IdahoSports.com awarded exclusive state tournament audio streaming rights

BOISE — The Idaho High School Activities Association Board of Directors voted unanimously today in favor of awarding the exclusive state tournament Internet audio-streaming rights to IdahoSports.com. The contract is for five years and includes every state tournament sponsored by the IHSAA. The contract will start this fall and extend through the spring of 2021.

Starting this fall, exclusive video streaming rights belong to the NFHS Network, who will provide video streaming of sponsored state championship events on a pay-per-view/subscription basis.

IdahoSports.com has no plans to charge fans to listen to the audio web casts, citing two motivations in pursuing the audio-only rights.

“First and foremost, we love our job. Broadcasting high school sports is something we love doing and we wanted to stay involved as much as possible with the state tournaments,” Paul Kingsbury, IdahoSports.com’s owner and managing editor, said. “Secondly, we wanted to be able to provide the parents, families and fans that aren’t able to be there in person a way to at least listen to the games online without having to pay a fee.”

IdahoSports.com will continue to provide free video webcasts of games and events during the regular season and district tournaments, as it has done for 15 years. It was the first website in the country to regularly produce internet video broadcasts of high school athletics.

IdahoSports.com is the number one high school sports website in the state, generating over 250,000 page views per month. Along with video and audio webcasts, the Idaho-based company provides scores, schedules, rankings and photo galleries for high schools across the state. During the 2015-16 academic year, more than 1.5 million people tuned in to IdahoSports.com to watch a free webcast. A list of games and events that will appear on IdahoSports.com, which will be updated throughout the year, can be found at www.idahosports.com/gamestreams.