Washington and Lee University and the rest of the Old Dominion Athletic Conference entered a five-year media rights partnership with FloSports before the 2025-26 academic year.  

FloSports is an online streaming platform. According to its website, it is “the essential destination for live streams and on-demand replays of your favorite sports, plus original content, real-time stats, game clips, rankings, news, and more.”

The switch to FloSports has been a couple years in the making. Negotiations within the ODAC began around January of 2023. An agreement was signed in June, with all conference teams opting in to the deal.

FloSports requires a paid subscription to watch the content. It charges its users with several different plan options. The plans include an annual subscription that charges $8.99 per month and a monthly subscription that charges $19.99 per month, according to the FloSports website. Accounts with an email address ending in .edu receive a discount.  

“W&L was already meeting the production standards and minimums required in the first year of the FloSports agreement,” said W&L Director of Athletics Communication Sydney Anderson, who oversees broadcast operations alongside Athletics Broadcaster and Multimedia Creative Specialist Ryan Connell. “Rather than rushing into new purchases, Ryan and I have taken a thorough approach—evaluating the right equipment and software so that any upgrades will be noticeable across all nine of our athletic venues. We’re excited about the opportunity to use Flo’s revenue-sharing model to elevate an already high-quality product.”

The paywall model has provided each school, through a revenue share, a five-figure payment at various points throughout the year to assist with production.  

The university’s athletic director, Jan Hathorn, said that Washington and Lee was the only one in the conference to vote against switching to FloSports.  

“We weren’t in support of it because the quality of our streams has always been top level,” Hathorn said. “But when it became clear that it was going to pass through league votes, we determined it was best for us to opt in to the process and the agreement so that we could get the benefit of the revenue and other incentives.”

ODAC Commissioner Brad Bankston, who was directly involved in deliberations about the new streaming service, said he believes some of FloSports’ appeal is its “one-stop shop” feel.  

 “One of the selling points I think people liked about moving in this direction was that it was creating a destination for Divisions II and III,” Bankston said. “There are Division I programs on it as well.”  

ODAC teams now stream their athletic events through FloSports, in contrast to previous years, when the streaming site varied from school to school. 

Aside from streaming games, FloSports is also helping to promote the league, according to Bankston. 

“Flo is helping us tell the stories by using their social media accounts, calling attention to things that are going on in the league,” Bankston said.  

As for the streams themselves, not much has changed. Connell said the production of streams is still very similar to when the games were streamed on the generalssports.com website.

“There’s just an extra step I have to add in on the back end of basically redirecting it to a different output,” Connell said.  

He also mentioned an incident earlier this year when the entire FloSports website went down. While the server crash did not directly affect Washington and Lee, Connell said it still raised concerns.

“That’s out of your control that the whole thing fell apart,” said Connell. “When you were the one putting it together, you could make a solution yourself, but now you’re waiting on them to create the solution.”  

The conference signed the agreement at the end of June, which was a quick turnaround to the start of the school year and has led to some hurdles, Connell said. He said the biggest struggle with FloSports has been the lack of clear communication.  

“The only way to communicate with their live text support is through Slack, which if anyone’s used Slack before, it’s fine, but it’s not anything great,” Connell said. “They assign one or two people to your game. You tag those people and then you’re at the liberty of waiting for them to get back to you.”  

Students and parents have also raised concerns about the new streaming platform.  

Bankston said he has heard some criticism from people who were disappointed with the games being behind a paywall.  

Hathorn said that the collective campus has also heard some pushback.  

“Our response has been that it’s a league decision and in order for us to stream our contests against our league, it was wise to be a part of the agreement,” said Hathorn. “I can’t say that I disagree with their lament.” 

Volleyball player Viviana Vasquez, ’27, said that while the change doesn’t really affect her directly, she still wishes it hadn’t happened. 

“I’d rather people be able to watch me for free, like my friends and family. I hate having to be like you have to pay for it to watch me,” she said.  

Her parents, Nelva Vasquez and Ramon Vasquez, said they dislike the switch to FloSports. 

“I really don’t know what the benefit is for having FloSports. It seems like the schools use the same cameras and commentators as before, so what exactly are we paying for?” Nelva Vasquez said.  

“The benefit is financial for the school and maybe a little bit of exposure for the school, but for the parents, it is kind of a rip off,” Ramon Vasquez said. 

Nolan Rickett, ’27, used to tune in to various W&L athletic events frequently. He said he doesn’t watch online anymore. 

“I don’t really see the value in subscribing to FloSports because I wouldn’t use it all for certain sports, and I feel like the price tag is too high for what it is,” Rickett said. 

Rickett suggested that FloSports should create a package where you can select only a few sports you’d like to watch and pay at a lower rate.  

Connell said that viewership has seen a decline this year compared to previous years. 

“Since it’s a bigger service, you get access to a bigger network of people. Through the first month and a half, the viewership would not reflect that,” Connell said. 

Despite some of the backlash and struggles during this first year of the ODAC partnership with FloSports, Hathorn said she thinks there are plans in the future to improve the product.  

“I think their greatest goal at the moment is to continue to add Division III conferences,” Hathorn said.  

Bankston said FloSports is going to create standardized production software for the ODAC and other partners.  

“That would provide a little bit more of a robust kind of delivery system and something they can actually manipulate on their end as opposed to communicating with somebody that’s actually on site,” Bankston said.