There’s an exciting new development this fall sports season for LocalLive Networks and the school districts that are signed up to receive the service. For the 2025-26 academic year, the streaming outlet that brings high school sports and other events to audiences live and on-demand from about 70 schools in the tristate area, including many in Westchester, is partnering with NBC
SportsEngine that will provide participating districts and the public with superior technology to exponentially enhance their viewing experience.
Kevin Devaney Jr., LocalLive’s vice president of digital content for the past seven years since shortly after the Stamford, Conn. – based company was launched, said the deal between the two entities commenced on July 1, but effectively begins when school reopens in September for the start of fall sports. Devaney said that after NBC initially approached LocalLive a few years ago, the company more recently determined that the best path forward was to tap into “an existing superpower company” that can provide a better website, camera technology and administration portals.
In the coming months, the public will see some of the improvements that LocalLive had long sought but found difficult to execute because of a finite amount of money and time. Now, there will be the ability for student athletes and their families to create highlights packages for college recruiters or personal use, greater connectivity to social media and the development of an app to allow a viewer to follow whatever high school teams they want at their fingertips, Devaney said.
Over the next one to two years, all cameras that had been installed inside school gymnasiums and at athletic fields will be replaced, bringing improved quality to viewers, he said.
“I think people are going to see a significant increase in quality of video, Devaney said. “We always had a high percentage of viewership that was on smartphone, or iPhone. So, the quality wasn’t as noticeable until you went on a larger computer or people casting up their TV now, and they’d open it up and say, ‘It’s a little grainy.
That’s kind of like a stretch video.’ Now we won’t have that. NBC Sports offers us far better resolution quality and cameras.”
Best of all for school districts is that the upgraded service won’t cost them additional money for the upcoming school year, Devaney said. There will be some changes to the website, now found at www.locallive.tv, which may take a bit of time to get used to, he said. Once everything is in place, the public can reach the service at www.sportsengineplay.com or they will be redirected there from LocalLive’s website.
“So, I think people over time will adjust to the new world,” said Devaney, who was a sportswriter for 12 years with The Journal News and spent another eight years working for Cablevision’s MSG Varsity before joining LocalLive in 2018. “I think they’re going to go to LocalLive and say, ‘Where is everything?’ There’s going to be a redirect, but for the most part you’re going to see the changes pretty quickly.”
Schools will continue to have the option of having other events streamed as well. Much of the content generated is sports-related with Devaney estimating that about 97 percent of the more than 200 schools throughout the U.S. contracting with LocalLive have sports streamed. But there are plenty of private schools and some public-school districts that use the service for Board of Education and PTA meetings or performances and concerts from their auditoriums.
One area athletic director praised LocalLive and the impact that it’s had on the community. Chris Drosopoulos, who leads athletics at the Briarcliff Union Free School District, said its addition about five years ago into the district “has been an integral part of our student athletes’ experience.”
LocalLive’s cameras were added to their high school gymnasium and athletic fields and all of the district’s athletic events at those venues are streamed, he said. The relationship between the district and LocalLive has been strong, and he expects that continue with the NBC SportsEngine partnership.
“The world has changed,” Drosopoulos said. “I know my wife and I, we work 100 hours a week and just trying to watch our kid is a huge undertaking, so doing the live streaming, a couple of our constituents they’re away on trips, and they really appreciate it.”
The ability to bring high school sports to local communities was somewhat novel when LocalLive’s founder, Nelson Santos, hatched the idea to live-stream games in 2017. He created the human controlled cameras that operated remotely. These cameras could be installed in school gyms and athletic fields and are operated by personnel off-site.
After MSG Varsity folded at the end of 2017, Devaney, an Armonk resident, was brought in to help LocalLive because of his 20 years of experience mostly covering the high school sports scene in the lower Hudson Valley and throughout the metropolitan area. For years, Devaney had cultivated strong working relationships that helped offset some school officials’ fears about having cameras mounted around a campus.
“By doing it this way, it allowed us to stream more than just the high school football game on Friday night or the big basketball game,” he said. “It allows us to stream everything that goes on.”
After the onslaught of the pandemic, it wasn’t known how long before spectators would be allowed back into the stands, which made streaming of games a priority, Devaney said.
The viewership for most games is pretty consistent, he said, with the exception of some marquee matchups such as Bergen Catholic-Don Bosco football games, two longtime parochial school rivals with powerhouse programs in northern New Jersey. Pivotal matchups that are close late in games also attract more interest, but so, too, does Arlington High School games in Dutchess County, likely because many friends and parents decide to watch rather than make the long trip.
“It’s all pretty consistent and it’s all centered around just how good the game is going. They just tune in,” Devaney said. “They find the game’s tied in the fourth, let’s tune in; the game’s a blowout, you have lower viewership.”
Most of the local public schools in the area that have contracted for LocalLive have done so through BOCES. But now there will be improved service.
“I’ve always hesitated to ever change, so we feel we’re at a good place with all of that,” Devaney said.
