Perfect Game Goes All-In on PGTV at Annual All-American Classic at Chase Field

Perfect Game Goes All-In on PGTV at Annual All-American Classic at Chase Field Perfect Game TV set to stream the scouting giant's crown-jewel event on Sunday By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital

Friday, August 16, 2024 - 12:41 pm

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As the Major League Baseball season enters its final weeks, thoughts are already turning to crisp postseason nights in October. This weekend in Phoenix, however, the more distant future of the game takes center stage: the Perfect Game All-American Classic brings 60 of the nation's top high school players to Chase Field for amateur baseball's crown-jewel event.

Perfect Game, the premier scouting and events organization in youth baseball, will have its burgeoning media team onsite to stream multiple events exclusively to its own free video platform, PGTV, throughout the weekend: the Underclass All-Star Game, the Home Run Challenge, and, ultimately, the All-American Classic on Sunday (8 p.m. ET).

Perfect Game, the world's largest youth-baseball and softball platform and scouting service, hosts its annual All-American Classic on Sunday at Phoenix's Chase Field.

It's the biggest broadcast of the year for a media entity that has established itself as a powerhouse in live baseball production. PGTV is home to thousands of hours of original content per year, including more than 70 live games/events in the nature of Perfect Game showcases and other high school and amateur-baseball games.

Our goal is to be the home for amateur baseball and for the future of the game of baseball, says Daron Sutton, VP/executive producer/host, Perfect Game and Perfect Game.TV, and former TV voice of the Los Angeles Angels, Arizona Diamondbacks, Milwaukee Brewers, and the Pac-12 Network. We really value storytelling in our live broadcasts. In a live game, you're going to know who the kids are. You're not going to hear just their hometowns; you're not going to hear just the basics. Rarely do we even get lost in stats in these games because, quite frankly, they're irrelevant. It is about storytelling. The majority of our kids that play on our network maybe don't even make it to college ball, but they'll always have this memory.

Streaming on Perfect Game's Own Social Platform The numbers continue to chart up. This year, the company produced games by the under-14 age group for the first time, and the hope is to pass 100 live events in 2025.

We are trying to cover more, not only of our own events but events that we feel are just of interest in the youth-baseball space, says Perfect Game Head of Media Will Burge, who joined the company in January after stints at Ball Sports and Barstool Sports. Coverage is evolving very quickly, and now it comes in all different shapes and sizes. We send social-media teams out to tournaments and games that we can't cover live on PGTV itself, and that's becoming almost its own tier of coverage. Next year, as we move into the schedule, we hope to have a more comprehensive tiered system where we're loading up on live games but are packing in even more numbers behind that on the social side. We are trying to fill out that network 24/7 with as much youth-baseball content as we can, and we are using a ton of different resources to do it.

This weekend's All-American Classic is the 22nd iteration of the event, but it's a notable one: it will be the first time Perfect Game has produced live coverage of the event and delivered it exclusively to its own streaming platform. In the past, the group has partnered with various cable networks to expand its reach.

I think it takes a lot of courage to put a game like this on only your own platforms, says Sutton. It takes a lot of courage and belief in your distribution and what you're doing. A lot of people would assume you'd at least do a partnership with a network. Quite frankly, I don't know if it would've been the smartest thing to do a couple of years back, but, because of what we've built in our platform and built on the social side, I think we're going to reach people.

Announcers Dani Wexelman (left) and Daron Sutton at Chase Field during last year's Perfect Game All-American Classic

Despite broadcasting a game from a Major League Baseball venue, the PGTV crew has an economical production-resource plan, deploying five or six cameras. It is also maximizing efforts with less of a focus on stats, graphics, or analytics, instead emphasizing tight shots on faces to tell stories and make stars of the kids.

We're not going out looking for an Emmy Award, says Jim Jenks, senior director, media productions, Perfect Game, and a veteran of both MLB Advanced Media and the MLB Network. We're looking for faces; we're looking for families. The stuff that happens within the lines, not the stuff that happens outside the lines. It's a very solid, good broadcast, but there's not the bells and whistles that you might expect from a big-league game. But watch it, and you'll be wowed that this is TV quality without [a lot] of cameras.

Adds Burge, Going to these bigger pro stadiums I don't think is a step up. I think it's a bigger stage to showcase everything that PG does. We are on the field with the kids in a Home Run Derby/All-Star Game setting, but, in between those events, we're running PG Weekly magazine-style sit-down interviews with the kids. We're injecting social content that runs on Instagram and TikTok. It allows a bigger stage for all the things we do so well in one place. It does feel like a Super Bowl for everything that we're producing.

Striving for Intimacy RF cameras are regularly positioned in each team's dugout. That's where Sutton believes the crew gets the biggest bang for its production buck.

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LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2024/08/16/perfect-game-goes-all-in-on-pgt...
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