Pleasant Prairie expands live streaming services and gets rid of old cars

The Pleasant Prairie Village Board approved an events agreement between the village and live streaming company LiveBarn Inc. during Monday night’s meeting, bringing live video streaming of events to the Village Recreation Department and allowing RecPlex to stream expanding sports tournaments.

LiveBarn Inc. specializes in live streaming of amateur and youth sporting events and its technology is already being used at both of RecPlex’s ice rinks. The expansion includes the field house, water sports center, ball fields and Lake Andrea Beach.

Priority will be given to the field houses and water areas, which RecPlex Athletics and Recreation Manager Brett Christopher said will hopefully be operational within two to three months. The others are “probably a little further out”.

Christopher said the streaming equipment would be installed at LiveBarn’s expense, meaning the only cost will be increased internet bandwidth at the village’s facility. He said they were confident, however, that their guest internet services would remain unchanged.

“We’re making sure that the bandwidth increase doesn’t impact our user groups,” said Christopher, “we feel like we’re in a pretty good place.”

Christopher said that while the partnership with LiveBarn happened before the pandemic, COVID forced them to think outside the box so audiences could follow youth and amateur sports safely.

“As events returned,” Christopher said, “we saw a demand for the creation of new viewing options.”

Pleasant Prairie and LiveBarn have a revenue sharing agreement for streaming service subscriptions, creating an additional revenue stream for the leisure division.

“The partnership with LiveBarn provides RecPlex with a free event streaming solution that allows viewers to watch remotely and watch from anywhere,” said Christopher. “We’ve been testing the service in the ice arenas and look forward to expanding the streaming services to offer athletes, coaches and viewers of the event a remote option that offers a different perspective.”

Launched in 2015, LiveBarn provides live and on-demand broadcasting of amateur and youth sporting events. LiveBarn currently broadcasts from over 1,000 venues including hockey, baseball, soccer and basketball stadiums.

The meeting also approved the sale of six village vehicles used primarily for administrative tasks, said Kathy Goessl, Village of Pleasant Prairie’s finance director. They will be handed over to the car agency Enterprise for sale.