🥎 Creators Are Hitting Youth Sports Scene

There is definitely validity to the concerns raised in the FOS piece, and it is inevitable the same dynamics will move further down the food chain and into middle school (and younger) sports.

But I also think some of these school and state officials are making this a bigger deal than it needs to be.

Obviously there are some differences, but Perfect Game has demonstrated a blueprint for embracing creator content while also instilling order. I would also add — as a proud former high school sports reporter — that there have always been people “covering” games with spotty professionalism and questionable need to be there. They just were not as obvious as, well, young kids in pajamas.

The safety issues are real. Football sidelines are dangerous places. And there should be vetting of anyone who gets media access to high school athletes. Costs are obviously an issue whenever background checks come up and you have to be careful it does not become a barrier that slides into First Amendment ground. But there should be a workable solution driven by state associations or the schools themselves.

My bigger takeaway: There is a huge business opportunity for high school sports content and coverage that pairs traditional media approaches with creator trends. It may not necessarily scale to an national model, but local operators can do well for themselves.

Interest is high. Passion is higher. There are myriad potential revenue avenues — live streams, photos, ads, brand partnerships, even publications. You can’t put a TikTok in a scrapbook, after all. And there is a real chance for differentiation when most legacy outlets are disappearing or pulling back and the creator approach seems likely to keep ruffling some feathers.

Every Surf coach will have access to two platforms in a dedicated Surf environment. Coaches' Voice's Education Platform brings masterclasses, courses and certificated CPD from many of the world's leading coaches, alongside Surf's own Football Focus content. Coaches' Voice's Session Planner gives every coach professional animated session design tools and the Surf curriculum built in, with ready-made sessions across age groups from day one. Selected Surf coaches will also have the opportunity to participate in Coaches' Voice specialist courses, focused on development in key areas such as scouting and analysis.

I legit LOL-d at the flippant nature of that retort. Well played.

And I certainly did not have the brand manager for a Panama-based book as the one to call out this topic, but here we are.

I wrote the following last November about this:

“In the case of youth sports, athletes are paying to participate, often unwittingly signing away their broadcast rights on a very limited basis, and they have zero control on how images are used other than to not participate at all.

Taken to the extreme, you can see cases where parents would not be allowed to even take photos and videos of their children, especially if they are participating in a game with broader public appeal and higher monetization potential. In those cases, how much revenue is passed back to leagues, teams, players and families? There’s not really a two-way negotiation happening here the way it is in pro sports. You could argue this is where the NCAA was 20 years ago.

Again, edge cases, but these are things the industry should be thinking about as technology and monetizeable broadcasts enter the fray. At what point do we go too far in the copyright weeds with someone’s child? We’re probably not there yet, but the time is coming.”

To be clear, every family participating in the Little League World Series knows what it’s signing up for, and happily does so because it’s an unforgettable experience. But you can also argue many families felt the same about D1 college football and basketball until it became clear lots of entities were making money except for the players.

With more youth and high school games receiving national attention, you bet this topic will come up again.