Nine days before the IFL season officially kicks off with the Jacksonville Sharks heading to Lowell, MA to take on the Massachusetts Pirates, the IFL finally unveiled their long awaited streaming project...
The IFL Network!
It had been rumored for quite some time that this was the route that the league was going and an announcement was honestly expected a lot sooner, but we can't be too picky.
The day before the announcement, they totally wiped their YouTube page of years and years of games and footage and now they have their own official network, so kudos to them for putting this together and being able to get away from YouTube and house all of their own content on their own platform. SURELY this will go over well with fans of #TheIndoorWar, both casual and hardcore right?
The Indoor Football League (IFL), the premier indoor football league based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is thrilled to announce a groundbreaking partnership with Visaic, an AI-enabled fan engagement platform for sports and entertainment to unveil the newly designed IFL Network. Available now, this multi-year collaboration brings fans closer to the action for the IFL’s 17th season, set to kick off on March 21, 2025, with cutting-edge streaming technology and enhanced viewing experiences, on web, mobile web, and mobile apps on iOS and Android devices.
The IFL Network, powered by Visaic’s innovative Video Interactive Platform (VIP), offers fans unparalleled access to all regular season games—live and on-demand. This partnership reflects the IFL’s commitment to expanding its reach, engaging its passionate fanbase, and delivering high-quality sports entertainment directly to viewers across multiple platforms.
Wow, sounds great.
AI-enable fan engagement? Not sure what that means but I'm down, I guess.
Let's keeping reading:
Oh boy. There it is. In order to view ANY IFL games this season, you are gonna have to sign up for either a Season Pass for $29.99 or a Monthly Pass for $9.99.
In an offseason clouded with other leagues shooting themselves in the foot and having more drama than a high school theater troupe, all the IFL needed to do was coast to the starting line with the status quo and they would emerge as the golden child of 50-yard football.
But not to be outdone by their arena football league counterparts, they drop this bomb on us.
Now before we go on too much further, I understand the need here and this felt like it was inevitable. You can't fully rely on YouTube for live streaming long term, as Commissioner Tryon broke down some of the reasons why they made the switch on the San Antonio Gunslingers coaches show, "Branded with Head Coach Tom Menas" (excerpt linked below)
But the issue isn't just transitioning from YouTube to their own platform -- it's doing so while being 100% paywalled. Is there a 30 day free trial? Yes, but those free trials, by design, are offered with the expectation that people will either love the product and keep it or forget about it during the trial and get charged -- it's not the IFL being nefarious, it's just the nature of the free trial game.
Being able to fully house their own content is absolutely going to be a great thing for the IFL long term, but part of the appeal of their previous set up was the prospect of folks organically finding the sport and the league.
A couple years back, I fired up YouTube and just started clicking through things that looked interesting and saw an Indoor Football League game being streamed live, and I decided to check it out.
Several years later I'm hooked on the sport and have a blog and podcast about it.
Now put that same stream from a few years ago behind a paywall -- we may not have the same story and I might not be here today posting Denham 'Indoor War' memes and overreacting to arena football things on X.
At the very least, there should be some type of free/freemium options for the IFL Network. Not even having a 'free game of the week' or anything like that is not great. Again, yes there is a 30 day trial, but please re-read 3 paragraphs ago.
Luke Miller, who is a spring football enthusiast and grim reaper of arena football fandom, made a poll that was pretty darn telling:
At the time of this blog going live, 82.3% of 130 votes said 'No'. Now, that isn't an automatic death sentence for the network but it should be alarming!
The games streamed live on YouTube would have anywhere between 1.1-2K concurrent viewers at any given time, with some games having more depending on the matchup. Take away potentially 82.3% of that audience and you're in trouble -- not to mention the thousands and thousands of replays that those games accrued throughout the season and over the years not being possible unless they signed up.
Paywalling the content seems to be something that may drive away casual fans and potentially jeopardize the relationship with hardcore fans if the content doesn't live up to the standards that you promise.
Last season, there were some rough streams to start the year and the answer we got was "We're getting things sorted out, bare with us! Hahah"
If you expect people to pay, there is no room for sorting things out.
There is no room for Stadium issues like what we experienced in the playoffs last season.
There is no room for teams resorting to streaming through a single camera on the sideline.
The streams have to be perfect. Not good, not excellent -- perfect.
Totally paywalling the content when you are switching over to a brand new provider -- who in and of itself is unproven -- is a little crazy too.
Below are screenshots from the iOS app store for other video apps provided by Visaic, Inc:
Not great!
The same folks that were pouncing on the AF1 for partnering with EvergreenNOW should have that same energy towards IFL & Visaic right now. To top it all off, the apps are not even available for download at the time it was announced and the time of this blog.
Keep in mind the season starts NEXT WEEK -- in a venue historically known for having stream issues -- and the app is not available for download.
I want to go back to the subscription details for a sec:
Every single one of these features was possible on YouTube lol. Granted, for the clip, share & download highlights portion, you had to know your way around screen recording and editing, but it was fully possible.
So you can do all of the same things that YouTube can do on The IFL Network, but this time you GET TO PAY to use it! The whole rollout is confusing and seems like there was a better way to go about it. Not to mention the playoffs are apparently NOT included and are separate from the subcription (yeah..)
You'd think the leadership of the IFL would really embrace this challenge head on and talk up the good and really sell it -- but that is not the route some folks chose to go:
"If you want free, well, there's other leagues out there you can go to"
Lmao -- if I were creating an antagonist character for a Ted Lasso-esque show about Arena Football, that would be a line I would put into their dialogue.
Having a prominent voice amongst team owners telling fans "yeah we don't need you, go support a different league" is CRAZY. So many things could have been said in that moment yet somehow she chose one of the only things they absolutely should not have said.
Cody from In the Alley summed it up pretty nicely:
They pre-recorded the show, then said "Yeah that's the one!" and pressed publish.
Just a head scratching decision to go on the offensive towards the people you are hoping buy in and support.
All that being said, $30 for a Season Pass is not a bad price point -- it comes out to $0.26 per game throughout the entire season, which is really good compared to some of the other season pass options out there for outdoor sports. BUT AGAIN, it isn't the price, it's the principle of the matter and how they went about it that is so frustrating.
If you are being the optimist, this could end up being really awesome and in 4 months we look back and say "Wow I'd totally buy that again", but unless things changed DRAMATICALLY across all IFL venues this offseason, it feels like we're gonna see some similar situations from last year... but this time paying for it.
Can't help but feel like this is going to seriously limit the growth of the sport in the interim in exchange for hopefully a 20% conversion rate on your current audience at a $30 price point.
IFL was up multiple scores on the AF1 & NAL and could have just run the ball and played within their scheme, but decided to start throwing the ball and threw multiple pick sixes -- and before you know it, those other leagues are suddenly back in the game.
There's more to come with all of this and we'll have to wait and see how this shakes out when the season starts next week -- but so far The IFL Network launch is off to a rough start.