Guy Sveinbjornson coaches minor hockey in Saskatoon. Talking to a player, he told CBC News in 2024, that he will sometimes look up and realize "there's a microphone right behind us." Somewhere, he said, "there's a grandma and a grandpa watching."
That camera belongs to a subscription streaming service, and for plenty of families, it is the only seat they have at the game. When Lethbridge, Alberta, added LiveBarn to its municipal arenas in 2024, the Lethbridge Herald reported that the streams were motion-activated, "coming online when at least two skaters hit the ice."
In the summer of 2025, LiveBarn cameras in Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge, Ontario, kept streaming to subscribers after hockey season ended, while city day camps used the arenas. At two Kitchener rinks, they had been running off-schedule since about 14 April, the city said. It learned of the problem on 22 July.
LiveBarn lists 2,170 venue partners across all 10 provinces and 49 states on its website. In March, the Montreal company was acquired by Ascent Sports Group, a platform backed by Chicago private equity firm GTCR, in a deal Sportico valued at roughly USD 400 million. In July, it launched analytics that turned the same feeds into shot maps and shift charts.
The rink camera is becoming more valuable to families, coaches, and investors at once. Waterloo Region's summer raised the question that comes with it. When a third party's camera sits permanently in a public building, who decides when it is on?
A Camera that Pays for Itself
For a municipality, the offer is simple. When Niagara-on-the-Lake brought LiveBarn into two arenas in 2025, there was no cost to the town, according to The Lake Report. LiveBarn supplied and installed the equipment, ran its own internet service, and operated the system under a four-year contract. At the time, families paid CAD 27.95 a month for a basic subscription or CAD 37.95 for premium, the paper reported.
"It's like Netflix," Kevin Turcotte, the town's manager of parks and recreation, told the paper. The camera follows the play, he said, using "puck-following technology." In Lethbridge, each camera offers two views, one that follows the action and a panoramic view of the whole ice surface.
Rinks can share in the revenue. LiveBarn says venues receive "a quarterly percentage revenue share based on subscribers gained."
During a 2023 debate in Bourne, Massachusetts, a recreation board member put the rink's share at 30% of subscribers' fees, paid quarterly, the Bourne Enterprise reported. He added that 118 of Massachusetts' 140 ice rinks already had the system.
From Feed to Data
On 29 July 2026, LiveBarn launched LiveBarn Analytics, built with Sportlogiq, a Montreal computer vision company that Teamworks acquired in January. Teamworks says Sportlogiq is trusted by 97% of NHL teams. The youth product adds video-linked shot maps, player cards, shift tracking, and playlists for coaches, sold in Core and Elite tiers to teams that play in LiveBarn venues.
"Parents can quickly jump straight to the moments that matter," said Ray Giroux, LiveBarn's chief executive, who moved up from chief operating officer when the Ascent deal closed.
The footage already does more than entertain. Hockey Saskatchewan's discipline co-ordinator sometimes receives about 20 video submissions a week, general manager Kelly McClintock told CBC in 2024, and clips have led to suspensions of players and coaches. "Especially in facilities that have LiveBarn, that's on pretty well 24/7," he said.
The Summer the Schedule Slipped
The cameras in Waterloo Region were installed for minor hockey. In Waterloo, the city later said there was a "high likelihood" that the stream at Waterloo Memorial Recreation Complex had been live from 1 May to 23 July 2025. When staff found out, campers were moved out of the arena and the cameras were unplugged, CBC reported. Kitchener and Cambridge reported the same problem in their own arenas that week. All three cities reported the incident to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, which said it was in the "early stages of gathering information."
LiveBarn said no footage had been downloaded or shared, and that Waterloo's stream had drawn "minimal views." Its explanation went to how the cameras work. "LiveBarn cameras operate on a motion-detect basis, meaning a rink operator must schedule or block off times when they are blacked out," the company told CBC News. It attributed the incidents to "human error" by the venues or the minor hockey associations that manage the streaming schedules, and said on-ice video is typically archived for 30 days.
Evan Light, an associate professor at the University of Toronto's faculty of information, put the exposure plainly. "Anything that occurred in that arena in the past three months has been livestreamed to anybody who has a subscription," he told CBC.
By LiveBarn's description, the cameras respond to motion on the ice unless someone has blocked out the time. A U13 practice and a day camp look the same to a motion sensor.
Who Holds the Switch
The cities' own statements show how responsibility was split.
The City of Kitchener told CBC it had no agreement with LiveBarn; the contract was with the Kitchener Minor Hockey Association, which administered the platform. Waterloo did have a contract, which it said gave LiveBarn "all responsibility for the cameras and associated equipment, including the operation and use, and signage," while the minor hockey association had access to schedule its games. Waterloo's signs told visitors the cameras were operated by LiveBarn and gave a LiveBarn contact for questions.
So the building belonged to the city, the camps were city programs, the league had access to set the streaming schedule, and the camera belonged to LiveBarn.
"This highlights how tricky it can be to work with private vendors in municipal or public settings," Krystle Shore, an adjunct assistant professor of sociology and legal studies at the University of Waterloo, told CBC.
Some operators had already planned for this. The University of Guelph told CBC its LiveBarn agreement includes a clause blocking out specific dates, so its August hockey camp would not be available to subscribers. Calgary, which has permanent HomeTeam Network cameras at a list of city arenas and fields, says its cameras focus "only on the field or surface of play," with no stands, locker rooms, or public spaces, and that user groups choose whether to take part.
Signage carries a lot of the load elsewhere. A notice in a Saskatoon rink tells visitors the complex is "monitored by video cameras for commercial purposes" and that participants and guests waive any claim over the broadcast.
Ron Kruzeniski, then Saskatchewan's information and privacy commissioner said that whether streaming breaches privacy law depends on who owns the rink, which jurisdiction applies, and whether the league has collected consent forms.
What the lens can see matters too. In the Bourne debate, the local rink manager described a Boston-area case in which someone used the LiveBarn app to check activity inside a rink while stealing from members of a men's league. A camera installed for hockey records whoever happens to be within its field of view.
Kitchener Writes the Rules
Ten months later, Kitchener had a policy. On 25 May 2026, the city's community and infrastructure services committee approved a livestreaming policy for city sports and recreation facilities, and council approved it on 29 June, according to the committee and council minutes. The staff report, CBC reported, called it "among the first of its kind in Ontario."
Under the policy, the city's director of sport must approve any equipment installation. Groups that rent city facilities sign livestreaming agreements, must get permission from participants or from the parents and guardians of minors, and must tell the city if permission is refused so the cameras can be turned off. Facilities must post clear signage when streams are running.
Bob Cheyne, Kitchener's director of sport, described the day-to-day changes to councillors. City staff now review the schedules of minor hockey sets for the cameras, he said, and at the end of the season they made sure "everything was shut down."
"We've actually unplugged the cameras," he said.
LiveBarn also tightened its stream windows, which had been set in 15-minute increments and could run into the next group's ice time. The trade-off, Cheyne said, is that viewers may miss the end of a game that goes to overtime.
The staff report said the policy shifts the focus from "risk avoidance to risk management."
What the Integrator Inherits
For integrators putting cameras into municipal recreation space, Waterloo Region is a specification lesson. By LiveBarn's account, the cameras did what they were set to do. The failure sat in who set the schedule, who could see it, and what the camera did when nobody had told it anything.
The useful questions follow from the incident.
What does the camera do when no event is scheduled?
Who sets the schedule, and can facility staff see it?
What does the signage say, and who does it tell people to call?
What is in the frame besides the playing surface?
And when something goes wrong, who in the building can turn it off without waiting for the vendor?