New Platform To Integrate Creation, Distribution of High School Sports Video

By Ken Kerschbaumer

An alliance of industry-leading companies, including HighSchoolSports.net and PrepAthlete.com, has been formed to bring high school sports-video creation and distribution to the next level. And with more than 16,000 high schools working with the companies on some level, the unified platform could gain marketplace traction.

“What’s been missing has been a common platform for high school sports video and a safe place for our children to view it,” says Adolph Santorine, president of HighSchoolSports.net. “We believe that our working together is the solution.”

For the first time, game-breakdown technology is integrated to produce team highlight clips and automatically make them accessible to the local community and the media. CoachComm and Game Plan are driving the MPEG-4 “related technologies that, behind the scenes, will allow schools to produce team highlight clips and make them available to fans and local media.

“The best part of this alliance is that it will make it easier and faster for coaches to edit their game video, execute Internet game exchange, and get video and stats to the local media as well as college recruiters,” says CoachComm President Peter Amos. “These are all things today’s high school coaches want or need to do but have been held back because of slow and complex technology. This is a big win for them.”

Initially, the collaboration will allow video to be repurposed for publicity and for use by the players themselves. More than 2 million still photographic images and nearly 100,000 video highlights are available, including full-game video for nearly 30,000 athletic contests.

“Instead of schools’ having to corral a number of different vendors,” says PrepAthlete.com President Jim McKelvey, “we offer a unified solution for their digital-media and information needs.”

HighSchoolSports.net has more than 6,500 schools subscribing to the Schedule Star athletic-management system that feeds HighSchoolSports.net. The content for each school includes the most up-to-date and accurate schedules for all sports at all levels. Visitors have the unique ability to review pictures, videos, and scores for their favorite teams.

Game Plan President Dave Glover says the alliance is open to other vendors and service providers. “We’re looking for people to contribute technology and/or media expertise or marketing expertise,” he says. “A camera manufacturer or digital video software or post-production software would be a wonderful thing.”

The platform will go live at the end of June and includes video-capture technology, the ability to tag metadata to those assets, and simplified uploading of video. A common video and data standard behind the services offered by the members of the Alliance will streamline workflow processes like attaching scores and other information to a file.

“The alliance is very open, and the intent is to create a strong brand for hyper-local sports content,” says Glover. “This ensures better visibility for the schools.”

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