Michael Phelps of the United States celebrates on the podium during the medal ceremony for the men’s 200m individual medley final on Day 6 of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at the Olympic Aquatics Stadium on August 11, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Photo by Adam Pretty/Getty Images)Getty Images
In June 2016, NBC Sports Group acquired Sports Ngin, a software company that develops software and apps for youth sports organizations and leagues. It was NBC’s first foray into youth sports, but over the next few years the company acquired more than a dozen complementary technology companies, all now grouped under the SportsEngine brand.
This week, NBC is launching SportsEngine Play, a streaming service for live games and on-demand video for youth and amateur sports. The service is based on technology from Rapid Replay, a streaming startup that NBC bought last September.
“We’ve always been thinking about how we can really better connect SportsEngine to the great history and storytelling tradition of NBC Sports,” said Will McIntosh, president of NBC Sports Next and Fandango, who leads SportsEngine. “A few years ago we started thinking about what if we became the home for live streaming and on-demand video content for youth and recreational sports nationally in the United States? That’s easy to say. It’s incredibly difficult to achieve.”
NBC has a storied history and extensive experience executing contracts with major sports leagues and events such as the NFL, major Division I sports conferences, the PGA Tour, Notre Dame Football and the Olympics. According to McIntosh, these deals are very different from what SportsEngine is seeking.
In these major events, NBC makes a huge financial commitment and invests billions of dollars, but the transactions are with established leagues and organizations with which the company’s executives have close, long-term relationships. But while NBC spends much less money on youth sports than it does on major professional and college rights deals, the youth and amateur sports landscape is much more fragmented, making it harder and less efficient to understand all the players in the business.
“That’s why no one has been able to pull this off yet,” McIntosh said. “It’s incredibly complicated. You’re talking about tens of thousands of small deals (in youth sports) versus a Sunday night football game (NFL) that might have 20 million people tuning in to NBC or Peacock (NBC’s streaming service) to watch. It’s like 100 or 200 people tuning in at the same time. From that perspective it’s much different and much more complicated.”
The SportsEngine Play service has been in beta mode since July and McIntosh said the team working on it has received input from users and adopted any changes. The service allows people to watch live youth sporting events across the U.S., as well as highlights and other videos on-demand.
The live streams can come from numerous devices, including an iPhone or an autonomous camera installed in a field. NBC claims that more than 30,000 youth sports organizations use its technology platforms and applications for tasks such as registering children for sports and communicating between team parents and coaches. Therefore, the company hopes that the integrated audience will migrate and use the SportsEngine Play service.
NBC offers the service free to anyone who wants to watch the live streaming games, but charges for additional features such as on-demand viewing of games, access to editing tools, and hundreds of hours of instructional and development videos from world-class Retired athletes such as swimmer Michael Phelps, soccer player Larry Fitzgerald, volleyball player Kerri Walsh Jennings and soccer player Megan Rapinoe.
NBC got access to these videos of Phelps and other athletes through a deal with The Skills, a startup founded in 2020 that aimed to charge people for access to videos of famous people talking to them about sports and life General information.
“We hope these relationships (with Phelps and others) will be long-lasting,” McIntosh said. “We are also exploring other similar options. There’s a lot of this content that just hasn’t found the right place to live yet. We believe we have created this platform. I think we will continue to invest in either producing this type of content ourselves or managing these situations opportunistically, as we have done with The Skills and the athletes we have hired.”
Currently, SportsEngine Play subscription plans cost $9.99 per month or $79.99 per year. McIntosh expects most people will access the service for free for the live streams, so NBC will generate revenue from advertising those games.
“I would say we’re probably as excited, if not more excited, about that (advertising) aspect of the business model as we are about the subscription base,” he said. “Honestly, in a world where there are lots of different companies trying to get you to subscribe to things, we love the idea of keeping this as low cost or as free as possible and doing it in a way do it where you can do it.” You also won’t be flooded with ads that may not be relevant to you. I think you will find that we will continue to invest in maintaining low costs and through advertising so that we can make it easily accessible to as many parents and young athletes as possible.”
McIntosh hopes NBC can also integrate SportsEngine Play into its broadcast and cable channels, as well as the Peacock service. He said the NFL is looking for a media partner for flag football, a sport in which the league has invested heavily at the grassroots level. While no deal has been finalized yet, McIntosh could envision a scenario in which SportsEngine Play streams local and regional youth flag football competitions while the national championship airs on NBC and/or streams on Peacock.
“This is a great example of a deal we would like to do,” McIntosh said. “There will be other opportunities like this where we can bring together the full breadth and depth of our business to make a difference. “This is where I think that really drives home that in all aspects of what we do in sport .”
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I have been involved in professional, collegiate and intercollegiate sports for more than two decades. I was a staff writer in the Sacramento Bee’s sports department for four years before earning my MBA from Georgetown University in 2009. Since then, I have worked for medical and financial media companies and written freelance sports articles for The New York Times, USA Today, Vice Sports, Bleacher Report and numerous other publications and websites. I grew up in Rhode Island, graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in psychology, and now live in a suburb of Philadelphia with my wife, two daughters, and son.
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