Eastern Mennonite University will expand livestreaming of home matches to a full season of home field hockey and men’s and women’s soccer games. This added coverage complements the continued streaming of all home men’s and women’s basketball games, as well as most home men’s and women’s volleyball matches. (Photo by Scott Eyre)

Royals athletics expands livestreaming of home matches to Turf Field sports

Royals athletics fans will be excited to hear that Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) will expand livestreaming of home matches to a full range of events on the Turf Field, joining the full coverage of events in University Commons.

This added coverage complements the continued streaming of all home men’s and women’s basketball games, as well as men’s and women’s volleyball matches. EMU had only streamed three games each from the men’s soccer, women’s soccer and field hockey seasons since adding the service on the Turf Field in 2013.

In a corresponding decision, the video webcasting services will be provided for the 2015-16 academic year by Broadcast from PrestoSports, according to sports information director James De Boer. The move to a new host allows Royals fans to maintain their free access to high definition video of EMU games while adding a number of features.

“We are really excited about upgrading the quality of our webcasting for alumni, parents and friends,” said Director of Athletics Dave King. “It is just another step in our efforts to connect the outside community with our student athletes and coaches, providing them access to the quality programs and people we have at EMU.”

Since EMU started streaming athletic events during the 2010-11 season, viewers were limited to watching a game live in a separate window on their computers. With Broadcast, video of a live game will now be played on a page which will also include interactive live statistics, allowing fans to get all of their information for a game in a single web browser window. Viewers will still have the option to click a “full screen” view of a game. Along with the live feed, fans can watch archived recordings of a game.

The new video player should also be viewable on nearly all devices, including Mac-based devices, such as iPhones, which had been a problem for some users in the past.

PrestoSports has been hosting Eastern Mennonite University’s athletics website since 2011.

With only one set of broadcast equipment in the EMU Sports Information Office, days with multiple home events in different venues will be decided on a game-by-game basis. (Baseball and softball cannot be streamed as there is no hardwired internet access at the fields.)

PrestoSports hosts nearly 800 athletic websites from colleges, conferences, and other associations around the country.  This is the first year that Broadcast was made available to the company’s clients and Eastern Mennonite is the first school from the Old Dominion Athletic Conference to use the platform.