Sports network weplay, which received nearly $4.5 million in funding earlier this year, has landed Pop Warner Little Scholars, Inc., as a new client. weplay will be powering the newly launched social network for Pop Warner, as a hosted group on the weplay platform (see it here). As the oldest youth football, cheer and dance organization, the necessity of an online community for connecting its new and existing members is undeniable in this day and age.
As there are a number of sports sites already oriented towards the youth, teen and college demographics, having an online community to enhance its website only makes sense. This network will be used for connecting not only the young athletes–coaches and parents can partake in the fun as well. So why not choose a more well known network platform like Ning?
weplay is a network that already had a focus on sports, and has a slew of known athletes already present on the site. Since the Pop Warner network will reside on weplay, there’s a mutually beneficial relationship that exist as a result. Being a part of the weplay network means that Pop Warner will have access to other weplay users. It’s a promotional perk that makes it a better option for Pop Warner. It also allows weplay to grow its user base fairly quickly. Gaining such clients for powering networks isn’t something that seemed to be on weplay’s initial to-do list, but I can’t say that I’m surprised to see the network move in this direction.
As far as sports networks go, the industry is still maturing and there’s plenty of room to still grow. It’s clear that the more established sports organizations are building out their online communities specifically designed for connecting various aspects of the industry, across a fairly wide range of ages. The white label solution is an easier sell than what we saw a couple of years ago, and we’ll continue to see the market expand as the online sector can be a great place for mass distribution of all media types.
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