SI is finalizing an early July broad relaunch of SI Play, the youth sports registration portal it has been developing over the past year. SI Play will seek to collate typically disparate functions in the youth space, including registration, scheduling, coaching background checks, statistics and content sharing. The company has built SI Play from the assets of several firms acquired by parent company Time Inc., including SportsSignup, League Athletics, iScore Sports and Tourney Machine. SI Play will be supported by a mobile app that borrows some design elements from the recently debuted flagship SI app. SI Play CEO Jeff Karp, who has had previous stints at Wilson Sporting Goods, EA Sports and Zynga, said, "What we’re doing is aggregating a lot of these functions into a single holistic solution. Not only do we want teams and coaches to be populated and running, but we also want to celebrate the sports life that’s happening in this space, and that often gets lost in a lot of these platforms.” Much of SI Play will be free to users, supplemented by premium-level paid features. SI estimates that the U.S. youth participatory sports market amounts to roughly $14B in annual spending, and intersects with nearly 50% of Americans in some fashion. The company currently has no plans to expand SI Play to the adult recreational sports market.
