A Scottish broadcasting company will tomorrow launch a new fundraising system which could revolutionise access to live sport on the internet.

Quipu TV was formed just two years ago, originally to provide enhanced coverage of Scottish cricket, but founders Jack McGill, Mike Stanger and David Holmes believe they are establishing a format that can allow every sport to transform how they market themselves.

Until now Quipu TV has relied on sponsorship and grant aid from governing bodies to fund their output and, having got the rights to Pakistan's forthcoming meetings with Scotland in Edinburgh and Ireland in Dublin at very short notice, they are currently seeking commercial sponsorship to the tune of around £25,000 for those matches.

However, they believe there is a new way for audiences to demand coverage of the events they want to see. It is that which has led the Scottish broadcasters to utilise their prospective coverage of the Netball Europe Open Championships in Aberdeen this year as an opportunity to experiment.

"We've run out of time to do this for the cricket, so this is our test event," said McGill, who presents all of their output. "We're going to a website called sport-funder.com, a crowd-sourcing website, and we're asking netball fans around the world based on the feedback we got from the World Premier Club Challenge in Glasgow, which was fantastic.

"It's the same as paying by subscription but it's putting the ownership of the coverage into the hands of the audience by directly contributing. By going on our page and showing your interest by contributing a fiver or a tenner or however much you want, you are saying: 'We want this on our screens.' If we get past a certain threshold then we can say we're going to do it. If we don't show the programme they get their money back."

The technology involved has been in use for some time by arts media outlets while pirate websites have used a similar approach to providing illegal access to high-end sport. However, for all that returns seem likely to be modest in the first instance, McGill believes this ground-breaking approach is the ultimate manifestation of Quipu's original philosophy to demonstrate "the democratising power of live streaming over a television model."

"I am certain that this is the first time in the UK that official sports coverage will be paid for through fan-funding and I'd be amazed if we're not the first in the world to do this for sport," he went on.

While superficially it is similar to mainstream broadcasters' pay-per-view programming the fundamental difference is that where they are aiming to capitalise on events that have mass appeal Quipu goal is to provide more niche audiences with what they want.

"There are a couple of really important strands in terms of fan engagement," McGill observed. "One is conversation with your audience and the second is making them feel invested in it. Those are the things that every major sports brand from Manchester United, Real Madrid and the Chicago Bulls down are striving for with their audience and some of them are so big that it's very difficult to manage.

"It's altruistic up to a point, but it needs to be commercially viable because we need to invest to develop. This is the start of the conversation with fans where you say this is our market testing, tell us what you want. Here's an event, we've got the rights so if you want it we'll give it to you.

"The slogan we're using is 'Your sport, your coverage' and that's our Twitter hash-tag from now on."

While Quipu is prepared to take on events anywhere in the world in order to bring in the level of business required to achieve that commercial viability they also aim to stay true to their roots by transforming coverage of minority sport in their home country. "The aim for us would be to become the leading independent production company in delivering international sports coverage," said McGill. "I certainly think that's achievable in Scotland because there is a lack of minority sport. This isn't a criticism of BBC Scotland or STV because outside broadcasting is ferociously expensive (but) we can do this at 10 per cent of the cost of a TV outside broadcast. "There is a gap in quality. Certainly we're not claiming to be Sky Sports HD, but what we lack in glossy sheen we have in immediacy and we are striving to improve the quality. During the netball we did our first HD production which was broadcast on all the big screens around the Emirates and apparently it looked fantastic, so that's a real step forward for us."