When Jackson Center defeated the Russia boys last Friday night, the ScoresBroadcast.com game listenership topped 3,600 IP addresses which were joined concurrently to the broadcast at a precise moment late in the fourth quarter.

This volume of listeners was a record-breaker for ScoresBroadcast for a regular-season boys basketball game. Russia and Jackson Center played Friday before a near sell-out crowd at the Tigers’ gym.

The free, online, play-by-play service was launched in 2006 and 2007 with the founding support of Lacal Equipment in Jackson Center. While the typical, maximum, simultaneous count for IP addresses is 2,200 to 2,600 in the second half of most broadcasts, the online audio stream draws an even better audience when the match or contest creates a lot of interest because of team records, league standings, or state rankings.

Russia, 11-1, and Jackson Center, 10-1, have now split their two regular season meetings. Each program has lost only that one game. Both the Raiders and Tigers should be ranked near the very top of the initial statewide Division IV AP Poll next week; polls were supposed to be released for the first time this season this week but were delayed due to technical issues.

Christian NetCast performs the hosting and serving for SCORES, the Shelby County Online Radio Entertainment System. It noted that the highest IP address count for last Friday evening’s contest doesn’t reflect the number that went in and out over the course of the game or “the number of individual people” who connected to the site for the play-by play. Those numbers would be considerably greater, NetCast pointed out.

Presently, the SCORES volume of listeners is consistently matching or exceeding its numbers recorded during January and February of 2020 when the pandemic significantly reduced in-person attendance at gyms.

Christian NetCast streams online programming for churches, schools, colleges, and some business organizations. ScoresBroadcast.com is “quite unique and does a great job providing an extremely valuable service,” it noted in evaluating the performance of its many clients.

The Fort Loramie-Lima Central Catholic regular season football game last October and the Redskins playoff contests versus Minster and New Bremen in November produced big listenership numbers for SCORES in late 2022.

SCORES is supported by a variety of business and industry throughout Sidney, Shelby County, and the region which benefit from the affordable marketing the special service offers. SCORES takes pride in creating on-air commercial content.

Online coverage this Thursday features the area’s headliner — the first Russia-Fort Loramie girls contest of the season. Fort Loramie collides with the Botkins boys in the Friday night clash aired by SCORES. Pre-game segments start at 6:55 PM each night.

This Sunday, play-by-play is streamed from the Fort Loramie MLK Classic. Air time is 1 p.m. for the Russia-Willard game.