NSN COVID-19

Details

Created on Friday, 19 March 2021 14:56

Written by John Habershaw

LYNDON - COVID-19 has affected many small businesses across the country and one local sports network has felt the ramifications, as they have been doing everything they can to keep the lights on.

     NorthEast Sports Network commonly known as NSN have seen the number of their college and highschool games that they would normally cover drop a signifacant amount. Last year around this time, the spring season for college and highschool sports was right around the corner. Ryan McDonald co-founder of NSN started to hear rumors swirling around from the Vermont Principals Association (VPA) that the spring season was going to be entirely cancelled. Having never heard of this ever happening in the past McDonald thought that it wasn't possible for the cancellation of the spring season.

     Untiil it did happen, it was a huge amount of business for NSN that McDonald described "evaproated over night". With this loss in business and revenue, McDonald as well as other members of the network had to put their heads together in order to be able to sustain their fulltime employees. Many of the crew that works for NSN are paid on a per game basis, and with the stopage of games it stopped a good percentage of their payroll which benefited the fulltime employees. 

     NSN averages around 2,000 to 2,500 games and events per year, losing two-thirds of the games over the past year in college games alone. Their highschool coverage has increased an incredible amount because highschool games are still happening as opposed to many colleges cancelling their seasons entirely. Not all bad happened during the stopage of what was described as "a crazy year", McDonald states "COVID to some degree did increase the value of what we do because fans weren't allowed in the stands" with fans not being allowed to physically attend the games, NSN's viewership online soared. Like a good low post player, NSN pivoted to pick up other work such as auto-racing throughout the summer and fall, as well as filming many school commencements. McDonald says NSN has rolled with the COVID punches and done a great job with keeping the lights on.