25 SPORTS FOCUS American Ultimate Disc League
Words by Neal Romanek
he American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL) was founded in 2012 and consists of 21 semi- professional franchises in the US
try to envision how these games would be streamed,” explains Tim DeByl, vice- president of marketing for the AUDL and head of the league’s video strategy. DeByl was also part of the initial 2012 launch and, with partner investors, became owner of the Madison Radicals ultimate team. “Live streaming hadn’t really been done much. There was some streaming for the world events, but even that was with one camera and very simple,” he explains. After a couple years with the UXTV platform, the AUDL caught the attention of ESPN, which was interested in streaming matches on the networks’s streaming service, ESPN3. In the meantime, DeByl and the AUDL team worked steadily with teams around the league to get it up to speed for ongoing, professional live coverage. They moved from their own
Whether you call it a ‘Frisbee’ or a ‘disc’, ultimate is moving out of its counterculture roots and into the sports mainstream. The AUDL, ultimate’s governing body for North America, is using video streaming to reach new fans
and Canada. It was kicked off (flung off?) when founder Josh Moore wrangled eight owners willing to put money (not much money) behind the new teams. The next year saw more teams added, with one of the new team owners being Cisco’s Rob Lloyd. Using his substantial resources, Lloyd boosted the AUDL into its ‘2.0’ phase and became the league’s chairman. Streaming video of ultimate games was part of the league’s strategy from the very beginning and, in 2013, the AUDL launched UXTV, a simple website that allowed the league to embed livestreamed video. “We bought cameras and hired some camera people and some ultimate people to
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