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PlayOn! Sports Network is the nation’s premier high school sports media company. PlayOn! is the largest rights holder, producer and aggregator of high school sports events distributed across television, the Internet and mobile devices. By combining State Athletic Association postseason content with the regular season events of member schools, PlayOn! Sports provides viewers the most comprehensive high school sports content available and marketers with a unique multi-media platform solution to reach teens, young adults and families. PlayOn! Sports is headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., with offices in the Midwest and California.
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History
The PlayOn! Sports Network began as a division of Turner Broadcasting and Time Warner, Inc. The company launched in August 2006 and primarily focused on producing and digitally streaming collegiate sporting events. In 2008, the company was purchased by David Rudolph, Buckhead Investment Partners and Imlay Investments in a spin out from Turner Broadcasting. The tipping point for focusing on high school sports came in early 2009 when the group produced a webcast of a Georgia state wrestling championship. The company anticipated limited viewership, but more than 100,000 people tuned in. Today, PlayOn! is the largest high school sports media company, producing over 50,000 high school events annually.
In partnership with over 42 State High School Athletic Associations, PlayOn! manages the NFHS Network www.NFHSnetwork.com, where fans can view a wide variety of high school sporting events, including playoff games, state championships and other games of interest. PlayOn! also works with over 1,300 high schools to produce and distribute additional regular-season games. The NFHS Network offers subscriptions to customers who wish to view the live and on-demand streamed content.
PlayOn! Sports includes six operating divisions: the NFHS Network, School Broadcast Program (SBP), Digital Scout, PlayOn! Sports Properties, PlayOn! Sports Technology and PlayOn! Sports Productions.
The NFHS Network
The NFHS Network is a joint venture of the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), its member State Associations and PlayOn!. The NFHS is located in Indianapolis, Indiana and is the national leadership organization for high school sports and performing arts activities. PlayOn! manages the day-to-day operations of the NFHS Network, which delivers live and on demand high school events at www.NFHSnetwork.com as well as through mobile apps.
School Broadcast Program (SBP)
The NFHS Network created the School Broadcast Program (SBP) to provide member high schools with educational tools to help grow their own broadcast programs and assist the Network with producing regular season games. Each school is provided a branded site on the NFHS Network that allows students to produce and distribute high quality events throughout the year, including regular season sports, graduations, memorials, announcements and plays. The program provides students with hands-on production and broadcast experience while also promoting their high school. These educational opportunities allows schools to participate while also earning money for school programs.
Digital Scout
Digital Scout, a sports stats tracking app, was acquired by PlayOn in February 2014. Digital Scout provides coaches and teams with easy-to-use mobile stat tracking apps to collect statistics and track team and player performances in real time, while also giving fans live access to detailed play-by-play statistics and box scores on the NFHS Network site. Scores and detailed stats from the Digital Scout apps are integrated into the NFHS Network framework and displayed alongside real-time sporting events such as football and basketball.
PlayOn! Sports Properties
PlayOn! Sports Properties partners with State High School Associations to package media rights with marketing assets to create unique opportunities for local sponsors of high school sports.
PlayOn! Sports Technology
PlayOn! Sports Technology operates a comprehensive technology platform that enables high-quality, low-cost productions of live sports events to be delivered via the Internet to consumer devices.
PlayOn! Productions
PlayOn! Sports Productions produces over 7,500 live sports events each year for both television and digital distribution for a wide variety of clients.