions, Asia-Pacific at Brightcove. "The Zencoder Live Cloud Transcoding Service is greatly reducing the complexity required for the organisation to launch a live subscription video service for V8 Supercar fans around the world."
V8SuperView subscriptions are priced as below:
– Yearly pass, per season Championship Pass (Includes all 2013 qualifying, top ten shootout, Championship Series races and full race replays) $39.95
– Dunlop Series Pass (Includes all 2013 races) $14.95
– Bundle Pass (Includes both Series) $49.95
I think V8 Supercars got the pricing right here, to avoid ads and have the convenience of IPTV, $40 per season is great value. There isn’t any mention of per-round pricing, it’d be great to see more of an a-la-carte model in the future which would let people tune in for a single day.
Also.. I still want to control the Megawall. For more info, race over to v8superview.com.
