Major League Baseball has made its latest move to foster the next generations of baseball and softball fans. Under a new deal with Future Today, a slate of content from the professional sports league’s nascent kids and family-focused MLB Clubhouse channel will extend beyond YouTube and join the HappyKids AVOD platform.
It marks HappyKids first partnership with a major sports league and reflects the free streamer’s larger ambitions in the sports space, where it hopes to build on the MLB collaboration with additional major league sports partners in the months ahead.
Under the agreement, HappyKids will feature a curated slate of programming from MLB Clubhouse, including original animated series, behind-the-scenes player features, game highlights and creative and educational content all designed around and meant to help introduce baseball and softball to some of the youngest generations.
Future Today owns and operates free streamers and FAST channels including Fawsome, HappyKids and iFood.tv. The MLB Clubhouse content will be available on the web and across the HappyKids app on Roku, Fire TV, Samsung TV Plus, Vizio, LG and other major streaming devices.
It’s a move by MLB to further extend reach of its youth-focused programming to a family-safe streaming environment, after initially launching MLB Clubhouse as a channel on YouTube Kids back in April.
Since launch on YouTube, MLB Clubhouse has garnered roughly 10,000 subscribers while views across various videos appear to have a wide range. Some content has generated fewer than 1,000 views while one episode of original animated series Doug Out! amassed 1 million views (with plenty of view counts in between across other videos – although take YouTube “views” as you will).
Now MLB wants to tap into more families and serve baseball-themed content via distribution on HappyKids – the latter which itself touts 85% of viewing driven by family co-viewing and more than 800 million monthly impressions.
"Reaching young fans means meeting them on the platforms where they already spend their time with their families," said Gregg Klayman, SVP Product Development and Content Strategy, Major League Baseball. "Partnering with HappyKids allows us to put MLB Clubhouse in front of families in a trusted, co-viewing environment, extending the reach of our content well beyond our own channels and helping more households discover the fun, creativity and personalities that make baseball and softball unique."
It comes as streamers, rights holders and sports leagues in general are navigating new types of distribution, fandom and engagement – and where kids underpin the target for future generations of sports fans and health of the game. MLB itself touted momentum with younger audiences, including a 23% yoy bump in fans ages 2-11 across national broadcasts (where reason stands these “viewers” are likely to be co-viewing with parents or families).
As for HappyKids, the ad-supported platform has boasted benefits of family co-viewing and a brand-safe environment before, and like other streamers is likely eager to capitalize on the staying power, fandom and family-friendly appeal of sports – both to boost viewership and engagement on its platform as well as ad dollars.
"HappyKids’ goal has always been to meet the demand of our audience and bring them the content they are looking to watch," said David Di Lorenzo, SVP Content Acquisitions and Partnerships at Future Today, in a statement. "This deal enhances our ability to bring content geared to kids along with highlights from Major League Baseball, a major sports league. Sports fandom starts young, and we want HappyKids to be the place where that fandom is born."
In terms of the amount and depth of MLB content coming to HappyKids, Di Lorenzo told Stream TV Insiders that the platform will have parity with the MLB Clubhouse YouTube channel.
Specifically, some titles joining HappyKids include the stop-motion series The Doug Out, as well as Whacky Highlights, Art Club, No Easy Outs, and more.
The MLB Art Club series debuted at launch and is made in partnership with Crayola, which co-posts each episode on YouTube to inspire creativity through baseball-themed art.
For its YouTube launch, MLB Clubhouse also partnered with ABCmouse (the top downloaded kids’ education app) for new and existing educational content – but Di Lorenzo confirmed that ABCmouse content will not be joining HappyKids at this time.
While declining to share a specific number, he noted that HappyKids already offers several hours of content from MLB Clubhouse and will be refreshing new content on a monthly basis.