Marketable Moments: Building Revenue and Respect in Youth Sports Through Product-driven Marketing

Making money in high school sports is something that makes a lot of people squeamish. When my team was asked to take over the direct-to-consumer P&L at VNN Sports (combined with rSchoolToday) in 2022, we knew we were walking that line-

How do you grow revenue in a space built on community values, without feeling like you’re exploiting them?

With roughly 14,000 high schools on our network, each with different rules, logos, and cultures, and a team of just three people on the project, the challenge was clear: the solution had to be scalable, modular, and genuinely useful.

Mapping the Shared Moments

The unique personality of each high school, region, mascot and traditions is precisely what makes high school sports special. But in order for us to succeed, we had to look at it in reverse… what did they all have in common?


We mapped the moments they all shared:

  • Signing up for our app

  • Registering for sports

  • Fundraising

  • Game days and events

At each of these points, families were already planning ahead- coordinating rides, buying tickets, ordering gear, checking schedules. That was our opportunity.

Turning Utility Into a Flywheel

VNN’s core product was communication: our SportsHub websites kept every team, score, and schedule in one place. So we asked- what if our answer was taking that utility a step further?

We built a feature that automatically triggered email and text notifications tied to key sports moments- each school-branded, event-based, and lightly merchandised.

Schools were paid a revenue share on any partner sales (an unsung key to aligning outcomes), but more importantly, these messages would make the sports experience smoother, and our system had all the information it needed to trigger them automatically.

Some of our key moments included:

  • Welcome to the Team – when a user subscribed to a team for the season or for the first time

  • Season Countdown – one month ahead of the first game

  • Gameday Alert – 24 hours before kickoff

  • Game Recap – the morning after, with score and gallery links

  • Thank You – after fundraisers closed

Each email or text offered only what made sense: before a season included schedules, app downloads, and fan gear; before a game, ticket and streaming links; after a game, scores, highlights, and photo galleries. If a school didn’t offer something, say, their own store- that link simply didn’t appear.

The system scaled instantly. Whether you were following a varsity football team or the eighth-grade chess club, the message came from your school’s account — not ours — with your colors, logos, and voice.

Building It the Right Way

As un-technical marketers, we initially tested third-party automation tools like Customer.io and Segment to run the stack. They worked beautifully (and are a great way to scale up an MVP), but we knew the long-term vision meant true personalization at the school level — custom domains, editable messages, flexible layouts.

To do that right, we recruited a part-time engineer to build the system ourselves using the global VNN product database. It gave us total control over branding, user segmentation, and — most importantly — trust.

Why It Worked

The magic of “Marketable Moments” was its simplicity:

  1. Simple beats complicated. “Sign up to follow your team” became the marketing angle; that’s all we needed to promote a full communication and commerce engine that the school actually would want to promote on our behalf. More fans = better community = win.

  2. Every sport mattered. VNN’s mission was always a level playing field — now every team, from football to track, had the same megaphone. We set a secondary goal to try and get fans to follow just one more sport beyond the one they participated in. If we could make a few of the football fans into lacrosse fans too, the community would be better for it.

  3. Community stayed at the center. Fundraising messages reached grandparents, aunts, and friends far beyond the school’s ZIP code which allowed us to expand reach without losing authenticity. Why not get score alerts from your nephew’s soccer team after you donated if it was easy?

We also kept the ecosystem open. If a school had its own bookstore or e-commerce platform, they could plug it in instead of ours. The goal wasn’t to trap them in a closed loop; it was to make participation easier.

Looking ahead, we thought about how this could grow - imagine preferences set to your life-stage - athlete, alumni, parent, grandparent, fan, local business owner, it was easy to imagine each group receiving completely different useful information as the system, and its users, grew (I always dreamed about the local coffee shop, library, and hardware store having the box scores for their chalkboard).

From Schools to Silicon Valley

Once we saw the engagement coming in, we realized “Buyable Moments” was also a framework. A predictable, high-trust communication channel that brands could use through schools to reach families in a positive way.

That idea caught the attention of Meta, who was looking for a way to help families understand Instagram’s parental controls. Together, we developed a campaign around a co-branded digital guide distributed through our notification network- turning the same infrastructure that sold fan gear and tickets into something that also delivered digital literacy and safety content at scale.

It proved the model could serve commerce, education and awareness — a rare bridge between unique local sports communities and one of the world’s biggest platforms, all done at scale.

And…what if you knew you’d be running late and wanted to pre-order a post-game meal from your local Chipotle franchise? This system made it easy, right when you were thinking about it.

The Results

We launched the first notifications on August 29, 2022. Within a year, we had sent 3.1 million notifications, achieving:

  • 66% open rate (vs. industry average ~20%)

  • 3.06% click-through rate

  • 23% click rate on “Welcome to the Team” messages

Those are unheard-of engagement numbers in digital marketing- because they weren’t “marketing emails.” They were community updates people actually wanted.

And they worked. Families stayed more connected. Schools earned more from partner programs. Sponsors saw clear ROI. Everyone won, including our team, who was able to turn a modest $300,000 P&L into $3.2M in two years through respectful, timely, and useful product marketing in a market space where trust is key.

Friday night lights, community pride, family — what it’s all about.

Legacy and Exit

“Buyable Moments” became a cornerstone of how VNN tied business growth to authentic community impact. It demonstrated that monetization and mission don’t have to be at odds- they can reinforce each other when the product serves a genuine need.

That alignment helped drive our company’s continued growth and ultimately contributed to our successful exit to KKR and PlayOn! Sports the following year.