BlackBear TV Reviews

BlackBear is displacing all these great rinks and then trying to replace a decent service like LiveBarn with sub par services that cost. You loose the pano and zoom to where you want to a tracking video and can never see what happens away from play. BlackBearTV is even worse, loosing the ability to do any clipping, easily get to prior games and no bookmarking. All in all this feels like a 10 year or older app

This is a horrible service. BlackBearTV and website are both bad. There has been no update to correct any of the complaints in previous reviews. Difficult to navigate. Unable to save clips. Cannot watch practices. BlackBearTV was not made for parents or families who want to watch their kids play. This was made for money only. What a horrible, greedy company leeching off families that are already milked for every penny for their kids to play a sport they love. Fix your service!

Considering how much more expensive BlackBearTV is than LiveBarn, I would have expected better features. While the camera quality is better, the usability is terrible. And I can’t tell you how many times it just stops and glitches…and no video

This streaming service is horrible. The subscription price is high and they do not broadcast practices! No App for Apple TV! Hard to use App interface. This is a GIANT downgrade from Live Barn and the worst part is Black Bear is trying to force parents to purchase this subscription by not allowing livebarn to broadcast from their rinks! Shame on you Black Bear, I will never subscribe.

I bought it for a weekend pass, because they disabled the LiveBarn of course, and they charged me 13 dollars to watch ONE GAME. That’s not what it said I was praying for— hard to navigate. There is also this horrible weird black dip at the top of the camera. So annoyed. AND it has gone black 500 times when turned to the side. I’ve had to refresh the whole game. I’m so annoyed.

I definitely didn’t think the world could get any worse, but here we are! $300 a year? NHL network is $99! These are parents wanting to watch their kids!! YOUTH SPORTS?!? Y’all need Jesus! App is cumbersome. Is the video from live barn cameras or a 2005 gas station security system? (Slow Clap) Congrats on competing with insurance, lawyers, and Comcast for being the worst. Without companies like this we would never know how low society could possibly go!

App (and service) doesn’t show what’s going on streaming at all times, just picks select games to show/promote. So you can’t view practices, scrimmages or any skates that going on at the rink like you can with older streaming apps.
So for double the price of Live Barn, you get about 1/100th of the product.
I’m really hoping they decide to just keep the cameras on all the time and steam everything live, otherwise this is just useless.

As a figure skater who skates at a BlackBear rink for the majority of my practices, I am very disappointed in this. LiveBarn was amazing for looking back at practices and being able to save videos and find moments, and now I no longer have that possibility for the rink I spend my most time and money at. It also does not seem practical to have a subscription to both this and livebarn… wish you guys would not have done this.

We all bought BlackBearTV to watch our kids. It is extremely aggravating when it doesn’t work for this purpose. Especially when a camera system and app was in place that was cheaper and more reliable. And we still have to pay for both since not all rinks have BBTV!!
1- I have not been able to watch games for weeks on my phone. I get a “we are having issues on our end error”.
There is zero support available to resolve this.
2- BlackBearTV is not formatted for an iPad, it will not go full screen. It’s about the same size as my phone!
3- There are so many other issues with BlackBearTV design and functionality. So frustrating to pay all this money and I can’t even watch my son play hockey!!

Try harder Black Bear and act like you care about the feedback!

Hockey families beware, do not sign up for Black Bear TV until you check what they will let you stream. I signed up yesterday for a $35 monthly membership and found out that they will not let me watch anything my son is doing on the ice until the end of October. What a waste for the first month. I tried to cancel the next day and they will not refund me, so I have a monthly membership to a streaming service that does not stream anything my son is involved in...Bring back LiveBarn please. Lastly, BlackBearTV is not user friendly and does not work for iPads.

The sooner you get your kids away from a Black Bear team, the better off you will be. The Black Bear rinks are poorly maintained and this company is ruining youth hockey in the Northeast. Now they got rid of LiveBarn which worked just fine in all these rinks for their own service which is worse. Just another money grab by the Black Bear group. Now parents will need so subscribe to multiple services to watch their kids play hockey. Do not subscribe to this service. Boycott it. Better yet, get away from the Black Bear teams and stop putting up with all of their nonsense - they do not have the best interest of your kids in mind.

Per AHF rules if you want a call to be overturned video evidence to support your claim is the bare minimum requirement. Black Bear TV venues ban ALL video recording on personal devices. So thanks to the genius design of BlackBearTV lacking all on demand services to dispute a decision on the ice you have to break the rules to enforce them. Not to mention not all rinks support Black Bear TV so I need another subscription just to see my kids games, but if I’m working during his games I will not get to see anything. It clear this is an app not designed for parents by parents. It is designed with one thing in mind, and that’s money. Terrible launch, disappointing features, just, no.

I unfortunately paid the $300 for this crappy service thinking this would be equivalent to LiveBarn and also allow my parents to watch my kids play. It’s not even close. BlackBearTV (and website) is clunky and error prone. Three of my kids unfortunately play at a Blackbear rink and not only do I have to pay for premium ice time, now I have to pay an exorbitant fee just to watch them play if I’m not at the rink? Also, I play men’s league at the same rink and they don’t even bother to allow the men’s leagues games to be on here. Never had these issues with LiveBarn, I could always go back and record the clips of me scoring my 2 goals per year with LiveBarn.

For the sake of the kids that use BlackBearTV, I will refrain from using extreme langue, however my opinions are quite the opposite. BlackBearTV is cumbersome and poorly designed. I intend on watching practices and games. Highlighting practices. There’s almost a 4:1 ratio of those in a week. This organization is completely pathetic. I absolutely hate it all. And then that on top of individual videos not being able to be taken is idiocracy. As Clanko Media points out, this is an entire different type of media mentality for games or small clips. Banning this essentially bans players from having good looking highlight tapes which is a huge way that people can get scouted from. Along with this, your absence of Pano mode, ability to zoom, play back feature, and breakup of the film itself is absolutely horrendous. You need to readjust this all as well as lowering the prices before anyone should ever consider buying this product.

Black Bear Inc is the worst thing for youth sports. They are literally nickel and diming every parent involved and youth hockey and BlackBearTV is next level theft!!!! The only positive is that the video quality is better than Live Barn but that positive cannot out weigh the negatives. Playback constantly freezes. The lag is almost a full period and that’s not an exaggeration. My wife turned the game on and it was warmups for her yet there were less than 3 minutes in the 1st period. I made the teams in our organization favorites and it doesn’t even define the different teams with age group or tier next to them. So I have to toggle between each team just to find the right one. On LiveBarn all you had to do was tap an icon and you recorded a 30 second clip. On Black Bear TV you need to be a nuclear physicist to figure out how to download the clip🙄 You can’t zoom in on the play. If I move my phone the slightest towards flat I lose widescreen mode and sometimes even need to exit the stream and restart. I can’t believe we had to pay $300 for this terrible app while you threaten to remove people from your rinks if they record clips or even the full game!!! This service is greed times 1,000,000. You should be giving us all refunds for this crap

Do not pay for this service. It is inconsistent, glitchy and unreliable. Their customer service is defensive and feels the service is excellent. They clearly don’t have kids that play.

Terrible app. Keeps freezing and shutting down. All for $25 per month. However, you have no choice if you want to see your kid play hockey and can’t make the travel weekends. This is what happens when there is no competition. Blackbear has no incentive to make it better.

Every time I go and try to switch to widescreen. It goes black, and I have to reload to watch a tiny screen.
Would like to keep if this can be corrected. Is it a rink issue or APP issue?
Or refund me.

You can't buy games through BlackBearTV you have to purchase a watch pass through the website but then you can sign in on BlackBearTV and watch purchased games on BlackBearTV .

Need to get pano, need to fix orientation view as every time I want to watch it switches back. Truly frustrating. I know it’s a work in progress, but we are paying a significant amount per yr to use your app because you gave us no other options. Let’s go!