NBC bets on high school sports

The Future. NBC Sports Next, a subsidiary of NBC, is rolling out a streaming service focused on youth and amateur sports called SportsEngine Play. It’s already recruited several schools, clubs, and amateur leagues across a variety of sports. If successful, the new service could become a key tool for students to secure NIL deals and overworked parents to catch their kids’ games even when stuck at the office.

Amateur hour
With professional sports rights all wrapped up, NBC is turning to your local rec league for more content.

• SportsEngine Play streams on-demand and live matches of everything from high school football games to community soccer matches.
• Games can be watched via video feed from coaches or spectators or from the 90 autonomous cameras installed at 85 venues.
• It also has video editing tools so players can create highlight reels from the streams and libraries of content centered on player development and training.
• There’s even a MasterClass-type offering called The Pros, featuring instructional videos from athletes like Michael Phelps, Shaun White, and Maria Sharapova.
• SportsEngine Play has three subscription tiers and will roll out a TV app sometime next year (it’s just on mobile right now).

With the global youth sports market hitting over $37 billion (twice the size of the NFL) and over 60 million American kids in some sort of program, SportsEngine Play could slyly turn out to be the most subscribed-to streaming service in the country —  besting Netflix’s almost 76 million users.