Terms of Service

Pancake is run by PANCAKE LLC (“we”, “us”), based in Colorado, USA. By using Pancake you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use it.

1. What Pancake is

Pancake is a comment section for live sports. Each game has one shared conversation, so people watching the same broadcast can talk about it as it happens.

Pancake does not show you the game. It has no video, no audio and no live scores. You watch the game however you normally watch it, and Pancake sits beside it.

Pancake is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to any sports league, team, broadcaster or streaming service — including the NFL, the NBA, the NHL, Major League Baseball, any of their clubs, or anybody who broadcasts their games. Team and league names appear only to say which game a room is for.

2. Who can use it

• —You must be at least 13 years old. If you are under 18, you need a parent or guardian’s permission.
• —Reading is free and needs no account. Anybody with a link to a room can read it.
• —Commenting needs an account, because somebody has to be answerable for what gets written.

3. Your account

• —Use an email address you actually control.
• —Keep your password to yourself. You are responsible for everything posted from your account, so if you think somebody else has got into it, email us straight away.
• —One account per person. Do not sign up on somebody else’s behalf, and do not use an account you were asked to stop using.

4. Your name

The first time you sign in we ask what you want to be called. We never publish a surname — not even if your sign-in provider gave us one. Two limits on what you can pick:

• —“Pancake”, and any way of spelling it, is reserved. That includes names that merely contain it, because “Pancake Official” impersonates the app better than “Pancake” does.
• —Do not pretend to be somebody else — another person on Pancake, a real public figure, or anybody official.

We may change or remove a name that breaks either rule.

5. The house rules

Pancake is meant to feel like watching a game with people. So, do not:

• —attack, harass, threaten or bully anybody;
• —use slurs, or abuse anybody over their race, religion, sex, sexuality, disability, nationality or anything else of that kind;
• —post sexual content;
• —post anybody’s private information — real names, addresses, phone numbers, workplaces — including your own;
• —impersonate anybody;
• —spam the room, advertise, or post links to things people did not ask for;
• —post anything illegal, or anything encouraging anybody to do something illegal;
• —try to break, overload or get around how Pancake works, including its moderation;
• —scrape or bulk-collect other people’s comments or names.

One thing that is explicitly fine: swearing about a dropped pass. Pancake is a sports room. Some words come out as emoji, which is a house style rather than a punishment.

6. How moderation actually works

We would rather tell you plainly than have you find out:

• —Every comment is checked automatically before it appears. Attacks and slurs are refused outright. Ordinary profanity posts with the word swapped for an emoji.
• —Anybody with an account can report a comment, and reports go to a person who reads them.
• —We may delete any comment and ban any account, at our discretion, without warning. Being banned means you can read rooms but no longer write in them.
• —There is no formal appeals process today. If you think a decision was wrong, email Tyler@pancake.watch and a human will read it. That is the whole process, honestly described.
• —A record of reports is kept, including after the reported comment is deleted, so that a pattern of baseless reporting is visible. This is explained in the Privacy Policy.

We are not obliged to monitor everything, and we do not claim to catch everything. An automatic word filter cannot read intent, and we are a small operation. If you see something bad, report it — that is the mechanism that works.

7. What you write

You keep ownership of your comments. They are yours.

By posting, you give us permission to store, display and distribute them within Pancake — which, because rooms are public, means showing them to anybody who opens that room’s link. That permission lasts as long as the comment is on Pancake. You confirm that what you post is yours to post and does not break anybody else’s rights.

Two things to understand before you type. Your comments are public — anybody with a room’s link can read them, with no account, during the game and long after it. And you cannot delete your own comments today; there is no button for it. If you want one removed, email us and a person will do it by hand.

If you think something on Pancake infringes your copyright, email Tyler@pancake.watch telling us what and where, and we will look at it and remove it if it does.

8. What we do not promise

Pancake is free, and it is provided as it is.

• —It may go down. It runs on free hosting and a free database, and we do not promise it will be available at any particular moment — including during a game you were looking forward to.
• —Game times are entered by hand and may be wrong. Do not plan your evening around them.
• —The catch-up clock is a best effort, not a guarantee. It can hold the room back 30 seconds or a minute so that a stream running behind does not get spoiled, and it cannot promise you will not see a spoiler. It does not know how far behind your television actually is, somebody may simply type what just happened, and if you are further behind than a minute it will not be enough. If being spoiled would genuinely ruin a game for you, do not rely on it.
• —We do not vet the people in a room. Other people’s comments are theirs, not ours, and we do not endorse them.
• —We may change, pause or stop Pancake, or any part of it, at any time. If we shut it down for good we will try to give reasonable notice.

To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, including that Pancake will be uninterrupted, error-free, or fit for any particular purpose.

9. Limits on what we owe you

To the fullest extent the law allows:

• —We are not liable for indirect or consequential losses — for example a spoiled game, a lost conversation, or anything you missed because Pancake was down.
• —Our total liability to you is capped at what you have paid us, which is nothing, or $100, whichever is greater.
• —We are not liable for what other people post. If somebody is abusive to you on Pancake, report them and we will act, but the comment is theirs.

Some places do not allow these limits. Where that is true, they apply only as far as the law permits, and nothing here removes a right you cannot legally give up.

10. If things go wrong between us

You can stop using Pancake at any time, and email Tyler@pancake.watch if you want your account removed. We may suspend or remove your account if you break these terms.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Colorado, and any dispute belongs in the state or federal courts of Colorado.

11. Changes

If we change these terms we will update the date at the top, and say so on the site if the change is significant. Continuing to use Pancake after a change means you accept the new version.

12. Contact

Tyler@pancake.watch — for anything: a bad comment, a ban you think is wrong, a question about these terms, or a mistake in them.