County Sports Zone, a Maryland-based company tasked with sharing information on all levels of high school sports, is expanding across the country.
After a successful pilot run in Tennessee, CSZ is looking into the massive high school sports markets in Florida and Texas, according to CEO Sam Hopkins.
CSZ utilizes fan-sourced score reporting for games, a big factor in how they will be able to expand across different markets.
“If you go to some of the game pages, fans are able to insert their scores,” Hopkins said. “We have, essentially, a verification engine to make sure that if the score is reported, we make sure that is matched across multiple reports.”
The platform goes beyond just reporting scores, though.
“We even take the coach-reported scores with the highest degree of trust, but we want to account for all the different scenarios and ultimately encourage fans through our spirit points platform to establish a good reputation for themselves as score reporters,” Hopkins said.
Fans can earn spirit points by uploading accurate scores to the platform as well as adding photos, videos and written pieces. A gaming feature on the platform helps CSZ stand out — a pick’em game in which fans can choose who they think will win certain games.
“It’s kind of both the progressive and the future,” Hopkins said. “It’s in progress, and we’re going to continue to add features to what that gaming is.”
CSZ prides itself on interaction with its users, both through fan reporting and by allowing fans to upload content on different matchups on to its platform.
“Those interactions include coming and looking at the scores, reporting scores, adding video, photo or written content to give more life to the scores we have,” Hopkins said.
What separates CSZ from its competitors is the encouragement of interaction on the platform, both through fan-reported scores and gaming, according to the CEO.
“Our intense focus on wonderful interactions around sports, beyond the information, is what sets us apart,” Hopkins said. “We saw that people were continuing to come to our platform during COVID, for example, because not many of the games were happening, but because of the memories, because of the feeling, because of the level of detail that we have from freshmen all the way up to varsity. We are able to knit together a real tapestry of what local high school sports communities look like.”
In the end, Hopkins hopes that the platform will generate attention and fandom at the high school sports level.
“We’re very proud to be cultivating the future of sports fandom, and just like the best sports video games can help you learn how to call plays out on the field, we think that we can make fans of everyone,” Hopkins said. “We are ultimately most excited about reinforcing community around education.”
County Sports Zone is a partner of PressBox.