Nine months after being put on the market, MaxPreps has a new home.
PlayOn announced that it has bought the long-running prep sports media platform from Paramount’s CBS Sports. The acquisition brings MaxPreps alongside its new owners’ other high school media brands GoFan, VidSwap and the NFHS Network.
The sale does not include CBS Sports’ other high school sports properties 247Sports and Scout Media. Financial terms were not disclosed, but PlayOn CEO David Rudolph described the negotiation as a competitive process. “Like most deals … they probably would have loved for us to pay more, and we probably would have loved to pay less, which says it probably landed about where it’s supposed to,” Rudolph said in a video interview.
Moving into a space long held by local newspapers, MaxPreps was launched in the summer of 2002 to cover high school sports. The site became popular due to its ability to crowdsource scores, rosters and schedules from coaches, athletes and schools. In time, MaxPreps expanded into college recruiting.
Aiming to supplement its College Sports Television (now CBS Sports Network) and expand its portfolio of sports and entertainment websites, CBS acquired MaxPreps for $43 million in 2007.
As he discussed the deal, Rudolph said he put the new acquisition to use to watch his daughter, a high school senior, play in her last home soccer game.
“Whether you’re the fan, the student athlete, the parent, the grandparent, whatever you need to experience high school sports … we want to make it an awesome experience,” he said while noting his daughter’s team was up 1-0. “We’ve done that on the streaming side, on the ticketing side, and now bringing MaxPreps into the fold, that really lets us kind of complete that circle.
“For me personally, this is the fulfillment of a 15-year vision; like we finally got the last piece to the puzzle.”
PlayOn, based in Atlanta and nearby Alpharetta, was originally a division of Turner Broadcasting (and the larger Time Warner), digitally producing and streaming college sports. It was spun out of Time Warner in 2008 and began streaming high school sports in 2009.
In 2013, PlayOn launched the NFHS Network, a joint venture with the National Federation of State High School Associations, as a subscription service for people to watch high school sports, including basketball, football, wrestling and cheerleading. In April 2022, PlayOn merged with GoFan, a ticketing and fundraising platform for high school sports that was founded in 2001.
Though the company now owns several platforms that ideally serve the same consumers of high school sports, Rudolph said there are no immediate plans to consolidate all of them into a super app for a unified user experience. “I do think we will be looking at that, but I also think we’ve got to protect some of the custom-built consumer journeys that we create,” he said. “It’s still going to have to make it very easy and intuitive for the fan to be able to do the very specific action that they’re looking for.”
Youth sports has become an active investment market recently, with private equity titans (and sports team owners) David Blitzer and Josh Harris making headway through Unrivaled Sports. PlayOn itself is a benefactor with KKR as a significant investor alongside existing shareholder and venture capital firm Panoramic Ventures.
That’s not lost on Rudolph, who noted that youth sports—both through high schools and club sports—have provided lower price points for investors looking to tap into those highly engaged customer bases.
“I think there are more and more people who are looking for ways to invest in sports, but don’t want to spend $6 billion to have a team that may or may not turn out to be a smart financial investment,” he said, noting the recent sale of the Boston Celtics. “I think they’re naturally looking at youth sports as a space. It’s a really fragmented space … so there are [more] opportunities to get involved.”
Last June, CBS Sports announced that it was exploring a sale of the site and enlisted Inner Circle Sports to assist in the process. LionTree Advisors (financial advising) and Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP (legal counsel) advised PlayOn on the acquisition.
The move is the latest in a string of transactions by Paramount in recent years to pay off its debt. The media conglomerate sold PopCulture and ComicBook, formerly under its CBS Interactive division, to Savage Ventures last August. In 2021, Paramount sold CBS’ famed “Blackrock” headquarters and the network’s studio center in separate transactions for a combined $2.61 billion. It has previously fielded offers for BET, the Black-themed cable network that it purchased for $2.3 billion in 2000.
Paramount awaits approval of a merger with Skydance, which is expected to close at some point in the first half of this year.
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Nine months after being put on the market, MaxPreps has a new home.
PlayOn announced that it has bought the long-running prep sports media platform from Paramount’s CBS Sports. The acquisition brings MaxPreps alongside its new owners’ other high school media brands GoFan, VidSwap and the NFHS Network.
The sale does not include CBS Sports’ other high school sports properties 247Sports and Scout Media. Financial terms were not disclosed, but PlayOn CEO David Rudolph described the negotiation as a competitive process. “Like most deals … they probably would have loved for us to pay more, and we probably would have loved to pay less, which says it probably landed about where it’s supposed to,” Rudolph said in a video interview.
Moving into a space long held by local newspapers, MaxPreps was launched in the summer of 2002 to cover high school sports. The site became popular due to its ability to crowdsource scores, rosters and schedules from coaches, athletes and schools. In time, MaxPreps expanded into college recruiting.
Aiming to supplement its College Sports Television (now CBS Sports Network) and expand its portfolio of sports and entertainment websites, CBS acquired MaxPreps for $43 million in 2007.
As he discussed the deal, Rudolph said he put the new acquisition to use to watch his daughter, a high school senior, play in her last home soccer game.
“Whether you’re the fan, the student athlete, the parent, the grandparent, whatever you need to experience high school sports … we want to make it an awesome experience,” he said while noting his daughter’s team was up 1-0. “We’ve done that on the streaming side, on the ticketing side, and now bringing MaxPreps into the fold, that really lets us kind of complete that circle.
“For me personally, this is the fulfillment of a 15-year vision; like we finally got the last piece to the puzzle.”
PlayOn, based in Atlanta and nearby Alpharetta, was originally a division of Turner Broadcasting (and the larger Time Warner), digitally producing and streaming college sports. It was spun out of Time Warner in 2008 and began streaming high school sports in 2009.
In 2013, PlayOn launched the NFHS Network, a joint venture with the National Federation of State High School Associations, as a subscription service for people to watch high school sports, including basketball, football, wrestling and cheerleading. In April 2022, PlayOn merged with GoFan, a ticketing and fundraising platform for high school sports that was founded in 2001.
Though the company now owns several platforms that ideally serve the same consumers of high school sports, Rudolph said there are no immediate plans to consolidate all of them into a super app for a unified user experience. “I do think we will be looking at that, but I also think we’ve got to protect some of the custom-built consumer journeys that we create,” he said. “It’s still going to have to make it very easy and intuitive for the fan to be able to do the very specific action that they’re looking for.”
Youth sports has become an active investment market recently, with private equity titans (and sports team owners) David Blitzer and Josh Harris making headway through Unrivaled Sports. PlayOn itself is a benefactor with KKR as a significant investor alongside existing shareholder and venture capital firm Panoramic Ventures.
That’s not lost on Rudolph, who noted that youth sports—both through high schools and club sports—have provided lower price points for investors looking to tap into those highly engaged customer bases.
“I think there are more and more people who are looking for ways to invest in sports, but don’t want to spend $6 billion to have a team that may or may not turn out to be a smart financial investment,” he said, noting the recent sale of the Boston Celtics. “I think they’re naturally looking at youth sports as a space. It’s a really fragmented space … so there are [more] opportunities to get involved.”
Last June, CBS Sports announced that it was exploring a sale of the site and enlisted Inner Circle Sports to assist in the process. LionTree Advisors (financial advising) and Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP (legal counsel) advised PlayOn on the acquisition.
The move is the latest in a string of transactions by Paramount in recent years to pay off its debt. The media conglomerate sold PopCulture and ComicBook, formerly under its CBS Interactive division, to Savage Ventures last August. In 2021, Paramount sold CBS’ famed “Blackrock” headquarters and the network’s studio center in separate transactions for a combined $2.61 billion. It has previously fielded offers for BET, the Black-themed cable network that it purchased for $2.3 billion in 2000.
Paramount awaits approval of a merger with Skydance, which is expected to close at some point in the first half of this year.
