Surf Partners With NextPro Making $99 Highlight Reels Available to Soccer Players
Originally known as Game Time, NextPro kicked off in 2010 and has a professional network of videographers that produce professional highlight reels for youth soccer players — at a fraction of the cost normally charged.
Announcing a new partnership with Surf to capture games at events produced by Surf Cup Sports, NextPro’s goal is to put the game video in the hands of parents and players and let them have fun.
Amin Edalat, Chief Executive Officer at NextPro, LA’s #1 resource for youth sports content, is excited to bring high-quality video content to the youth soccer landscape.
SoccerToday Interview With Amin Edalat on how his company is revolutionalizing the industry
Diane Scavuzzo: What makes your video company different than all the others?
Amin Edalat: We started the business back in 2011, primarily focused on lacrosse. Over the years, we started expanding to multiple sports and now include soccer, baseball, softball, lacrosse, and basketball, and to some extent football, primarily seven on seven.
Diane Scavuzzo: You have just announced a new partnership with Surf and will be on the fields capturing video at events produced by Surf Cup Sports. Can you tell me what makes your video company different than all the others?
As you know, this is industry has been extremely fragmented when it comes to video content. There are many smaller companies focusing on specific geographic areas, and really trying to deliver that baseline product of game films of highlight reels.
Then, on the other hand, there are companies such as Hudl and Crossover, for example, focus primarily on coaches and team managers.
The biggest problem is the capture of high-quality content on a consistent basis.
Unlike other companies, we focus on players and parents provide the coaches and youth soccer clubs with a value proposition that hasn’t really existed before.
What we do is really two-fold — we have an infrastructure across the country with 500 plus production staff in 36 states. Currently, we shoot a little over 30,000 games per year. Next year, we plan to shoot signficantly more. We’re the largest company in this space, we invested heavily in our team and in our people and we have a large team of post-production staff, 15 editors who work for us full-time.
The idea is the main ingredient is the content — the video of the games. Historically, these videos have been shot by coaches who are not videographers and would probably rather be coaching than taping a match. The video has been used for recruiting, you get your game film, you chop it up into the highlight reel — or from a performance standpoint, for the coaches to break down the game.
Players and parents are spending enormous amounts of money on playing soccer — and when the year is done, they look back and there is not a lot of video they can enjoy. Maybe the coach has reviewed the individual games with the players, but why not capture the season with a team highlight video? With the best plays of the team, and create individual player highlights as well.
If you want a professional looking highlight reel done, because we have this scale, we’re able to do that at a very low cost.
$99 dollars for a professinal Highlight Reel — that’s a rate that is unheard of.
Diane Scavuzzo: Do you tag the players?
Amin Edalat: Yes, of course. Our editors’ tag players on their highlight reel. For the highlight reel, the parents tell us, “These are the plays that I want.” Then our editors chop up the footage of a player’s accolades with nice edits, adding nice music and turn it into a professionally edited highlight reel.
We created this brand new system that gives the club their own dedicated channel. As a club, all your games are in one place, and you can create — for free — up to a minute clip of any game or any content.
If a player had a good play, you can clip it and post it on social media, email it to a friend, or even put it on your website.
We want to put the content in the hands of the end users and let them have some fun with it without wanting to nickel and dime them on subscription fees.
Diane Scavuzzo: Very cool. Why partner with Surf?
Amin Edalat: Surf — both as Surf Cup Sports and Surf Soccer Club — is the most recognizable brand across the country.
When you say Surf, that brand means quality. It is known for bringing tangible value to their audience —whether you’re a team who’s attending their events, a college coach who is recruiting at Surf Cup, or you are a club player who is going through their program.
There is no better program in the country to be partnered with than Surf.
At the end of the day, I respect their business philosophy and while making money is great, it only sustainable if the value that is brought to your audience makes sense.
We consider Surf to be a brand-defining client for us.
Diane Scavuzzo: So, just to recap, a video that is shot by NextPro, a player can grab a segment and easily send it to a college coach?
Amin Edalat: Absolutely, a player, parent or a coach can email the clip or share it directly on Facebook, Twitter, or download the clip and post it on Instagram.
Essentially we put that content in your hand.
And for clubs or tournaments, over time, they will have hundreds of players clipping segments of their games — just imagine the amount of content that will be generated by their own players, and this, of course, gives tremendous exposure to the game, the club or event — as well as the players.
