Football 2026
Football 2026
Streamed live to anyone who wants it — grandparents in Ohio, the aunt working second shift, the player who got hurt in week two. Then it stays on your school’s channel for good.
What this is
Emerald Coast Connected covers Destin, Fort Walton Beach, Navarre, Santa Rosa Beach and 30A — local business, events and news, and high school football. We already produce live play-by-play here. This puts a picture on it, for your school.
Your game is not competing for attention against a school in Ohio. The entire audience is people who live on this coast.
Every game lands on your school’s page and stays there. No paywall, no account to watch, nothing buried by an algorithm three days later.
Every game stays online for good, free, with no subscription tier deciding how much a family can pull. Players cut their own highlight reels from it for recruiters, and coaches have the season in one place for banquet night and for next year’s install.
The money
It is a real number and we are not going to pretend otherwise — cameras, cellular, crew and hosting all cost something. What we will not do is put it on your budget.
Covers the whole season — all ten games, home and away — the equipment, training for your crew, replays hosted permanently, and the sponsor named on every broadcast.
One local business underwrites the season at $2,500. The booster club owns that relationship, and the sponsor is named on every game — live and in every replay after.
Most programs already know the business that would say yes to this.
If you would rather not chase it, we sell the sponsorship ourselves and carry the cost. The school still pays nothing and the games still run.
In that case Emerald Coast Connected retains the sponsorship revenue.
Either way there is no invoice to the school — no purchase order, and nothing that has to clear a budget cycle before kickoff. The only question is who signs the sponsor.
What it looks like
One camera in the press box, wide enough to hold both sidelines. Here is exactly what that gives you, and what it does not.
The full field, both sidelines, every formation and every play developing exactly as it does from the press box. For watching football — seeing the run lane open, seeing the safety bite — a wide shot is what you want.
Readable jersey numbers. On any camera framing an entire field a player is a few dozen pixels tall and the number is a handful of them. That is geometry, not equipment. If numbers on screen matter to you, say so now — it points to a different camera, and we would rather tell you than have you find out in week three.
Where your crew is in the booth we take their board feed, so the stream carries the same play-by-play as the radio. Where there is no crew, you get the crowd, the band and the PA.
For your players
The wide shot is not a compromise here. It is the shot college evaluators actually ask for — and now your kids have all ten games of it, free, forever.
College coaches are judging leverage, assignment, and what a player does away from the ball. A broadcast follow-cam hides every one of those. The wide press-box view shows all twenty-two players and the whole field — which is why coaching film has always been shot this way.
Every game is online permanently and free to watch. A junior building a highlight tape can pull his snaps from any game of the season without a subscription tier deciding how much film his family is allowed.
Ten games, home and away, in one archive that does not expire. Useful for install week, for banquet night, and for the parent who wants to send a link to a college coach without asking you to burn anything.
The fair question
This is the first thing every athletic director says, and it deserves a real answer rather than a reassurance. Here is ours.
The NFHS Network — the organisation most schools already work with — reports that more than 80% of their viewers sit 15 to 20+ miles outside the school’s radius, and states plainly that streaming does not reduce ticket sales at the gate.
Grandparents who cannot manage bleachers. Family out of state. A parent on second shift. The player who got hurt in week two. The away crowd who were never buying your tickets anyway. None of those are a seat you lost.
The gate is not really selling a view of the field. It is selling the student section, the band, the concession line and being in the building when it matters. A stream does not compete with that, and it has not anywhere it has been tried at this level.
Where a school already broadcasts on radio, that is the same test run for years — live coverage, full stands.
Clips travel. A play worth watching gets shared in the community all week, and we can put your next home game on screen during the broadcast and on the replay page. Remote viewers turn into attendees more often than the reverse.
And if you decide it is hurting you, we stop. There is no multi-year commitment and nothing to buy your way out of. Watch your gate for a season with the stream running — if the numbers move the wrong way, tell us and we take the camera down. We would rather lose the site than argue with your ticket receipts.
What we need
Your press box crew runs it. The people already up there for the clock and the PA. We supply the equipment and we train them — it is a case, a mount, a power lead and one button. About fifteen minutes to learn, a couple of minutes to set up on game night.
A spot in or on the press box with a clear, unobstructed view — ideally not behind glass. A roof rail or an open window is perfect.
Power. One standard outlet is all it needs.
Written OK from the school to stream your regular-season games.
A look at any streaming agreement you already have. If you have an NFHS Network or Pixellot arrangement we need to read it first. We are not asking you to break a contract, and postseason runs through the FHSAA separately.
Road games work the same way. The kit travels in a case, so whoever from your side is going anyway sets it up in the visitors’ box exactly as they do at home. If nobody can make that trip, we simply carry your five home games and leave it there — the sponsorship does not change either way.
Already own a Veo, a Hudl Focus, or something similar? We may not need to install anything at all — several of them can send their picture straight to us. Tell us what is in your press box and we will check.
Where it goes
The version worth building is one where your students run it — a broadcast-journalism program that happens to produce a live game.
The score box, the lower thirds, the replays, the commentary. Kids running an actual broadcast, and something real to put on an application.
Equipment, a teacher who wants it, and a semester to stand up. Honestly a next-year conversation — we raise it now because it changes what we would install this season.
Basketball and volleyball are easier than football in every way that matters. The camera sits close to the action, so the picture is better and the gear is cheaper.