A school stream costs money: cameras, a hotspot plan, software, and the time of the people running it. Local sponsors are the most common way to cover it, and most of them already support the school with fence signs and program ads. This guide covers what you can offer a business, how to package it for a season, how to price it from your own numbers, how to pitch it and how to deliver and report on every spot.
Check the rules first
Before you call a single business, talk to your athletic director. Ask:
- Who holds the streaming rights for regular-season and postseason games? In many states, postseason games can stream only to the NFHS Network, so your own sponsor package may not cover the playoffs. Find out before you promise a sponsor every game.
- Are there district or association rules about which businesses can sponsor school events? Alcohol, tobacco, vaping and gambling are commonly restricted.
- Does the money go to the athletic department, the booster club or a specific program? Settle that before you send an invoice.
Our guide to high school sports streaming rights lists the questions to ask.
What you can offer
Keep the menu short. Three or four kinds of inventory are plenty:
| Item | What the sponsor gets | How you deliver it |
|---|---|---|
| Break spots | A 30 or 60 second video commercial at timeouts, between periods and at halftime | Played in OBS during natural stoppages |
| Scorebug sponsor | Their logo on the score graphic, on screen for the whole game | The sponsor spot on the ScoreCastr scorebug |
| Presenting sponsor | "Tonight's game is brought to you by..." on the pregame title card, announcer reads at each half, the postgame thank-you | Title card graphics and the play-by-play script |
| Halftime feature | A guaranteed place in the halftime break, ahead of everyone else | A fixed, ordered break pod |
Don't sell what you can't deliver. Count your real breaks. A basketball game gives you timeouts, quarter breaks and halftime; soccer gives you halftime and very little else. Our guide to running sponsor commercials has a sport-by-sport table of where breaks fit.
Build season packages
Sell by the season, not by the game. One agreement covering "all home football and basketball games" is easier to sell, deliver and report on than a stack of one-night deals. A simple three-tier structure works for most schools:
- Supporter: a 30 second spot in the rotation at every streamed home game, plus a postgame thank-you.
- Partner: everything above, a 60 second spot, and announcer mentions at each half.
- Presenting: one business per sport, with the scorebug logo, the pregame title card and the first spot in the halftime break.
Limit the top tier to one sponsor per sport. Scarcity is what makes it worth more. Write down exactly what each tier includes, the games it covers and the date it ends, and give the sponsor a copy.
How to price it
There's no standard rate for school stream sponsorships, and you shouldn't guess. Price from your own data:
- Pull your viewer numbers. YouTube Studio, Facebook's Insights and Twitch's Creator Dashboard all show views and watch time for past streams. Use the last season's average per game, or your first few games if you're new.
- Count your inventory. Streamed home games, multiplied by the breaks per game you can actually run, multiplied by how many spots fit in each break.
- Look at what sponsors pay now. Ask your booster club what a fence sign, a program ad or a scoreboard panel costs. Your stream package should sit in the same range for a similar level of exposure, and bundling it with an existing sign is often the easiest sale.
- Cover your costs first. Add up a season of hotspot data, software and gear. Your packages together should cover that before anything else.
If you're brand new and have no viewer data, sell a lower-priced first season with the promise of a real report at the end. Next year you price from facts.
The pitch
Most sponsors are parents, alumni or longtime supporters. Lead with the community, not with impressions.
- Start with businesses that already sponsor the school. They've already said yes once. Offer the stream as an add-on to their sign or program ad.
- Bring one page. The tiers, what's in each, the games covered, and your viewer numbers if you have them. A screenshot of a past stream with a sponsor logo on the scorebug helps more than a paragraph.
- Say who's watching. Grandparents, deployed parents, alumni who moved away, families at a sibling's game. These are the people a local business wants to reach.
- Promise reporting. "Every month you'll get an email showing how many times your spot ran" is a strong close, because most local ads never come with proof.
- Make the spot easy. Many small businesses don't have a video. Offer a simple 30 second spot built from their logo, a photo and a voiceover, or have a student media class make it.
Deliver the spots on stream
Once you've sold the package, you have to deliver it every game, with volunteers running the stream.
Break spots: CommercialCue plays spots from Google Drive in OBS. The operator taps 30, 60, 90 or 120 seconds, and it switches to the ad scene, plays the spots and returns to the game on its own. A few features map directly onto sponsor deals:
- Campaigns have flight dates, an Active switch and a weight for each spot, which auto-balance to 100%. Only one campaign runs at a time, so build one per season (for example "Fall 2026") that holds every sponsor's spots, and give higher tiers a bigger weight so they play more often. If the campaign can't fill a break, CommercialCue falls back to the full library.
- Break pods are a fixed, ordered sequence. Use one for the halftime feature you promised your presenting sponsor.
- Advertiser separation: two spots from the same advertiser never play in one break. The advertiser is read from the filename, so name every file like MainStreetPizza-Fall-30s.mp4.
Scorebug sponsor: ScoreCastr's graphics set, on Starter and up, includes a sponsor spot on the scorebug. Add the presenting sponsor's logo before each game and check it on the preview before you go live.
Announcer reads: write them into the rundown at fixed points (pregame, end of each half, postgame) so the play-by-play voice doesn't have to remember.
Report back and renew
CommercialCue logs every break with its start and end time and the spots that played, and its campaign report shows breaks run, total plays and each spot's share for any date range. Combine that with your platform's viewer numbers and send each sponsor a short monthly email. Our guide to proof of play reports has a template you can copy.
Ask for the renewal in the last month of the season, while the games are still on, and bring the season's numbers with you.
Sponsorship checklist
- Athletic director has approved sponsors, rights and where the money goes.
- Inventory counted: games, breaks per game, spots per break.
- Tiers written down, with one presenting sponsor per sport.
- Prices based on your viewer numbers and existing sponsor rates.
- Spots received as MP4s, named by advertiser and length.
- Campaigns set with flight dates; presenting sponsor's logo on the scorebug.
- Monthly report sent to every sponsor, and renewals asked for before the season ends.