We Play connects youth, parents, coaches and pros

About 52 million children a year participate in organized sports leagues, according to the National Council of Youth Sports…and now there’s a Website catering to them. (Read Coverage from CNet)

From NYT

The venture, WePlay.com, a social networking site for youth sports — something like Facebook for young athletes — is expected to start in mid-April. The site caters to youth athletes, parents and coaches — a vast audience. About 52 million children a year participate in organized sports leagues, according to the National Council of Youth Sports.

Young athletes will be able to set up a profile, post pictures, communicate with friends and share videos of games. Parents will be able to get practice schedules, coordinate car pools and find out which equipment to purchase. Coaches will be able to communicate with their players and parents, as well as learn about strategy and other skills.

“Two hundred forty million people in America are one degree of separation from youth sports,” said Steve Hansen, the chief executive of WePlay. “Youth sports is held together by e-mails, phone calls and clip boards. We want to change that.”

The videos of the athletes as children, as well as footage from recent shoots — a camera crew will join LeBron James at his high school gym in the coming weeks, for example — will surround the more traditional features of social media. The site will be mostly advertiser supported, initially in the form of sponsorships integrated in to the site, and later, banner ads.

Madison Avenue has long seen the value of aligning with sports teams, and over the years has been reaching further down the athletic food chain: first professional, then college, and more recently high school. Takkle, a social-networking site for high school athletes, is partially owned by Sports Illustrated. With WePlay, advertisers will have the chance to go even younger.

At the same time, WePlay can also be seen as an attempt on the part of the professional athletes to gain more control over how their images are used commercially — in other words, why let ESPN run video of their Little League games free, when they can do so and sell advertising alongside it?

The idea originated at C.A.A., which about 20 months ago began a sports division and whose agents have been trying to find ways beyond the traditional endorsement deal to increase an athlete’s earning potential, by starting companies in which the players can be owners.

We first heard about this site back in Febuary at the Sports Marketing 2.0 VIP Summit in NYC.

Our next summit events are coming up soon: May 6 in San Francisco and June 12 in Chicago.

Get the details here