One great way to get more parents and families interested in and excited about youth sports is by sharing engaging content online. When you have fun and entertaining content on your website and social media platforms, you’re likely to reach more potential players—and get them excited to register.
However, if you’re new to the world of sports content creation, you might not be sure where to start. So we’ve got some youth sports content ideas plus a handful of tips for creating good sports content.
Let’s get started.
Youth sports content ideas
If you’re unsure what types of content to share, look to other youth teams and sports content creators to see what they’re doing. To help you get inspiration, we’ve got nine ideas and examples below.
1. Team/league updates
One of the most basic ideas is sharing team or league updates so both interested and registered parents can keep up with important dates, like registration, skills evaluations, season start dates, and more.
You can keep an “Updates” page on your website, but this is also the perfect type of content and information to share on your team’s social media outlets.
Take a look at this example on BRICK League Columbus’s Facebook Page:
The league is letting interested parents know that registration is open, along with a number of other details: the registration window, costs, where to register, and more.
If you have any other important updates for your league or team, sharing them on a social media platform accessible to all parents can be a great way to get the word out and keep people coming back to your social media pages.
📚LEARN MORE: The Best Youth Sports Website Hosting Sites
2. Live streams
Live streaming all of the games is another great way to generate fan engagement. Not all parents and family members can make it to every game, so making the games viewable in real-time online is a great use of your youth sports marketing strategy.
The Wisconsin Power Elite Basketball Club has a page on their website letting their fan base know how to get access to live events. Given that this is a youth basketball league, they’ve wisely made the live streams private so that not just anyone can view them.
Most social media platforms offer some sort of live streaming capabilities. If you also want to make sure your live streams are private, placing it behind a password-protected web page or streaming in a private Facebook Group can be a great idea.
You can then give parents and family members access to the live streams—or you can choose to charge for access, like if you’re live streaming your high school’s football games and want to give access to a larger audience.
3. Photo albums
Take photos of your players throughout the season, both at practices and games. Designate a parent on the team with a high-quality sports camera—or, at the very least, an eye for photography—who can take and share photos with the team.
SCC Flag Football put together photo albums on their website so parents can find pictures of their kids throughout the season.
Creating a webpage on your site for photos is a great way to share a large number of photos at once—but team photos can make great social media content as well. Create Facebook albums on your page or simply share a few photos each time your team has a game.
4. Sport information
Another great content type consists of sharing information about the sports industry in general or details and tips about your particular sport. There are a few different formats this type of content can be found in.
For example, the Boulder Bears Football team has a few different pages on their website with information: the FAQ (pictured below), a Player Equipment page, and a Player Safety page.
However, this information can be shared across your social media channels as part of your sports league’s digital marketing and content strategy.
Share information like:
- Important tips and information directly from sports media like ESPN
- Podcast episodes that dig into strategy about your sport
- Fun content from sports influencers that your players might like
- Helpful articles about your sport that players can learn from
5. Funny memes and videos
Share funny memes and video content on your social media platforms as well. TikTok is famous for its short-form video content—consider creating a TikTok account for your league or simply cross-posting entertaining TikTok videos onto your other social media platform.
Take a look at sports leagues and influencers to see what types of content they’re sharing. For example, the NBA has one of the most-followed TikTok accounts and could be a great place to find entertaining content to share.
Otherwise, you can search for or create your own sports-related memes and quizzes to share on your website and social media outlets.
6. Interviews
Interview the players, coaches, or other people involved in the organization and share those interviews on social media and your website. For example, you could put together a compilation asking each player their favorite move, how many goals (baskets, touchdowns, etc.) they’ve scored throughout the season, and other questions.
Or you could do a more in-depth interview with coaches and league staff about the sport, how the coach plans to win the season, how the league works, and other informational interviews to share online.
7. Challenges
Sports are filled with challenge opportunities—capitalize on those for some fun social media content for your marketing campaigns.
For example, you could film your players completing challenges like:
- Fastest mile
- Most baskets in 60 seconds
- Longest throw
- Hardest kick
Or other challenges related to your sport. Film them, then challenge your followers to try it out for themselves and share their results.
8. Products and merch
If you share products and merchandise as a way to raise money for your team, make sure you’re promoting those on your website and social media.
The Columbia Knights link their merch store from their main website, making it easy for parents, players, family members, and other local supporters to purchase shirts, shorts, buttons, and other swag to wear to show their support at sports events.
There are a number of online tools that leagues can use to make it easy to create and sell team-themed apparel to make money for your team.
9. Fundraisers
And speaking of making money for your team, incorporating fundraisers into your digital marketing strategy is a great way to raise even more money so your team can afford better uniforms, equipment, and field care.
Brick Sports has a donation page right on their website that they can easily share with parents in emails or on social media.
While a donations page is a simple way to fundraise for your league, there are several other fundraising ideas you can use online as well:
- Sponsorships/partnerships with local businesses
- Car washes
- Bake sales
- Concessions
- Silent auctions
Tips for creating good sports content
Ready to start creating your own content? Here are four key sports content creation tips to help you get started.
Understand your audience
Who is the main audience for your content? Think about who the fans are—likely locals, parents, and family members of the players. What types of content would resonate well with them?
For younger leagues, information about the sport itself can help parents understand more about what their kids are doing—and help them practice on their own time. Information like registration windows, costs, necessary equipment, practice times and places, and the like are helpful.
Parents also love to see photos of their kids playing sports, so focusing on photography and videography can be a great way to resonate with your audience.
However, leagues and school teams where teens are playing might cater content more towards the players themselves as they’re now of social media age. Sharing funny memes, podcast episodes, and sports moments might resonate more with this age group.
Get the right equipment
Next, you need to make sure you have all the right equipment for your content creation plan. Think about what you’ll need based on the types of content you plan to create and share.
Some of the equipment you might need to gather include:
- Tripod
- Microphone(s)
- Photo editing software
- Video editing software
- Graphic design software
- Social media scheduling software
There are a ton of tools out there for beginners that include templates for content creation and walk you through step-by-step how to get started. You’ll just need to look at your team budget to make sure you can afford each piece of equipment before buying.
Get permission for filming youth athletes
You need parental permission to take photos or film your youth athletes in case of privacy and safety concerns.
Make sure to put together waivers or permission slips for parents to sign. Be mindful of any parents who aren’t okay with their child being photographed or having those photographs shared publicly on your youth sports website or social media.
If any parents opt out, make sure those children either aren’t in any of the photos or videos or are properly blurred out for their privacy.
Build community around your content
Finally, be sure to build a community around your content so you can increase engagement, boost awareness around your league, and create content that your audience loves.
Start by creating content that speaks directly to your audience. During live streams, answer questions. Go live for Q&As so your viewers can ask questions in real time. Hold polls online to engage your followers.
However, you can also build a community just by being responsive online. Answer all comments and messages and become a reliable resource for your players, parents, and other locals.
And finally, involve your team and players in the content creation process itself. Ask your players for ideas for videos, social media posts, and more. You’d likely be pleasantly surprised with how many unique ideas you’ll get from the kids on your team.
Mention players in the caption when you use one of their ideas, as well. This will make parents excited and more likely to share your content on their pages, spreading the word about your league even further.
Make youth sports more engaging with sports content creation
The takeaway here is that your content creation process should be fun and engaging for both your youth sports organization and your audience. Let parents know where to find you online and they can help spread the word.
If you need the right platform for your sports team website and fundraisers, look no further than Jersey Watch. Our youth sports management software can help you get your website up and running quickly and easily so you can start registering players, raising money for your league, and more.
