WPIAL awards streaming rights to NFHS Network; future of free viewing of championships in doubt

By: Chris Harlan
Wednesday, June 14, 2023 | 2:48 PM

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High school sports fans likely will have to pay to watch WPIAL football and basketball championships after the league awarded video streaming rights for its playoffs to the NFHS Network.

The WPIAL informed Trib Total Media of the decision Wednesday.

The network is associated with the National Federation of State High School Associations and charges viewers a subscription fee. WPIAL executive director Scott Seltzer said he hadn’t seen details of the agreement with the NFHS Network but was aware the league was moving in that direction.

Seltzer said the decision to award NFHS Network the postseason streaming rights was made by Teall Properties Group, an outside agency contracted by the WPIAL.

“It is a concern that we have,” Seltzer said of charging fans to watch championships online. “We know change is never really accepted, but there’s not a whole lot we can do about that change.”

The NFHS Network also has a partnership with the PIAA for exclusive video streaming rights for state playoffs.

Current NFHS Network subscription rates are $79.99 a year or $11.99 a month. The network, along with digital-ticketing company GoFan, is owned by Atlanta-based PlayOn! Sports.

Trib Total Media also bid for the WPIAL video streaming rights, attempting to maintain a partnership that started in 2017. The Trib previously held exclusive audio rights for WPIAL postseason broadcasts but opted out of that arrangement to embrace video streaming.

The WPIAL last week awarded postseason audio rights to KDKA Radio.

“We put in an offer that would have paid Teall Properties Group three times our previous contract rate to ensure our audience could continue to watch high school sporting events free of charge on TribLIVE’s HSSN,” said Trib Total Media President and CEO Jennifer Bertetto. “Although we are disappointed by the decision, our commitment to high school streaming coverage will remain strong, and we will continue to offer the streaming of regular-season games on our network for free.”

The Trib has streamed — for free — more than 10,000 high school sports broadcasts since HSSN was created in 2017. That included exclusive video coverage of all six WPIAL football finals last fall and the 12 WPIAL basketball finals — boys and girls — in the winter. HSSN also streamed WPIAL championships for soccer, swimming, baseball and softball, among other sports.

“Our partnership with the Trib was always a good partnership, and even before that with MSA,” Seltzer said. “It really wasn’t a decision anybody in this office had a lot of control over.”

Seltzer said the WPIAL four years ago entered into an agreement with Teall Properties Group to handle all of the league’s rights packages and sponsorship deals. He said the WPIAL holds veto power only in certain circumstances. For example, if the WPIAL board thought a deal wasn’t appropriate for high school athletes, such as a tie-in with alcoholic products, then the WPIAL could object.

Before the partnership with TPG, the WPIAL handled rights contracts in house.

“We had people who were reaching out and getting sponsorships for us, and this group approached (then-WPIAL executive director Tim O’Malley) and the board,” Seltzer said. “They said they’d offer us, at the time, I think, $200,000 per year. We weren’t even coming close to that kind of money on sponsorships and marketing.”

The NFHS Network in recent years has installed autonomous video cameras in some high school gyms and football stadiums. Seltzer said he wasn’t sure how many WPIAL schools had those cameras installed, but their presence or absence won’t be a factor when choosing playoff sites.

“We’ll still pick all of our venues and where we have our games,” Seltzer said. “That’s not going to change.”

PlayOn! Sports didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Trib Total Media, which includes the daily Tribune-Review newspapers and TribLIVE.com, purchased what became the High School Sports Network from Management Science Associates Inc. in 2017.

The HSSN website drew 18 million pageviews in 2022, with more than 3.2 million users site-wide. That included 2 million broadcast pageviews by 460,000 users.

Along with live events, the website maintains a vast archive of broadcasts. No registration is required.

Chris Harlan is a TribLive reporter covering sports. He joined the Trib in 2009 after seven years as a reporter at the Beaver County Times. He can be reached at charlan@triblive.com.