Under Armour has signed on as the first “anchor partner” of the NFHS Network, a startup digital high school sports subscription service that hopes to attract 10 million visitors and 45 million page views this academic year.
The network, owned in part by the National Federation of State High School Associations and its member associations, also says it will aggregate rights to 19,000 high schools and stream as many 70,000 high school sports events during the current school year. During the 2013-14 school year, it streamed 28,000 events.
Under Armour gets category exclusivity within footwear and apparel as well as digital advertising inventory. It will develop content that could be out as soon as the fourth quarter. Under Armour also gets pass-through rights for its retailers.
“This offers us connectivity to the high school athlete, who is the core customer for our brand,” said Brian Cummings, Under Armour vice president of team sports marketing. “Since we partnered with MapMyFitness [Under Armour acquired online workout tracker MapMyFitness last year for $150 million], we’re looking for more digital and social connections to athletes, and this looked like something that really was a deep tie into athletes and grassroots, which is what we’re both all about.”
NFHS Network Chief Revenue Officer Andrew Saltzman said he had been working on this deal since the spring.
“High school is a fragmented market, but one so many advertisers want, so we’re trying to offer the only real program there with scale,” he said. Saltzman would not say how many subscribers had signed up for the network, but users pay from $9.95 a day to $119.95 for access over 12 months.
NFHS and the state associations own a combined 52.5 percent of the NFHS Network, while Atlanta-based PlayOn Sports owns 47.5 percent.
