A Pixellot system installed at Grady High School in Atlanta. (Courtesy of Pixellot)
PlayOn! Sports and Pixellot have extended their partnership with the National Federation of State High School Associations that could lead to more than one million live high school sporting events streamed per year.
The parties began working together in 2017 with the distribution of 1,500 Pixellot robotic camera systems. These are guided by artificial intelligence to stream games automatically and even to detect highlights that can be clipped for distribution. PlayOn! Sports has operated the NFHS Network for six years now. With the contributions from Pixellot, the channel features more than 25,000 live hours of games and tournaments each month.
Under the terms of the new seven-year extension, Pixellot will provide 20,000 more devices over the next few years. The companion app enables fans to watch on mobile phones and to choose to view either an automatically produced HD feed or a panoramic angle of the event. Schools interested in Pixellot can partner with the NFHS Network for a discounted rate.
“We’re pleased to continue our successful relationship with PlayOn! Sports and the NFHS Network,” Pixellot CEO Alon Werber said in a statement. “This long-term contract will enable thousands of high schools to produce sports content at scale, through the network. We’ve worked diligently on our automated production solution to ensure an engaging and professional viewing experience for kids, their parents and the entire community. We’ve added new algorithms suited for additional sports coverage including baseball and softball and we will continue to add more automation layers to enrich the viewing experience.”
Pixellot recently raised $30 million in its Series B investment round. The company has sold around 2,500 robotic camera systems thus far, meaning this partnership extension represents an 800-percent increase.
SportTechie Takeaway
While Pixellot also works with elite clubs in both Europe and Mexico, its scale of operation at the amateur level is astonishing. Between partnerships like this one with the NFHS and a previous one with NBC’s SportsEngine, Pixellot is democratizing sports streaming for high schools. The system can also be used in conjunction with apps like ScoreStream, which reports scores and images from more than 15,000 high schools.
