High school sports offer untapped potential and plenty of unique challenges for distributors, said panelists during a session on Day 1 of the ’14 NeuLion Sports Media & Technology Conference. Here are some quick hits from the panel:
ON BUILDING SCALE:
* Home Team Marketing President Pete Fitzpatrick: “I’ve heard a couple of words to describe sports in general. They’re local and tribal. You can’t get more local and passionate than high school sports. High school is local to the point where it’s neighborhood-centric. However, I think if you work wisely, you can build that scale from the ground up.”
* BigTeams CEO Clay Walker: “All of us have the ability to reach people at the local level… A lot of it is sort of like the church bulletin. It’s the local plumber and the local florist. There’s a lot of that coming through this system. The challenge is how do you scale that, and that’s what we’re all trying to solve here.”
* USA Today VP/Content Gerry Ahern: “There is the opportunity, even though it is hyper local content, to have types of stories, types of content that are going to resonate: The student manager coming off the bench to hit a three pointer, the six-lateral play to end a game ... and owning the intellectual right to that content, suddenly you have the ability to take this story that’s the biggest story in Denver, but it resonates across the nation.”
ON THE ROLE OF ADVERTISERS:
* Fitzpatrick: “At this level, when you have a sponsor, they are actually helping the high schools run their state championships, helping the high schools with media equipment, helping with students getting broadcasting time. It’s seen as this incredible value proposition. They want to get into an authentic sponsorship.”
ON THE FUTURE:
* PlayOn! Sports CEO David Rudolph: “This is probably a decade-long process for this to really mature. For us, [the key] is really for consumers to have the expectation that they’re going to be able to watch these games. It’s still a little bit of a novelty now. It’s ‘Oh, this is cool.’ But I think this generation as they come through, there will be more of an expectation of, ‘Why couldn’t I see my game?’”
