海外来风:美国青少年体育赛事直播产业市场价值已达百亿美元(上篇)
Fueled By Family Viewing and Recruiting Purposes, Youth Sports Streaming is Now a $10 Billion Business（Part 1）
受家庭观看和招募需求的推动，青少年体育赛事直播如今已发展成为一个价值100亿美元的产业（上篇）
原文转载自Sport Business Journal
As the offensive coordinator of Concordia University, an NAIA school a half-hour west of Lincoln, Neb., Greg Nelson used to spend every Friday night traversing the state for recruits. He’d watch the first half of one high school game, then drive to a nearby school to take in the second half of another.
作为康考迪亚大学（一所位于内布拉斯加州林肯市以西半小时车程的NAIA院校）的进攻协调员，格雷格·尼尔森过去常常每个星期五晚上奔波于内布拉斯加州各地，寻找合适的球员。他会先看完一场高中比赛的上半场，然后驱车前往附近的学校观看另一场比赛的下半场。
Nelson still gets on the road some for those invaluable in-person looks and conversations with a prospect, but just as often he’ll hunker down in his living room. Two games will be streaming on his computer, a third on his iPad perched on the coffee table and a fourth on his phone, which he’ll rest on his lap.
尼尔森现在仍然会偶尔出差，与潜在球员进行宝贵的面对面交流，但更多时候，他会窝在客厅里。他的电脑上会播放两场比赛，放在茶几上的iPad上会播放第三场，而放在腿上的手机上则会播放第四场。
“I can watch four games in the 7 o’clock hour, and I can watch four totally different games in the 8 o’clock hour,” he said, noting that the western third of Nebraska is in the Mountain time zone, “and cover a huge part of our recruiting base.”
“我可以在晚上7点看四场比赛，也可以在晚上8点看四场完全不同的比赛，”他说道，并指出内布拉斯加州西部三分之一的地区位于山区时区，“这样就能覆盖我们大部分的招生区域。”
Instead of seeing four teams play in person and spending the night away from home, Nelson can see 16 teams — greatly widening the funnel of possible recruits — and not be so far from his family.
与其像以前那样，只能现场观看四支球队的比赛，还要在外过夜，尼尔森现在可以观看16支球队的比赛——这大大拓宽了潜在招募对象的范围——而且离家人也不远。
Nelson is uniquely positioned to appreciate the growing media exposure for youth sports as he has helped create the supply through his day job as a senior vice president at Hudl, the tech provider that started as a coaching analysis company. Over time, Hudl began helping athletes use the platform to compile and publish highlights for recruiting purposes, which in turn fed the demand for full-game feeds. Hudl acquired streaming provider BlueFrame in 2022 to power that service and offer better production value.
尼尔森对青少年体育媒体曝光度的提升有着独特的理解，因为他作为Hudl的高级副总裁，在业内也参与了相关内容的制作。Hudl是一家技术提供商，最初是一家教练分析公司。随着时间的推移，Hudl开始帮助运动员利用其平台制作和发布集锦视频以用于招生，这反过来又刺激了对完整比赛直播的需求。2022年，Hudl收购了流媒体提供商BlueFrame，以增强其服务能力并提升视频制作质量。
“Obviously during COVID it took off,” he said. “The need to be able to provide greater access to content for those schools and groups was the No. 1 thing that drove our streaming side.”
“显然，在新冠疫情期间，这项服务迅速发展起来，”他说道。 “为这些学校和团体提供更多内容访问渠道的需求，是我们发展流媒体业务的首要驱动力。”
Millennials and prior generations were lucky to have a family member or coaching assistant bring a camcorder to their sporting events so that athletic memories could be preserved on VHS. But at high school, club and youth competitions these days, you’re likely to find an AI-powered camera and any number of handheld smartphones recording multiple angles, often sharing the footage live through an app or on YouTube.
千禧一代和更早的几代人很幸运，他们的家人或教练助理会带着摄像机到场观看体育赛事，这样他们就能用VHS录像带保存下精彩的运动瞬间。但如今，在高中、俱乐部和青少年比赛中，你很可能会看到一台人工智能摄像机和无数部智能手机从多个角度拍摄，并经常通过应用程序或YouTube实时分享这些画面。
“In 2016 when we started, it was like, ‘OK, now high-level high school games could be produced,’” said Sandeep Hingorani, BallerTV EVP and co-founder. “Now we’ve reached a place in society where every game needs to be produced.”
“2016年我们刚起步的时候，感觉就像是‘好吧，现在高水平的高中比赛也能制作成视频了’，”BallerTV执行副总裁兼联合创始人桑迪普·辛戈拉尼（Sandeep Hingorani）说道。“现在，我们已经到了每场比赛都需要制作成视频的地步。”
The numbers are staggering:
TeamSnap CEO Peter Frintzilas described youth sports streaming as a $10 billion market “that not many people are talking about outside of those that are covering youth sports.”
TeamSnap 首席执行官 Peter Frintzilas 将青少年体育赛事直播市场描述为一个价值 100 亿美元的市场，“但除了那些报道青少年体育的人之外，很少有人谈论它。”
Pixellot streamed about 1.5 million games across 14 sports in 2025; Hudl eclipsed 1 million, a number that has doubled in the last two years.
Pixellot 在 2025 年直播了 14 项体育赛事的约 150 万场比赛；Hudl 的直播场次超过 100 万，这一数字在过去两年里翻了一番。
Roughly 600,000 of those games are through Pixellot’s NFHS Network collaboration with PlayOn Sports, at times attracting 100,000 viewers for the designated games of the week. NBC SportsEngine Play is another major Pixellot partner.
其中约 60 万场比赛是通过Pixellot 与 PlayOn Sports 合作的NFHS Network 平台进行的，有时每周的指定比赛能吸引 10 万观众。NBC SportsEngine Play 是 Pixellot 的另一个主要合作伙伴。
BallerTV will stream up to 50,000 games on peak youth sports weekends.
BallerTV 将在青少年体育赛事高峰周末直播多达 5 万场比赛。
ESPN’s Wide World of Sports near Orlando has 25 Spiideo cameras installed to capture video from just about every competition on its sprawling Disney World campus.
位于奥兰多附近的 ESPN 体育世界安装了 25 台 Spiideo 摄像机，用于拍摄其庞大的迪士尼世界园区内几乎所有比赛的视频。
Hockey streaming company LiveBarn sold for a reported $400 million to private equity firm GTCR as the first of what’s expected to be many investments in the youth sports space. KKR made a major investment in PlayOn in 2022.
据报道，冰球流媒体公司 LiveBarn 以 4 亿美元的价格出售给了私募股权公司 GTCR，这笔交易是 GTCR 在青少年体育领域众多投资中的首笔。KKR 于 2022 年对 PlayOn 进行了重大投资。
“Youth sports was a sleeping giant asset class,” said Scott Bushman, director of media partnerships for Spiideo, an AI-powered sports performance and video broadcasting firm. “Maybe for a long time, it flew under the radar.”
“青少年体育就像一个沉睡的巨人资产类别，”人工智能体育表现和视频广播公司Spiideo的媒体合作总监斯科特·布什曼说。“也许很长一段时间以来，它都被忽视了。”
The landmark deal shaping the future of youth sports distribution began in 2013 when the National Federation of High School Associations worked with PlayOn to launch the NFHS Network, a subscription-based digital aggregator of scholastic sports. That accelerated in 2017 when Pixellot joined as a partner, making its AI-powered cameras available at a discount to schools that signed onto the NFHS Network. By 2020, terms changed, and those cameras became free to users, leading to nearly 10,000 installations in the U.S. alone. In 2025, the partnership was extended for five more years.
这项具有里程碑意义的合作协议塑造了青少年体育赛事分发的未来，其开端可追溯至2013年。当时，美国高中体育协会联合会（NFHS）与PlayOn合作推出了NFHS Network，这是一个基于订阅的学校体育赛事数字聚合平台。2017年，Pixellot加入成为合作伙伴，为签约NFHS Network的学校提供折扣价的人工智能摄像机，进一步加速了这一进程。到2020年，合作条款发生变化，这些摄像机对用户免费开放，仅在美国就实现了近1万次安装。2025年，双方的合作关系又延长了五年。
The benefit of AI automation — BallerTV, Hudl, FloSports, PlaySight, Spiideo, Trace and Veo are among the other entrants — is that high school athletic directors, club administrators and tournament organizers can “set it and forget it.” There’s no need for a camera operator to track the action, as the AI has been trained to do that, or for a producer to add graphics. The goal is to make the technology reliable and ubiquitous because there are no do-overs.
人工智能自动化（其他参与者包括BallerTV、Hudl、FloSports、PlaySight、Spiideo、Trace和Veo等）的优势在于，高中体育主管、俱乐部管理人员和赛事组织者可以“一劳永逸”。无需摄影师追踪动作，因为人工智能已经过训练，可以自动完成；也无需制作人添加图形。这项技术的目标是可靠且普及，因为没有重来的机会。
“When you capture a game, that needs to work. You can’t miss a moment,” Pixellot CEO Doron Gerstel said. “In a teenager’s life, at this period of time, this moment is everything.”
“录制比赛时，必须确保万无一失。你不能错过任何精彩瞬间，”Pixellot 首席执行官 Doron Gerstel 表示。“对于青少年来说，在这个阶段，每一刻都至关重要。”
Viewership is a volume proposition. Most streams may only attract a dozen folks tuning in, all of whom share a last name with a participant, but that adds up the with the scale of these streams. And there are exceptions.
观看人数取决于观看规模。大多数直播可能只有十几个人观看，而且他们都与直播参与者同姓，但考虑到这些直播的规模，这部分人数加起来也相当可观。当然，也有例外。
“Parents are going to be your core audience regardless of sport, regardless of level,” PlayOn Sports President BJ Pilling said, but added, “It wasn’t uncommon to have over a hundred thousand viewers for some of those big marquee games, which was awesome to see. It’s that broader recruiting fan base. It’s that sports fan that’s home on Friday night that’s watching those bigger marquee games.”
PlayOn Sports总裁BJ Pilling表示：“无论什么运动，无论哪个级别，家长都将是你的核心受众。”但他补充道：“一些重磅比赛的观众人数超过十万并不罕见，这令人振奋。这得益于更广泛的球迷群体。正是那些周五晚上待在家里观看这些重要比赛的体育迷们。”
BallerTV’s rise followed a key event in 2016. This was around the time that Facebook Live and YouTube were growing, as was Periscope and other user-generated content streams, but they were all disparate — the thesis was to centralize and commoditize the availability.
BallerTV的崛起源于2016年发生的一件关键事件。当时，Facebook Live和YouTube正在蓬勃发展，Periscope和其他用户生成内容直播平台也同样如此，但它们各自独立——其核心理念是将内容集中化并商品化。
Two California powerhouse high school programs — Mater Dei and Chino Hills when LiAngelo and LaMelo Ball were starring at the latter — were meeting in Platinum Division final of the Tarkanian Classic in Las Vegas. BallerTV provided fans a place to watch from in the Golden State.
两支加州篮球强队——马特戴高中和奇诺岗高中（当时利安杰洛·鲍尔和拉梅洛·鲍尔兄弟俩正效力于奇诺岗高中）——在拉斯维加斯举行的塔卡尼安经典赛白金组决赛中相遇。BallerTV为身处加州的球迷提供了一个观看比赛的平台。
After that, Hingorani said, “We had people knocking down our doors to get this technology to their events, and so we quickly had to figure out how we scale this thing, how do we monetize this thing? And eventually settled on a model where all the content lived behind a paywall.”
之后，欣戈拉尼说：“很多人蜂拥而至，希望将这项技术应用到他们的活动中，所以我们必须迅速找到解决方案，思考如何扩大规模，如何实现盈利。最终，我们决定采用付费墙模式，将所有内容都放在付费墙后。”
—— 未完待续 ——
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