Brand Safety and High School Sports Streaming Monetization
For ubiquitous high school sports streamer Hudl—which, according to VP of media Adam Gouttierre, broadcasts 5,000 football games every Friday night of the season and hosts high school highlights on almost every active NFL player—monetizing content means embedding brands in their streams that align closely with the content. They are primarily “locker room brands” such as Gatorade and Nike that are not only relevant to sports, but also aspirational for the athletes in that they’re also associated with established stars at higher levels. In this clip from Streaming Media 2025, Gouttierre and Chris Pfaff of Chris Pfaff Tech Media discuss the importance of matching brands with content when your audience is predominantly “communities of passion.”
Brand Partnerships
Pfaff asks Gouttierre to speak about brand safety with his clientele. He wonders how long Hudl has been using embedded brand sponsorship.
Gouttierre says it’s been part of live for about three years. “We also have 12 million highlights a year. And a lot of those highlights are created by athletes. And so we’ve had longer partnerships with Nike and Gatorade that want to reach that audience,” he notes. He describes Nike’s sponsorship approach: “they want to reach active athletes in context” and during live.
With Gatorade, Hudl did a sponsorship called Fueling Greatness. “Hudl’s been around for almost 20 years, and that means almost every NFL athlete—every NFL athlete but one, he’s a punter from Australia—has their highlights on Hudl. [We have a] majority of WNBA stars, majority of NBA stars,” Gouttierre explains. He gets back to Gatorade: “So Fueling Greatness with Gatorade was Caitlin Clark, Jayson Tatum, and Josh Allen. Three stars … with three different sports. We mashed up their Hudl highlights from when they were in high school with their professional highlights, and it was a really great piece of branded content and then delivered that back on the Hudl platform to athletes and in the live sporting event.” It created full-circle moments for both the content and the athletes’ careers, he says.
Like Guerrilla Marketing
Pfaff points out that this approach is similar to guerrilla marketing “because you’re getting in with these different leagues as well.”
“Absolutely,” Gouttierre agrees. He describes the term Hudl uses for companies such as Nike and Gatorade, which is “locker room brands,” because athletes request to work with those brand due to their aspirational feel. Seeing Caitlin Clark’s high school highlights could inspire college-bound athletes.
Pfaff jokes, “[W]hen I think of ‘locker room,’ I think AXE body spray. You should work on that one.”
Gouttierre laughs.
“But I think that’s an interesting way that you … have really backed into what is essentially a massive way to organically integrate these brands into what you’re doing,” Pfaff praises him.
“The NFL, for context, we’re not competing with them,” Gouttierre notes. “They’ll have 16 games across the weekend. We’ll have close to 5,000 football games on a Friday night. And so it’s changing mindsets on [how] you can reach high school youth sports at scale. … You can reach these communities of passion at scale in cool ways.”
Join us February 24-26, 2026 for more thought leadership, actionable insights, and lively debate at Streaming Media Connect 2026! Registration is open!
Related Articles
Beyond supporting safety and alignment for streams monetized through integrated branding, AI creates a number of new possibilities for enhancing brand value, like a logo imposed on a sponsored athlete's shoe, according to Global Logic's Scott Davis, who digs into the emerging opportunities and strategic use cases as well as progressive innovations in ad integrations leveraging AI in specific sports in this discussion with Chris Pfaff Tech Media's Chris Pfaff at Streaming Media 2025.
09 Dec 2025
How critical to the future of the live sports streaming experience is multiview, now touted as a key feature in a growing number of DTC apps? Do viewers really want to tech-direct the games they watch or follow multiple games at once? Is it most valuable to gamblers? Ateme's Francois Guilleautot, Major League Table Tennis's David Guinan, Roku's Joe Franzetta, and Ring Digital's Brian Ring speculate on the many possible futures of multiview streaming in this clip from Streaming Media 2025.
08 Dec 2025
From the ultra-low latency that effective prop betting requires to more curated and personalized experiences, today's sports fans bring a complex array of demands to their live sports streams, as Swerve Sports' Christy Tanner, Transmit's Leslie Falbo, and Elecard's Victoria Tuzova discuss in this clip from Women in Streaming Media's Industry Insights session at Streaming Media 2025.
08 Dec 2025
In this Q&A, Hudl VP of Media Adam Gouttierre discusses the growth of high school sports as a streaming niche, the dedication of hyperlocal fan bases, opportunities brands are seeing and seizing on the Hudl platform, and how he believes those monetization opportunities will evolve in the coming years, particularly as the role NIL deals play in amateur sports continues to expand.
14 Aug 2025