---
title: "The High School Revenue Playbook: venue4D"
description: A tactical guide for athletic directors, booster clubs and district leaders on selling real-time, interactive videoboard inventory to local partners.
---

[![venue4D](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/hubfs/Playbooks/images/venue4d-logo.png)](https://www.venue4d.com)

venue4D Revenue Playbook Series · High School

[Live Overview](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/venue4d-live-overview?hsLang=en) [Blog](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog?hsLang=en) [Get the PDF](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/high-school-revenue-playbook-venue4d?hsLang=en) [Contact venue4D](https://www.venue4d.com/contact)

venue4D Revenue Playbook Series · High School

# THE HIGH SCHOOL REVENUE PLAYBOOK

Funding a Pro-Level Game Day with Local Partners

A guide for Athletic Directors and Activities Directors, Booster Club Presidents and Treasurers, District Business Officials and Communications Directors, and the Broadcast, Media and Production teachers whose students run the board.

![venue4D](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/hubfs/Playbooks/images/venue4d-logo.png)

by Emissive Labs · Powered by Unreal Engine 5

Steven Skubic · COO + Partner  
[steve@emissivelabs.com](mailto:steve@emissivelabs.com) · 707-763-3108

Contents

1. [1Why This Playbook Exists](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-1)
2. [2The High School Sponsor Reality](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-2)
3. [3How Schools Pay for the Board, and How the Board Pays for the Show](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-3)
4. [4What High School Sponsorship Inventory Actually Sells For](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-4)
5. [5The Inventory Catalog](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-5)
6. [6Proof: What the Activations Produce, and What Schools Have Done with Their Boards](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-6)
7. [7The Rules: Advertising Policy, Title IX, NIL and Student Privacy](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-7)
8. [8The Pitch Playbook](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-8)
9. [930–60–90 Day Implementation Timeline](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-9)
10. [10The Partner Report](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-10)
11. [11Next Steps](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-11)
12. [Blog Reference Guide](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#resources)

[venue4D Live Overview](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/venue4d-live-overview?hsLang=en) [venue4D Blog](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog?hsLang=en) [Contact venue4D](https://www.venue4d.com/contact)

Contents

## What’s in this playbook

1. [1Why This Playbook Exists](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-1)
2. [2The High School Sponsor Reality](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-2)
3. [3How Schools Pay for the Board, and How the Board Pays for the Show](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-3)
4. [4What High School Sponsorship Inventory Actually Sells For](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-4)
5. [5The Inventory Catalog](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-5)
6. [6Proof: What the Activations Produce, and What Schools Have Done with Their Boards](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-6)
7. [7The Rules: Advertising Policy, Title IX, NIL and Student Privacy](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-7)
8. [8The Pitch Playbook](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-8)
9. [930–60–90 Day Implementation Timeline](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-9)
10. [10The Partner Report](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-10)
11. [11Next Steps](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#section-11)
12. [Blog Reference Guide](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/playbook/high-school#resources)

Section 1

## Why This Playbook Exists

High school sports have never been bigger, and they have never been harder to pay for. A record 8.26 million students played a high school sport in the most recent national survey, a new all-time high. At the same time, the districts that fund those programs are closing budget gaps by charging families to play: Seattle Public Schools proposed participation fees of up to $550 against an $87 million shortfall; Pinellas County, Florida, added a $50-per-sport fee, joining three neighboring counties; the majority of Ohio high schools now charge, with some districts at $500 per season; and pay-to-play has arrived in Texas, historically a no-fee state. Seattle’s superintendent put the situation plainly: “It’s a lot of money, and we are in the hole. The first thing we have to do is stop spending money we don’t have.”

Into that environment, the LED videoboard has arrived. Manufacturers report well over a thousand high schools adding video displays in the last five years alone. Districts and booster clubs are buying boards that cost $130,000 to $450,000 and, in a few Texas districts, far more, and they are buying them with sponsorship. The Brainerd, Minnesota, sports boosters bought a $434,655 stadium board and projected $162,000 a year from twelve sponsor panels. Masuk High School in Connecticut raised $151,000 in sponsor commitments toward a $294,582 project before the board went up. Kilgore ISD in Texas, already earning about $50,000 a year from static scoreboard ads, bought a $347,900 LED board specifically to have more inventory to sell.

So the board is paid for, or being paid for, by local businesses. The question this playbook answers is what comes next: once the panels are sold, how does a school keep growing partner revenue without a bigger board, a bigger staff, or a designer?

The answer is what plays on the board. Most high school videoboards run the same pre-rendered loop on Homecoming that they run on a Tuesday JV game: a static panel rotation, a few sponsor slides, the scoreboard. The theme lives in the student section’s outfits and the halftime show, not on the screen. Every one of those nights is a sellable moment that nobody is selling, and every one of them could look different without a designer touching it, because the student who runs the clock can run this.

**This playbook is built for athletic and booster leaders who need to:**

- Turn a board that was bought with sponsor money into a board that keeps producing it, season after season
- Give the credit union, hospital, dealership and restaurant group that already buy a panel a reason to buy more
- Make Homecoming, Senior Night, Pink Out, Military Appreciation and the rivalry game look like the events they are, on every screen in the building, with the staff you already have
- Keep the program on the right side of district advertising policy, Title IX, state NIL rules and student privacy law, all of which this playbook addresses directly
- Run it with students, as a learning program, not with a hired designer

**A note on scope.** This playbook is about the show on the board and the partner revenue that funds it. It is not a scoreboard-purchasing guide, and it does not assume you have a stadium: a gym board at a basketball-first school is as sellable as a stadium board at a Texas 6A program. The pricing tiers in Sections 4 and 5 are built around your crowd and your calendar, not your enrollment classification.

Go deeper

- [The Rendering Bottleneck: Is Your Videoboard Leaving Revenue on the Table?](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/the-rendering-bottleneck-is-your-videoboard-leaving-revenue-on-the-table?hsLang=en)
- [From Classroom to Control Room: Building a Student Production Team](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/from-classroom-to-control-room-building-a-student-production-team?hsLang=en)
- [How Local Sponsors Win Big on the Big Screen](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/how-local-sponsors-win-big-on-the-big-screen?hsLang=en)

Section 2

## The High School Sponsor Reality

Four things are true about high school sponsorship today that were not true five years ago.

### 1. The buyers are institutions, not just the pizza place

Look at who is putting their name on high school facilities: Children’s Health (Prosper ISD, $2.5 million over ten years), PlainsCapital Bank (Lubbock ISD, $3 million), Academy Sports + Outdoors (Katy ISD, $2.5 million), Cy-Fair Federal Credit Union ($1.5 million), Riverview Health (Westfield, Indiana, $1.5 million), Woodforest National Bank (Conroe ISD, $1 million), Mansfield Methodist Hospital ($575,000), Allegheny Health Network (Canon-McMillan, Pennsylvania, $100,000 over five years), ShareFAX Credit Union (Kings Local, Ohio, a new arena naming), Foresight Bank (Dover-Eyota, Minnesota, $8,500 a year). Health systems, credit unions and community banks are now the anchor category at every level of school sponsorship, from a Texas 6A stadium to a small district in southern Minnesota.

These buyers have marketing departments, boards and compliance officers. They sponsor because it demonstrates community investment, and they increasingly want to show their own leadership something more than a photo of a sign. A credit union that sponsors the student-section challenge and receives a count of how many families participated has a story for its board. A credit union with a panel on the scoreboard does not.

### 2. The board is already the best-selling asset in the building

Where districts and boosters publish prices, the videoboard sits at the top. Katy ISD’s public rate card prices its stadium scoreboard package at $30,000 a year, a ribbon-board package at $15,000, a “Time Out Sponsor” at $12,000, and a “Fan Interaction Social Media” package at $12,000, against $5,000 for an audio commercial and $485 to $770 a month for a newsletter ad. The Elkhorn, Nebraska, Public Schools Foundation sells its stadium board title position at $25,000 a year and gym-board title at $15,000. Brainerd’s founding panels are $15,000 a year on five-year terms. Mentor, Ohio’s athletic director expected sponsorship revenue to “pay for the board within a couple of years.”

Interactive inventory extends that pricing power rather than competing with it. The panel sponsor stays a panel sponsor; the upgrade is a moment on the board that the sponsor owns and that the crowd participates in.

### 3. Pro-style production has arrived at the high school level, and so has the pressure to keep up

Brainerd’s activities director explained the board purchase in one sentence: “When our teams go on the road, this is what they see in opposing school stadiums.” Massillon Washington High School in Ohio runs an 80-foot-wide board at Paul Brown Tiger Stadium; Allen, Texas, plays in front of 18,000 seats and a 38-by-23-foot screen; McKinney ISD’s display was billed as the largest at any high school in the country when it opened. The expectation of what Friday night looks like has moved, and it moves again every time a neighboring district opens a new stadium.

### 4. The rules are real, and they are getting more specific

High school is the one level where the sponsorship question “can we?” comes before “how much?” District board policy (usually a code like “KHB, Advertising in Schools”) governs what may appear in the building and almost universally excludes alcohol, tobacco and vaping, cannabis, gambling, firearms, political and religious messaging, and content that conflicts with wellness policy. The UIL in Texas bars the same categories from broadcasts of any UIL activity. The NFHS has warned about sports betting since the 2018 Supreme Court decision. Name, image and likeness is now permitted for high school athletes in roughly 45 states, but nearly all of them forbid the use of school marks, uniforms or facilities in an athlete’s deals, which means a sponsor cannot feature a current player’s endorsement on the school’s board. And because children under 13 are in the stands, any activation that collects a name, phone number or email is a federal privacy matter.

None of this is an obstacle to the inventory in this playbook. It is the reason the inventory is designed the way it is: team and mascot identity rather than individual athletes, participation without personal information, and partner categories that pass a district review. Section 7 covers each rule.

The bottom line

The board is bought. The panels are sold. The next dollar of partner revenue comes from what happens on the screen between the panels, and from being able to show the partner what happened.

Go deeper

- [Beyond the Banner: Valuing Modern Sponsorship Assets](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/beyond-the-banner-valuing-modern-sponsorship-assets?hsLang=en)
- [Why Real-Time Beats Post-Game: The Shift to Live Engagement Metrics](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/why-real-time-beats-post-game-the-shift-to-live-engagement-metrics?hsLang=en)
- [Democratizing the Control Room: Solving the Talent Gap](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/democratizing-the-control-room-solving-the-talent-gap?hsLang=en)

Section 3

## How Schools Pay for the Board, and How the Board Pays for the Show

Three funding structures account for nearly every high school videoboard sold in the last five years. Knowing which one you are in determines who sells, who keeps the revenue, and where the show budget comes from.

**School buys or leases; a sales program sells panels**

The district or boosters lease the board (often tax-exempt, three to five years, $1 buyout); a sponsorship sales program (the manufacturer’s, or a third-party firm’s) sells panels on the school’s behalf; sponsor revenue is directed to the lease payments.

**Who sells** Vendor or firm sales staff · **Who keeps the revenue** School keeps most or all

**Examples** Manufacturer-run programs report tens of thousands of dollars a year per school; Market Street Sports Group’s representation model leaves the district 70 percent

**Third party installs free; revenue is split**

A media company covers equipment and installation; the school provides power and infrastructure; new sponsor revenue is split (50/50 at Westside High School in Omaha), or the vendor retains ad rights with a rebate to the school.

**Who sells** Vendor · **Who keeps the revenue** Shared, or vendor

**Examples** Scoreboard Media (Westside HS, Omaha: sponsors include the University of Nebraska, Chick-fil-A and Omaha Steaks); Digital Scoreboards’ offer to Blackhawk SD, Pennsylvania

**Boosters or foundation buy the board and sell panels**

The booster club or education foundation finances the board and sells five-year panel contracts; the district sometimes bridges the gap with an interest-free loan.

**Who sells** Boosters, AD, foundation director · **Who keeps the revenue** School or boosters keep 100 percent

**Examples** Brainerd, MN ($434,655 board; 6 founding panels at $15,000 + 6 community panels at $12,000 = $162,000 a year projected); Masuk, CT ($294,582 project; $151,000 committed before installation; district loaned the rest); Elkhorn, NE Foundation (tiered program from $1,000 to $25,000 a year)

Two quotes from the Brainerd school board capture why the booster model has spread. The board chair: “We’re not reducing class sizes for third graders and buying a half-million scoreboard.” A board member: “It’s taking athletic needs and not having to compete with academic needs.”

### The Show Budget Has No Line

In all three models, the revenue plan covers the hardware. Almost nowhere does it cover the content (the graphics, the themed nights, the sponsor moments) because the assumption is that whatever the vendor ships, or whatever a teacher and three students can build in a free period, is the show. That assumption is why week one and week eight look the same, and why the panel sponsor who paid $12,000 sees the same slide in October that ran in August.

venue4D is the content layer. It is an all-inclusive subscription, priced per venue, that includes the rendering hardware (a pre-configured machine that ships to you and plugs into whatever control system and LED processor you already have), the software, a custom content pack built in your school’s colors and marks, a library of new themed content packs, remote setup, and support. It is a license, not a purchase, and the rate is locked for the life of the agreement. Because the machine is included and nothing in the building changes, it sits as a line in the athletics or booster budget rather than a capital request to the district.

Quotes are generated for each venue based on screen configuration and scope. [Request yours here](https://www.venue4d.com/contact). The [venue4D Live Overview](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/venue4d-live-overview?hsLang=en) is the companion to this playbook: it shows the platform, the activations and the case studies referenced here.

**Who sells it.** venue4D supplies the inventory, the show and the post-event report. The school, the booster club or a sales firm the district engages sells it, the same people who sell the panels and banners today. Emissive Labs does not sell sponsorships on a school’s behalf.

### The Recouping Standard

The standard to hold the platform to is the one schools already apply to the board itself: sell enough interactive inventory to cover the subscription before the season opens, the way panel contracts are sized to cover the board. Set your early sales against your custom quote, and treat everything sold beyond it as margin.

### Worked Example: Single-School Varsity Program with a Stadium Board (Tier B)

| Line | Amount |
| --- | --- |
| Season-long Student Section Challenge title partner (credit union) | $3,000 |
| Live Spirit Vote presenting partner (orthodontics practice) | $1,800 |
| Five Theme Night takeovers at $1,200 (hospital system: Pink Out; auto dealer: Homecoming; two local restaurants; a realtor: Senior Night) | $6,000 |
| Crowd Prompt Package presenting partner (regional bank) | $2,000 |
| Eight Same-Day Partner Spots at $350 across fall and winter | $2,800 |
| Partner Rotation Pack: twelve booster business partners upgraded from static cards at $400 each | $4,800 |
| **Interactive inventory sold** | **$20,400** |

Two things about this example. First, every line is the venue4D component of a larger package: the credit union still has its panel, the twelve booster partners still have their fence banners. Second, the early lines are the ones to close before installation; set them against your quote, and everything beyond the subscription is margin. Every line is an addition to money the school already collects, and the inventory runs across football, volleyball, basketball, wrestling and soccer on the same board or boards. A single school with a stadium board and a gym board hosts 60 or more ticketed events a year; the West Aurora, Illinois, boosters count 60-plus stadium events and 150-plus events on their digital scorer’s tables. One subscription serves all of them.

### Where the Money Should Go

Route interactive-inventory revenue to the athletic department’s general account, or to the booster club’s general fund, rather than to the football program. Title IX measures the benefit students receive, not the source of the money; booster and sponsor dollars are evaluated the same way taxpayer dollars are, and a board that upgrades the football experience with revenue retained by football boosters is an equity exposure. A board that runs the same show for girls’ soccer, volleyball and flag football, and funds the athletic department as a whole, is both the compliant answer and the better sales story: the partner’s moment plays at every home event, all year.

Go deeper

- [How Technology Is Helping Venues Control Operating Costs and Unlock New Revenue](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/how-technology-is-helping-venues-control-operating-costs-and-unlock-new-revenue?hsLang=en)
- [Sponsorship Agility: Maximize Value, Cut Costs](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/sponsorship-agility-maximize-value-cut-costs?hsLang=en)
- [Evaluating Real-Time Graphics Services for Sports Venues](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/evaluating-real-time-graphics-services-for-sports-venues?hsLang=en)

Section 4

## What High School Sponsorship Inventory Actually Sells For

High school pricing is more public than minor league pricing (booster clubs and districts post their packets), but it varies by a factor of ten or more between a Texas district stadium and a small-town gym. The tiers below are built around crowd and venue rather than enrollment classification.

**Tier A: District stadium or large suburban program.** A multi-school district stadium or a single large program drawing 5,000 to 12,000 on a Friday; 8,000 to 19,000 seats; often a district-run marketing program with a published rate card. Katy, Allen, Prosper, McKinney and Mesquite in Texas; Mentor and Massillon in Ohio; Westfield in Indiana.

**Tier B: Varsity program with a stadium board.** A single school drawing 1,500 to 5,000 for football, with a videoboard in the stadium and usually a digital board or scorer’s table in the gym; sponsorship sold by the AD, a booster club or an education foundation. Brainerd, Elkhorn, Jordan, Masuk, Fairfax, Lake Braddock.

**Tier C: Gym-first or small school.** Under 1,500 in the stands; the video display is in the gym, or the stadium has a basic LED scoreboard; sponsorship sold by boosters at a few hundred dollars a line. Lutheran South, South Pasadena, Truckee, Sterling.

(Regular-season attendance by classification is not surveyed nationally; these ranges are working estimates. For scale, the most recent UIL state finals drew 39,464 for the 6A Division I game and about 7,500 for each 2A final; Allen’s Eagle Stadium seats 18,000, Mentor’s 8,000; the largest high school gyms, nearly all in Indiana, seat 7,500 to 8,400.)

### Market Rate Card: Traditional Inventory (annual unless noted)

Stadium naming rights

High confidence

Tier C (gym-first / small)

$5,000–$15,000

Tier B (varsity, stadium board)

$15,000–$100,000

Tier A (district stadium)

$100,000–$300,000

Dover-Eyota MN $8,500/yr; Byron MN $12,000/yr; Canon-McMillan PA $100,000/5 yrs; Westfield IN $150,000/yr; Cy-Fair $150,000/yr; Palm Beach up to $175,000/yr; Texas 5A/6A new builds $100,000–$300,000/yr. Marc Ganis, Sportscorp: “Naming rights of high school stadiums is a very regional activity… at least for now, it is a Texas phenomenon.”

Field or gym naming

Moderate confidence

Tier C (gym-first / small)

$2,500–$10,000

Tier B (varsity, stadium board)

$10,000–$25,000

Tier A (district stadium)

$25,000–$100,000

Royse City ISD field $25,000/yr; Norwin PA multipurpose room $100,000 lifetime

Scoreboard / videoboard title or anchor position

High confidence

Tier C (gym-first / small)

$2,500–$5,000

Tier B (varsity, stadium board)

$10,000–$25,000

Tier A (district stadium)

$25,000–$50,000

Elkhorn title $25,000; Katy scoreboard package $30,000; Brainerd founding panel $15,000; Norwin stadium scoreboard $500,000 lifetime

Permanent videoboard panel

High confidence

Tier C (gym-first / small)

$1,000–$2,500

Tier B (varsity, stadium board)

$5,000–$15,000

Tier A (district stadium)

$12,000–$30,000

Brainerd $12,000–$15,000; Jordan “ALL IN” $11,000; Elkhorn Premier $5,000; Masuk Gold $5,000 + $1,250/yr; Lutheran South stadium panel $1,667/yr

Videoboard rotating ad or :15–:30 spot (all home events)

High confidence

Tier C (gym-first / small)

$300–$1,000

Tier B (varsity, stadium board)

$1,000–$5,000

Tier A (district stadium)

$5,000–$12,000

Fairfax :30 commercial $2,500; Lutheran South gym rotation $1,000; Jordan Gold $5,000 incl. one :15 per game; Elkhorn Varsity $1,000 to Premier $5,000

Gym digital scorer’s table message

High confidence

Tier C (gym-first / small)

$300–$500 per season

Tier B (varsity, stadium board)

$500–$1,000

Tier A (district stadium)

$1,000–$2,500

South Pasadena $500/season/sport (16 max); Lutheran South $900/yr; Truckee $500

Fence or field banner

High confidence

Tier C (gym-first / small)

$250–$500

Tier B (varsity, stadium board)

$500–$1,500

Tier A (district stadium)

$1,000–$2,500

most common price $500; Lake Braddock concession banner $1,500; Colquitt County gym banners $300–$2,000 by size

PA announcement / audio commercial

Moderate confidence

Tier C (gym-first / small)

Bundled from $500

Tier B (varsity, stadium board)

$500–$2,000

Tier A (district stadium)

$2,000–$5,000

Katy audio commercial $5,000; booster tiers bundle PA at $1,500–$3,000

Time-out or segment sponsor

Moderate confidence

Tier C (gym-first / small)

$300–$750

Tier B (varsity, stadium board)

$750–$3,000

Tier A (district stadium)

$3,000–$12,000

Katy Time Out Sponsor $12,000; Harrison GA “Red Zone naming” inside a $7,500 tier

Event title (tournament, rivalry night, district event)

Moderate confidence

Tier C (gym-first / small)

$500–$1,500

Tier B (varsity, stadium board)

$1,500–$8,000

Tier A (district stadium)

$8,000–$25,000

Katy district event $25,000, primary event sponsor $8,000, supporting $2,500; Sarasota Christian “night” $1,000

Program full page

High confidence

Tier C (gym-first / small)

$100–$250

Tier B (varsity, stadium board)

$300–$1,000

Tier A (district stadium)

$1,000–$2,500

Lake Braddock full page $1,000, half $750; small-school tiers $60–$250

Program business-card ad

High confidence

Tier C (gym-first / small)

$50–$100

Tier B (varsity, stadium board)

$100–$300

Tier A (district stadium)

$300–$500

Lake Braddock business card $300; shout-out $50

Streaming spot (NFHS Network / Hudl broadcast)

Low confidence

Tier C (gym-first / small)

Bundled

Tier B (varsity, stadium board)

$250–$1,000

Tier A (district stadium)

$1,000–$3,000

schools receive two sponsor spots per NFHS Network broadcast; prices rarely published; Jordan bundles a Hudl ad into its $11,000 tier

Booster “business partner” tiers (bundled)

High confidence

Tier C (gym-first / small)

$100 / $250 / $500

Tier B (varsity, stadium board)

$500 / $1,000 / $2,500 / $5,000

Tier A (district stadium)

$2,500 / $5,000 / $7,500+

Sterling CO $100–$500; Krum TX $500–$1,500; Sarasota Christian $500–$2,500; Lake Braddock $750–$3,000; Harrison GA $250–$7,500; Colquitt County $150–$5,000

Four observations your partnership team should carry into every conversation:

1. **The board already commands the top of the card.** At Katy ISD the scoreboard package ($30,000) is among the most expensive single assets the district sells; at Elkhorn the board title ($25,000) is the top line of the entire foundation program; at Brainerd twelve panels were projected to retire a $434,655 board in under three years. Interactive inventory is an upgrade to an asset your buyers already value most.
2. **Multi-year is normal.** Brainerd, Elkhorn, Masuk and Jordan all sell panels on three-to-five-year terms. Sell interactive inventory the same way, with a right of first renewal.
3. **Sales capacity, not demand, is the constraint.** Westfield, Indiana’s AD: “It took us six to eight years to sell 12 naming right sponsorships.” Districts that hire a sales firm pay for it: Market Street Sports Group’s representation model keeps 30 percent and leaves the district 70 percent; Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, contracted $204,000 in year one of an in-house program set up with the firm’s consulting help. Interactive inventory is designed to be sold as an upgrade to partners you already have, by the people who already sell to them.
4. **The whole community sells it, and the whole community sees it.** Byron, Minnesota, a small district outside Rochester, brings in $40,000 to $45,000 a year from a sponsorship program that was less than two years old when it reported the figure. You do not need a Texas stadium.

### Where Interactive Inventory Sits

| Inventory type | What it is | Pricing position |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Static panel or banner | Printed or rendered once; installed for the season or the contract term. | Commodity. The rate card above. |
| Standard digital rotation | Changeable, but every change needs a file, a student or teacher with design time, and an upload window. | Mid-range. Most high school boards live here; the panel sponsor’s slide is the same in week eight as in week one. |
| venue4D real-time inventory | Instant. Sponsor, theme, game or visual environment changes in under a minute from the operator panel. Fans participate from their phones or on the board. | Premium. In venue4D’s experience, interactive inventory with participation counts commands 1.5x to 2x over passive placements of equal visibility. |

**How schools package and sell this inventory.** As an upgrade. The credit union with the $12,000 panel adds the season-long Student Section Challenge for $3,000 and gets a count of how many fans played at every home event. The hospital system that presents Pink Out adds the full-venue takeover so the board, the ribbons and the marquee match the shirts. The twelve local businesses with fence banners move from a static card in the rotation to an animated card in the venue4D rotation for a few hundred dollars more each. The benchmarks in Section 5 are the venue4D component of those packages.

Go deeper

- [How Local Sponsors Win Big on the Big Screen](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/how-local-sponsors-win-big-on-the-big-screen?hsLang=en)
- [Unlock Revenue: The Guide to Interactive Sponsorship](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/moving-sponsors-from-static-signs-to-interactive-moments?hsLang=en)
- [Building Community Through Live Event Campaigns](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/building-community-through-live-event-campaigns?hsLang=en)

Section 5

## The Inventory Catalog

This is the menu your AD, booster club or foundation sells from. Each activation is described with how fans engage, why partners buy it, best-fit local categories, and pricing benchmarks by tier. Benchmarks are the venue4D component of a package, as annual figures covering all home events in all sports unless marked per event or per game. Every benchmark is an estimate; the basis is stated.

**Two formats, one platform.** Some activations are phone-wide: the whole student section or the whole crowd scans a QR code and plays from their seats, with no app, no download, and no account. Others run on the board itself: one fan or one student at midcourt, the PA announcer hosting, the whole gym watching. Both run from the same operator panel, both are reskinnable for the next partner in minutes, and neither requires the operator to know anything beyond running the clock. The student who runs your board today runs this.

**The real-time premium.** The reason this inventory commands more than a rotation slide is that it eliminates the production pipeline. A themed night that used to take a teacher and three students a week of design time now takes the operator one pack selection and a logo swap. If a restaurant calls Thursday about Friday’s game, the answer is yes.

### 1Student Section Challenge: Phone-Wide Interactive Game (Great Race, Field Goal / Free Throw Challenge, Home vs. Visitors Tug-of-War)

Fans scan a QR code on the board and play from their phones: racing a partner’s vehicles, kicking virtual field goals or shooting free throws, pulling the home student section against the visitors. Results and leaderboards render live in 3D on the board. No app, no account, no personal information collected.

![Branded vehicle race on a videoboard](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/hubfs/Playbooks/images/deployment-1.jpg)

The Great Race on a major college board, reskinnable for the next partner.

**Why partners buy:** A 3D product or vehicle integration in the game, a leaderboard the whole crowd watches, a participation count after every event, and a family-friendly moment the partner’s own staff can come watch.

**Fan engagement:** 60 to 90 seconds of focused attention during a quarter break, halftime or a timeout. A comparable phone-wide activation at a large college venue drew thousands of interactions per game, roughly 9 percent of stadium capacity; scaled to a 3,000-person Friday crowd, about 10 percent participation is a realistic planning figure, roughly 300 players, with nearly everyone in the stands watching the reveal.

**Best-fit partners:** Auto dealers (the race), credit unions and banks (the student-section challenge), QSR and pizza, sporting-goods retailers, orthodontics and pediatric dental practices.

**Pricing benchmarks: season-long title partner, all home events**

Tier C

$500–$1,500

Tier B

$1,500–$4,000

Tier A

$4,000–$12,000

*Basis: set against the observed season videoboard commercial rate at each tier (Fairfax :30 spot $2,500; Elkhorn Premier $5,000 sit at the midpoints of Tiers B and A), with Katy’s $12,000 “Fan Interaction” and “Time Out Sponsor” packages as the Tier A ceiling. The premium over a commercial is the participation count the partner receives after every event. Estimate.*

Go deeper

- [From Spectators to Players: Turning Every Seat Into a Controller](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/from-spectators-to-players-turning-every-seat-into-a-controller?hsLang=en)
- [The Power of Collective Interaction](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/the-power-of-collective-interaction?hsLang=en)

### 2Hosted Board Game: One Student, the Announcer, and the Whole Gym (Match Game, High Low, Trivia)

One fan or student plays on the board, live, with the PA announcer hosting. In Match Game, a 45-second round: flip the tiles, find the pairs. In High Low, five cards are dealt face down; the first flips, the player calls higher or lower, the call locks on the board for the crowd to see, and five straight correct calls win. The partner’s brand is on the card backs, the frame and the title card for the whole segment, and the card order changes every run so it never plays the same way twice. High Low can also carry a phone-play layer so the whole student section votes higher or lower alongside the featured player, with the board showing the split. For a high school, deal the cards from school history, mascots, opponents’ logos or plain numbers rather than current athletes’ photos (see Section 7 on NIL). The game logic runs on the board; no Wi-Fi dependency, no app. Reskin it for the next partner in minutes.

![Match Game on the main board](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/hubfs/Playbooks/images/deployment-2.jpg)

One fan on the board, the announcer hosting, a partner on every card back.

This is the halftime contest your boosters already run with a tarp and a megaphone, moved onto the board at broadcast quality.

**Why partners buy:** Exclusive ownership of a named, hosted segment (“the \[Credit Union\] Match Game at halftime”); logo on screen for the full round; a real student or family in the spotlight, which is exactly the community story a bank, hospital or realtor wants; a clip for the school’s and the partner’s social channels.

**Fan engagement:** 45 to 90 seconds; the whole building watches one of their own. Pairs with a prize from the partner.

**Best-fit partners:** Credit unions, community banks, hospital systems, insurance agencies, realtors, grocery, furniture and home-improvement retailers.

**Pricing benchmarks: season-long segment partner**

Tier C

$500–$1,250

Tier B

$1,000–$3,000

Tier A

$3,000–$8,000

*Basis: comparable to a season-long time-out or segment sponsorship at each tier, with a premium for board-native presentation and segment naming. Estimate.*

Go deeper

- [Top 8 Uses of 3D Game-Day Software in Sports Venues](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/top-8-uses-of-3d-game-day-software-in-sports-venues?hsLang=en)
- [Transforming Timeout Moments into Charitable Opportunities](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/transforming-timeout-moments-into-charitable-opportunities-with-venue4d?hsLang=en)

### 3Live Spirit Vote & Polling (Pick the Song, Pick the Spirit Theme, Team Play of the Game, Predict the Score)

Fans vote on a partner-branded question in real time; results animate live on the board. One tap, no app, no personal information. The highest-volume, lowest-friction activation in the catalog, and the one that works identically in a 600-seat gym and a 12,000-seat stadium.

**A note on what to vote on.** Keep the question about the team, the school and the crowd (the next song, the spirit theme for the rivalry game, the play of the game) rather than about an individual athlete tied to a partner’s name. Nearly every state’s high school NIL rules prohibit using school facilities or marks in an athlete endorsement, and a “\[Brand\] Player of the Game” vote sits close to that line. “Team Play of the Game, presented by \[Brand\]” does not. See Section 7.

**Why partners buy:** The brand names the question; broad participation across every age group in the building, including parents and grandparents who will never download an app; a participation count after every event.

**Fan engagement:** At a single-event venue, one Pick the Song vote in one timeout produced 112 interactions per minute and an 81 percent completion rate.

**Best-fit partners:** Credit unions, banks, hospital and urgent-care systems, insurance, grocery, QSR, radio-station partners.

**Pricing benchmarks: season-long presenting partner**

Tier C

$400–$1,000

Tier B

$1,000–$2,500

Tier A

$2,500–$6,000

*Basis: comparable to a season videoboard rotation sponsorship at each tier (Lutheran South gym rotation $1,000; Fairfax $2,500), with the participation count as the added value. Estimate.*

Go deeper

- [In-Venue Partnerships: Unlocking New Revenue](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/in-venue-partnerships-unlocking-new-revenue?hsLang=en)
- [Beyond the Feed: Harnessing the Power of Social Media on the Big Screen](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/beyond-the-feed-harnessing-the-power-of-social-media-on-the-big-screen?hsLang=en)

### 4Theme Night Full-Venue Takeover (Homecoming, Senior Night, Pink Out, Military Appreciation, Rivalry Week, Youth Night, Holiday)

One operator action reshapes every digital surface in the building (the main board, the ribbon, the marquee, the gym board) into the night’s theme, with the partner’s brand inside it for the whole event. No production lead time; the pack is in the library, and new ones are added to the Content Hub every week.

The high school calendar is already built around theme nights. The board is usually the one thing in the building that does not change for them.

**Why partners buy:** Ownership of the full visual environment on the one night a year the partner cares most about: the hospital system on Pink Out, the dealership on Homecoming, the credit union on Senior Night; photographable and shareable; zero creative cost to the partner.

**Fan engagement:** Persistent presence for the whole event. Every fan is inside the partner’s branded environment.

**Best-fit partners:** The presenting partner you already have for the night, upgraded; hospital and health systems; auto dealers; credit unions; realtors and title companies; a veterans’ organization’s corporate partner for Military Appreciation.

**Pricing benchmarks: per event, venue4D component**

Tier C

$250–$750

Tier B

$750–$2,000

Tier A

$2,000–$5,000

*Basis: an increment of roughly 25 to 75 percent on observed event-presenting rates at each tier (Sarasota Christian “night” $1,000; Katy primary event sponsor $8,000). Estimate.*

Go deeper

- [Honoring Service Through Shared Game-Day Moments](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/honoring-service-through-shared-game-day-moments?hsLang=en)
- [Scaring Up ROI: How Seasonal Campaigns Boost Sponsor Visibility](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/scaring-up-roi-how-seasonal-campaigns-boost-sponsor-visibility?hsLang=en)
- [Visual Agility: Changing Your Arena’s Look in Seconds, Not Weeks](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/visual-agility-changing-your-arenas-look-in-seconds-not-weeks?hsLang=en)

### 5Crowd Prompt Package (Make Some Noise, First Down, Three-Pointer, Timeout and Halftime Graphics)

All the real-time graphic moments across a game (the noise prompt on third down or a free throw, the celebration after a touchdown or a three, the halftime and timeout graphics) sold as one presenting partnership across all sports.

**Why partners buy:** Persistent brand presence across every game rather than a single window; the partner is the brand on screen every time the crowd gets loud.

**Fan engagement:** Multiple touchpoints per game, every game, every sport.

**Best-fit partners:** Regional banks, insurance, health systems, telecom and internet providers, grocery.

**Pricing benchmarks: season-long presenting partner**

Tier C

$500–$1,250

Tier B

$1,250–$3,000

Tier A

$3,000–$8,000

*Basis: comparable cumulative screen time to a season rotation sponsorship, with the real-time premium; Katy’s $12,000 Time Out Sponsor is the observed ceiling. Estimate.*

Go deeper

- [Monetizing the Countdown: Your Pre-Game Engagement Playbook](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/monetizing-the-countdown-your-pre-game-engagement-playbook?hsLang=en)
- [When the Stat Feed Runs the Promotion](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/when-the-stat-feed-runs-the-promotion?hsLang=en)

### 6Same-Day Partner Spot

A local business that calls Thursday is on the board Friday. venue4D eliminates the design cycle: the operator drops the logo and colors into a prompt or a rotation card from the panel in under a minute. This creates a class of inventory a high school has never had: spot buys for the restaurant with a game-night special, the dealership with a weekend sale, the youth league with sign-ups open.

**Why partners buy:** Speed and a low price of entry. Many will convert to a season package after one game.

**Fan engagement:** Full-game rotation presence plus one anchored moment.

**Best-fit partners:** Restaurants, auto dealers, youth sports and camps, local events, the booster club’s own fundraisers.

**Pricing benchmarks: per game**

Tier C

$100–$250

Tier B

$250–$500

Tier A

$500–$1,500

*Basis: a premium over the per-event equivalent of a season rotation spot, justified by speed. Estimate.*

Go deeper

- [Sell High-Value Slots Hours Before Tip-Off](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/sell-high-value-slots-hours-before-tip-off?hsLang=en)

### 7Audio-Reactive “Make Noise” Partnership

The crowd’s volume drives live 3D effects on the board. The louder the student section gets, the bigger the response. The partner anchors the moment: “Volume brought to you by \[Brand\].”

**Why partners buy:** Ownership of the loudest moment in the building; a clip the school and the partner will both post.

**Fan engagement:** 30-to-60-second windows at the peaks: fourth-quarter stops, late free throws, match point.

**Best-fit partners:** Sports-nutrition and smoothie shops, pizza and QSR, auto, local radio, sporting goods. (Energy-drink brands common at the pro level may conflict with district wellness policy; check first.)

**Pricing benchmarks: season partner**

Tier C

$300–$750

Tier B

$750–$2,000

Tier A

$2,000–$5,000

*Estimate; sized at roughly 60 percent of the Crowd Prompt Package at each tier.*

Go deeper

- [The Power of Collective Interaction](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/the-power-of-collective-interaction?hsLang=en)

### 8Partner Rotation Pack: Upgrading the Business-Card Tier

The $250-to-$500 fence banner and the business card in the program are the backbone of booster fundraising, and they are the least interesting thing on the board. The Partner Rotation Pack moves every booster business partner into an animated, branded card in the venue4D rotation (same template, their logo and colors, a motion treatment that matches the night’s theme) at every home event in every sport, with the option to feature one partner per game (“Tonight’s Featured Partner”).

This is the activation that lets a booster club raise its entire partner tier by a few hundred dollars without adding a single new sponsor.

**Why partners buy:** They are already buying. The upgrade costs them a few hundred dollars, looks dramatically better than a slide, and plays at 60-plus events instead of a handful of Friday nights.

**Fan engagement:** Passive, but persistent across all sports and the whole school year.

**Best-fit partners:** Every existing booster business partner.

**Pricing benchmarks: per partner, per year, as an add-on to an existing tier**

Tier C

$150–$400

Tier B

$300–$800

Tier A

$750–$2,000

*Basis: roughly the price of the fence banner or business-card tier it upgrades, at each level. Estimate.*

**A note on data capture.** The college version of this catalog includes a first-party data capture activation that gates participation behind an email or mobile opt-in. We do not recommend it as a default at the high school level. Children under 13 are in your stands, and collecting personal information from them online requires verifiable parental consent under federal law. Every activation above is designed to run with no personal information collected. If a partner wants a prize drawing that requires contact information, run it as an adult-only entry with a neutral age gate, and have your district’s counsel review the form. Section 7 has more.

Go deeper

- [Gratitude in the Stands: Celebrating Fans and Sponsors](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/gratitude-in-the-stands-celebrating-fans-and-sponsors?hsLang=en)
- [Securing the Second Screen: Data Protection in Real-Time Fan Engagement](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/securing-the-second-screen-data-protection-in-real-time-fan-engagement?hsLang=en)

### One Board, Every Sport

A high school board is not a football asset. It is a 60-to-150-event-a-year asset that happens to open with football. Volleyball in the fall, basketball and wrestling through the winter, soccer, lacrosse and track in the spring, graduation in May: every one of those events is a home crowd, a set of partners, and a chance to run the same inventory. venue4D is sport-agnostic by design: the same pack library, the same games, the same operator panel, reskinned in seconds for whichever team is on the floor and whichever partner owns the night. Selling inventory as “all home events, all sports” is both the stronger package and the Title IX-compliant one.

Go deeper

- [Managing the Matrix: Sponsorship Sales for Multi-Sport Venues](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/managing-the-matrix-sponsorship-sales-for-multi-sport-venues?hsLang=en)

Section 6

## Proof: What the Activations Produce, and What Schools Have Done with Their Boards

### What the Activations Produce

venue4D’s live deployments to date have run at a major college football stadium, a college arena, and a bowl game in an NFL-scale venue. Those crowds are larger than yours. The mechanics are identical (a timeout, a QR code or a student at midcourt, a board), and the operational profile is the part a high school should care about: no app download, pre-loaded content with no live bandwidth dependency, a window that fits a standard break, a one-click reveal, and a report afterward. After launch week at the college venue, the activations ran with no designer support; the crew already running the board ran them.

![Field Goal Challenge on the videoboard](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/hubfs/Playbooks/images/deployment-3.jpg)

Fans kick from their phones; scores update live on the board.

| Deployment | What ran | Result |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Single-event venue (StaffDNA Cure Bowl, Orlando) | One Pick the Song vote during one standard timeout | 112 interactions per minute · 81 percent completion · 562 direct interactions in five minutes · 15,000-plus watching the reveal |
| Single-sport stadium (major college football, one season) | Three phone-wide games across eight home games: a song vote, a field goal challenge, a vehicle race | 48,233 fan interactions · 6,029 per game average · zero designer support after launch week |
| Hosted format (University of South Florida, arena and stadium) | Match Game: a 45-second round on the main board, the MC hosting, one fan playing, a credit union locked on screen for the whole segment. High Low: five cards, five calls, one sponsor on every card back and frame | A game series built to be reskinned for the next partner; more titles in development |

> venue4D created an unforgettable moment that connected fans to our mission.

Alan Gooch, CEO, Cure Bowl

**Scaling the proof to a high school crowd.** Plan on roughly 10 percent of fans participating in a well-promoted phone-wide activation (the college season above ran at about 9 percent of stadium capacity per game) and nearly everyone in the seats watching the reveal. At a 3,000-person Friday crowd, that is about 300 participants per activation and a 3,000-person audience for the result. At a 900-seat gym, about 90 participants, and every one of them is a countable number you can hand to the credit union on Monday. Your first homestand produces your own figures.

### What Schools Have Done with Their Boards

There is not yet an independently documented case of a high school running sponsored interactive board games with measured participation: this is new territory, and the first schools to do it will own the reference. What is documented is how aggressively schools are already monetizing the board itself:

- **Brainerd, Minnesota**: $434,655 stadium board bought by the sports boosters; six founding partners at $15,000 and six community partners at $12,000 on five-year contracts, $162,000 a year projected.
- **Kilgore ISD, Texas**: about $50,000 a year from existing static scoreboard advertising; approved a $347,900 LED videoboard to create more inventory to sell.
- **Chambersburg Area School District, Pennsylvania**: contracted more than $204,000 in year one of an in-house corporate partnership program.
- **Byron Public Schools, Minnesota**: $40,000 to $45,000 a year from a sponsorship program launched in 2022; the superintendent: “we’re not taking out of our general fund when we have some of those bigger projects 10, 15 years down the road.”
- **Westside High School, Omaha**: sponsorship-funded board with a 50/50 split on new partners; sponsors include the University of Nebraska, Chick-fil-A and Omaha Steaks. The AD: “It’s consistently grown every year, and it’s significant enough that what we’re doing here continues to make sense.”
- **Elkhorn Public Schools Foundation, Nebraska**: a published tier program from $1,000 to $25,000 a year across one stadium board and three gym boards.
- **Katy ISD, Texas**: a district rate card with a $30,000 scoreboard package, a $12,000 Time Out Sponsor and a $12,000 Fan Interaction package; “100% of all marketing revenue generated is deposited into the District’s General Operating Fund.”
- **Masuk High School, Connecticut**: a $294,582 board project with $151,000 in partner commitments before installation; the principal on the students who will run it: “We have kids who will take to this like athletes take to their sport.”

The pattern across all of them: the board was justified by sponsorship and the panels sold. In most buildings, the show on the board is still whatever the vendor shipped. The next revenue line is the show.

Go deeper

- [Beyond the Roar: Using Data Analytics to Supercharge Venue Marketing](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/beyond-the-roar-using-data-analytics-to-supercharge-venue-marketing?hsLang=en)
- [Enhancing Sponsorship ROI with Real-Time Graphics](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/enhancing-sponsorship-roi-with-real-time-graphics?hsLang=en)

Section 7

## The Rules: Advertising Policy, Title IX, NIL and Student Privacy

High school is the one level of sport where the compliance conversation comes before the sales conversation. This section is a working checklist, not legal advice; your district’s counsel and your state association have the final word.

### District Advertising Policy

Nearly every district governs commercial content in its buildings through a board policy, commonly coded “KHB, Advertising in Schools” or a numbered equivalent. The common elements: approval by the superintendent or a designee; revenue directed to the district general fund or to a specific school’s activity fund; a statement that advertising does not imply district endorsement; and a prohibited-category list that almost always includes alcohol, tobacco and vaping, cannabis, gambling and sports betting, firearms, political and religious messaging, sexually oriented content, and products that conflict with the district’s wellness or nutrition policy. Pull your district’s text before you build a partner list, and give the superintendent’s office the inventory catalog in advance so approvals are category-level rather than game-by-game.

### State Association Rules

State associations mostly regulate broadcasts and championships rather than regular-season signage, but their category lists are a reliable guide to what your district will accept. The UIL in Texas prohibits advertising of political announcements, tobacco, gambling services or venues, adult entertainment, alcohol and firearms during broadcasts of any UIL activity. The NFHS’s guidance on facility naming recommends excluding alcohol, tobacco and gambling companies, honoring existing exclusives such as beverage pouring rights, and prioritizing long-term community partners. Sports betting, which now floods college and professional inventory, is effectively off-limits at the high school level: no state association permits it in the guidance we reviewed, and district policies ban it outright.

### Title IX

The source of funds does not matter; the benefit delivered does. Booster and sponsor dollars are evaluated under Title IX exactly as taxpayer dollars are, and the Office for Civil Rights has stated that “the purpose and effect of Title IX requirements could be routinely undermined by the provision of unequal benefits through private financial assistance.” For a videoboard program, the practical rules are: run the same show for every team that plays in the venue, including girls’ soccer, flag football, lacrosse and track; route interactive-inventory revenue to the athletic department or booster general fund rather than to football; and, where the only board is in the stadium, make sure the gym program gets equivalent treatment. “All home events, all sports” is both the compliant package and the one partners pay more for.

### High School NIL

Roughly 45 states and the District of Columbia now permit high school athletes to earn name, image and likeness compensation, according to industry trackers. Ohio’s member schools approved NIL by referendum (447 to 121) under litigation pressure, and a bill to reverse it has been introduced; Texas allows seniors 17 and older to sign agreements but bars payment until the athlete enrolls in college. Common to nearly every permitting state: athletes may not use school names, uniforms, logos, mascots or facilities in their deals; compensation may not be tied to performance or recruiting; and coaches, school employees and booster clubs may not facilitate deals.

**The in-venue implication is simple:** the school’s board cannot be used to promote an individual athlete’s endorsement, and a partner-branded recognition of a single player sits uncomfortably close to that line. Build fan-engagement content around the team, the mascot and the crowd (“Team Play of the Game,” “Student Section Challenge,” “Pick the Spirit Theme”), not around individual athletes paired with a sponsor’s name. None of the inventory in Section 5 requires an athlete’s likeness.

### Student and Fan Privacy

Children under 13 are in your stands. Federal law (COPPA) requires verifiable parental consent before collecting personal information online from a child under 13, and the Children’s Advertising Review Unit’s guidance on contests is explicit: collect only what is reasonably necessary, use neutral age gates, and defer collecting winner details until after selection. The design rule that follows, and that the activations in this playbook are built around: participation without personal information. Scan, play, vote, watch the reveal: no account, no download, no name, no number. If a partner wants a prize drawing with contact information, run it as an adult-only entry behind a neutral age gate, keep the no-entry version of the activation as the default, and have counsel review the form. If your school shares rosters, headshots or stats with any vendor, that vendor should be covered by your district’s student-data privacy agreement; the activations in this playbook do not require student data (roster or matchup graphics, if you choose to run them, do).

### Streaming

If your games stream on the NFHS Network or Hudl, you already sell digital inventory: the NFHS Network gives schools two sponsor spots per broadcast and a revenue share of 10 to 20 percent of subscription revenue; Hudl splits pay-per-view 60/40 with schools. When your broadcast crew cuts to the board, a theme night takeover or a hosted Match Game appears on the stream as well, which lets you sell the same partner both placements in one package.

Go deeper

- [Securing the Second Screen: Data Protection in Real-Time Fan Engagement](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/securing-the-second-screen-data-protection-in-real-time-fan-engagement?hsLang=en)
- [The Broadcast Gap: Is Your Venue Losing to the Living Room?](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/the-broadcast-gap-is-your-venue-losing-to-the-living-room?hsLang=en)

Section 8

## The Pitch Playbook

Four tools: two outreach templates (one for the partners you have, one for the categories you want), a seven-slide partner deck, agreement guidance, and a note on building the student crew that runs the show.

### 8a. Outreach: Existing Booster or District Partner (Renewal Season)

**Subject line options**

- Option A: A new way to put \[Business\] on the board this season
- Option B: Before we renew \[Business\]’s partnership, one upgrade worth seeing

\[First name\],

Thank you again for standing with \[School\] athletics this year. Before we finalize next year’s partnership, I want to show you one new thing we can do on the board.

Starting this season our videoboard runs real-time graphics, which means we can do things the old board could not: a student-section challenge where fans race \[Business\]’s trucks from their phones with the leaderboard live on the screen, a “\[Business\] Match Game” at halftime with a student playing in front of the whole gym, or a full Homecoming or Pink Out takeover where the board, the ribbon and the marquee all carry the night’s theme with your brand inside it.

Every one of these gives us a number afterward (how many fans played, how many finished) that we will send you after each home event, in every sport, all year. Your current panel stays exactly where it is; this is an addition to it.

Can I show you two options at your office or at a game? It takes fifteen minutes.

\[Your name\] | \[Title\] | \[School\] Athletics / \[School\] Boosters

### 8b. Outreach: New Partner (Credit Union, Hospital System, Dealership Group)

**Subject line options**

- Option A: \[Community\]’s Friday night crowd, your brand, and a number afterward
- Option B: A measurable way to support \[School\] athletics

\[First name\],

\[School\] athletics hosts more than home events a year across \[number\] sports, with \[attendance\] on a typical Friday night. This season we are opening a new category of partnership on our videoboard: real-time interactive moments that fans take part in from their seats: no app, no download, no personal information collected.

For \[Credit Union / Hospital\], that could be the season-long Student Section Challenge, a hosted halftime Match Game with your logo on the board for the whole round, or presenting partner of Pink Out with the entire building themed in your colors. After every event we send a short report with participation counts, so your team has something concrete to show.

Partner revenue goes to the athletic department as a whole (every team, every season) so your support reaches all of our student-athletes.

Would twenty minutes work to walk through it? I can show you the activation running and what the post-event report looks like.

\[Your name\] | \[Title\] | \[School\] Athletics / \[School\] Boosters

### 8c. The Seven-Slide Partner Deck

| Slide | Title | Content |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Title | School + Partner co-branded. “A New Way to Be Part of \[School\] Game Day.” |
| 2 | The Crowd | Home events per year across all sports; typical attendance; the community that fills the stands. |
| 3 | The Board, Upgraded | Before (the slide rotation) and after (the live, themed, interactive board). One sentence: “Fans play; you get a number.” |
| 4 | Option A | Featured activation with the partner’s mockup, e.g., Student Section Challenge with the dealership’s vehicles, or Match Game with the credit union locked on screen. |
| 5 | Option B | Second option, e.g., Pink Out takeover for the hospital, or the Partner Rotation upgrade for an existing banner partner. |
| 6 | The Package | What the partner already has (panel, banner, program ad) plus the interactive component, as one annual package across all sports. Pricing from Sections 4 and 5. |
| 7 | Close | School logo, contact, dates available this season. Where the revenue goes. |

### 8d. Partner Agreement Guidance

Not legal advice; have your district’s counsel review all agreements.

**Policy approval first.** Confirm the partner’s category against district advertising policy before quoting. Keep a current copy of the policy in the sales folder.

**Revenue routing.** State in the agreement where the money goes (the athletic department general account or the booster general fund) and that the inventory runs at all home events in all sports.

**No athlete endorsements.** Include a clause that board content will not feature individual student-athletes in connection with the partner’s brand.

**No personal information by default.** State that activations collect no personal information from fans unless a separately approved, adult-only entry is added, and that any such data is owned by the school and shared only with the fan’s affirmative consent.

**Term and renewal.** Three-to-five-year terms are the norm for board panels and work for interactive inventory; include a 30-day right of first refusal for the partner to renew at the same rate before the position is offered to a competitor.

**Exclusivity.** Category exclusivity is a premium, not a default: typically 1.3x to 1.8x the standard rate.

**Creative approval.** Collect logo files and brand guidelines at signing with a ten-business-day approval window before first use; the partner may review mockups but does not direct the operator on game night.

**Performance language.** Do not guarantee participation counts. Commit to a number of activation windows per season and a report after each.

**Subscription disclosure.** venue4D is a subscription; the school licenses the platform for the term and does not own it.

### 8e. Build the Crew

The board at most high schools is run by a student working around a class schedule, which is the right model, and the one this inventory is designed for. Masuk’s principal and the parent-nonprofit director who led Park City’s fundraising both describe the board as a teaching tool first. Redwood Valley, Minnesota, paid students $25 an event to run its board as part of a communications class; Park City ties its board to a career-and-technical-education program.

venue4D is built for that crew. One operator selects the pack, changes the logo and colors, previews and pushes live; nobody needs design software or rendering experience. A production or broadcast teacher can run the program as a course, with students owning the show rundown, the partner activations and the post-event report, which is also the easiest way to make sure the report gets sent.

Go deeper

- [From Classroom to Control Room: Building a Student Production Team](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/from-classroom-to-control-room-building-a-student-production-team?hsLang=en)
- [Democratizing the Control Room: Solving the Talent Gap](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/democratizing-the-control-room-solving-the-talent-gap?hsLang=en)
- [How Generative AI Is Streamlining Control Room Scripting](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/how-generative-ai-is-streamlining-control-room-scripting?hsLang=en)

Section 9

## 30–60–90 Day Implementation Timeline

Run it against the school calendar. The selling window for fall is May through August, when booster budgets reset and businesses plan the year; the board then works through three seasons.

| Phase | Goal | Key actions |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Days 1–30 (late spring)** | Policy, inventory and pricing | Pull the district advertising policy and confirm categories with the superintendent’s office. Map each activation in Section 5 to a package name in the school’s voice. Set pricing by tier from Sections 4 and 5. Build the partner list: every existing board, banner and program partner first (upgrade sales), then four to six new-category targets: the credit union, the hospital system, the dealership group, the orthodontist. Build the partner deck with school marks. Submit school colors, marks and the theme-night calendar to venue4D for the custom pack. Identify the production teacher and the student crew. |
| **Days 31–60 (summer)** | First revenue | Pitch existing partners the upgrade; close the season-long Student Section Challenge or Match Game title that covers the platform. Close the Partner Rotation upgrade across the booster business tier. Submit partner assets. Complete remote setup and operator training with the student crew before the first scrimmage. Run the first live activation at the home opener. Send the first post-event report within 48 hours. |
| **Days 61–90 (fall)** | Scale and set up the year | Use the opener’s numbers to close remaining targets. Sell Theme Night takeovers against Homecoming, Pink Out, Senior Night and Military Appreciation to the nights’ existing presenting partners. Hold Same-Day Partner Spots open for walk-up buyers. Carry every package into volleyball and winter sports. Open next-year renewal conversations before basketball season, with a season of reports in hand. |

Go deeper

- [The Agility Advantage: Modernizing Venue Operations](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/the-agility-advantage-modernizing-venue-operations?hsLang=en)
- [Why Venues Are Switching to Real-Time Graphics](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/why-venues-are-switching-to-real-time-graphics?hsLang=en)

Section 10

## The Partner Report

Every activation produces a number. Sharing it with the partner (one page, within 48 hours) is what turns a one-season sponsor into a five-year one, and it is a task the student crew can own.

### Post-Event Report Structure

| Section | What to include |
| --- | --- |
| **Header** | Partner and activation name · Event, date, opponent, sport, estimated attendance · Activation window (quarter break, halftime, timeout) |
| **Participation** | Direct interactions (scans, votes, plays) · Completion rate · Peak interactions per minute · Estimated audience watching the reveal |
| **Brand presence** | Theme or takeover nights run · Rotation appearances · Social clips posted (school and partner) |
| **Season to date** | Running total across all of the partner’s activations, all sports · Trend versus the prior event and why · Projected season total |
| **Next** | One adjustment (move the activation to halftime; add a PA read) · One additional activation the partner could add · Renewal path |

### Sample Season Summary (Format)

| Event | Sport | \[Credit Union\] Student Section Challenge | \[Bank\] Spirit Vote | Total |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Aug 29: Home opener | Football | 410 | 620 | 1,030 |
| Sep 12 | Football | 365 | 540 | 905 |
| Sep 16 | Volleyball | 85 | 140 | 225 |
| Sep 26: Homecoming | Football | 520 | 790 | 1,310 |
| **Season to date** |  | **1,380** | **2,090** | **3,470** |

*Illustrative format; figures are not from a live deployment.*

### Why the Report Matters More Here Than Anywhere

A minor league club has a partnership staff. A high school has an AD who also teaches, a booster treasurer with a day job, and a lot of goodwill. The report is what lets goodwill become a line item: the credit union’s marketing director can forward it to her board, and the orthodontist can see that 2,000 local families voted in his Spirit Vote this fall. The partner who gets that report in September is not shopping in May. They are asking what else they can sponsor.

Go deeper

- [Why Real-Time Beats Post-Game: The Shift to Live Engagement Metrics](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/why-real-time-beats-post-game-the-shift-to-live-engagement-metrics?hsLang=en)
- [Gratitude in the Stands: Celebrating Fans and Sponsors](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/gratitude-in-the-stands-celebrating-fans-and-sponsors?hsLang=en)

Section 11

## Next Steps

**See it on your board.** We will show you the platform running with your school’s colors and marks, walk through the activations that fit your calendar, and build a partner inventory and pricing worksheet for your venue. → [Contact venue4D](https://www.venue4d.com/contact)

**Get your custom quote.** Pricing depends on your screen configuration and scope. Quotes are generated per venue. → [Contact venue4D](https://www.venue4d.com/contact)

**Build your custom pack.** Every agreement includes a content pack co-developed in your school’s identity (colors, marks, mascot, theme-night treatments) built around your building. Your rate is locked for the life of the agreement.

Resources

## Blog Reference Guide

All venue4D blog content is published on the [venue4D Blog](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog?hsLang=en).

**Why the board matters now**

- [The Rendering Bottleneck: Is Your Videoboard Leaving Revenue on the Table?](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/the-rendering-bottleneck-is-your-videoboard-leaving-revenue-on-the-table?hsLang=en)
- [Beyond the Banner: Valuing Modern Sponsorship Assets](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/beyond-the-banner-valuing-modern-sponsorship-assets?hsLang=en)
- [Why Venues Are Switching to Real-Time Graphics](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/why-venues-are-switching-to-real-time-graphics?hsLang=en)
- [Beyond the Playback Loop: Real-Time Graphics as the New Venue Standard](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/beyond-the-playback-loop-real-time-graphics-as-the-new-venue-standard?hsLang=en)

**Partner revenue**

- [How Local Sponsors Win Big on the Big Screen](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/how-local-sponsors-win-big-on-the-big-screen?hsLang=en)
- [Unlock Revenue: The Guide to Interactive Sponsorship](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/moving-sponsors-from-static-signs-to-interactive-moments?hsLang=en)
- [In-Venue Partnerships: Unlocking New Revenue](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/in-venue-partnerships-unlocking-new-revenue?hsLang=en)
- [Sponsorship Agility: Maximize Value, Cut Costs](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/sponsorship-agility-maximize-value-cut-costs?hsLang=en)
- [Managing the Matrix: Sponsorship Sales for Multi-Sport Venues](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/managing-the-matrix-sponsorship-sales-for-multi-sport-venues?hsLang=en)
- [Enhancing Sponsorship ROI with Real-Time Graphics](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/enhancing-sponsorship-roi-with-real-time-graphics?hsLang=en)

**Fan engagement and theme nights**

- [From Spectators to Players: Turning Every Seat Into a Controller](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/from-spectators-to-players-turning-every-seat-into-a-controller?hsLang=en)
- [The Power of Collective Interaction](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/the-power-of-collective-interaction?hsLang=en)
- [Top 8 Uses of 3D Game-Day Software in Sports Venues](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/top-8-uses-of-3d-game-day-software-in-sports-venues?hsLang=en)
- [Transforming Timeout Moments into Charitable Opportunities](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/transforming-timeout-moments-into-charitable-opportunities-with-venue4d?hsLang=en)
- [Monetizing the Countdown: Your Pre-Game Engagement Playbook](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/monetizing-the-countdown-your-pre-game-engagement-playbook?hsLang=en)
- [Honoring Service Through Shared Game-Day Moments](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/honoring-service-through-shared-game-day-moments?hsLang=en)
- [Scaring Up ROI: How Seasonal Campaigns Boost Sponsor Visibility](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/scaring-up-roi-how-seasonal-campaigns-boost-sponsor-visibility?hsLang=en)
- [Harnessing Holiday Cheer: Effective Marketing Tactics for Venues](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/harnessing-holiday-cheer-effective-marketing-tactics-for-venues?hsLang=en)
- [Visual Agility: Changing Your Arena’s Look in Seconds, Not Weeks](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/visual-agility-changing-your-arenas-look-in-seconds-not-weeks?hsLang=en)
- [Sell High-Value Slots Hours Before Tip-Off](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/sell-high-value-slots-hours-before-tip-off?hsLang=en)
- [Beyond the Feed: Harnessing the Power of Social Media on the Big Screen](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/beyond-the-feed-harnessing-the-power-of-social-media-on-the-big-screen?hsLang=en)
- [Building Community Through Live Event Campaigns](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/building-community-through-live-event-campaigns?hsLang=en)
- [Gratitude in the Stands: Celebrating Fans and Sponsors](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/gratitude-in-the-stands-celebrating-fans-and-sponsors?hsLang=en)

**Students, operations and compliance**

- [From Classroom to Control Room: Building a Student Production Team](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/from-classroom-to-control-room-building-a-student-production-team?hsLang=en)
- [Democratizing the Control Room: Solving the Talent Gap](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/democratizing-the-control-room-solving-the-talent-gap?hsLang=en)
- [How Generative AI Is Streamlining Control Room Scripting](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/how-generative-ai-is-streamlining-control-room-scripting?hsLang=en)
- [The Agility Advantage: Modernizing Venue Operations](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/the-agility-advantage-modernizing-venue-operations?hsLang=en)
- [Why Venues Are Switching to Real-Time Graphics](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/why-venues-are-switching-to-real-time-graphics?hsLang=en)
- [Evaluating Real-Time Graphics Services for Sports Venues](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/evaluating-real-time-graphics-services-for-sports-venues?hsLang=en)
- [Securing the Second Screen: Data Protection in Real-Time Fan Engagement](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/securing-the-second-screen-data-protection-in-real-time-fan-engagement?hsLang=en)
- [Why Real-Time Beats Post-Game: The Shift to Live Engagement Metrics](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/why-real-time-beats-post-game-the-shift-to-live-engagement-metrics?hsLang=en)
- [Beyond the Roar: Using Data Analytics to Supercharge Venue Marketing](https://hub.emissivelabs.com/blog/beyond-the-roar-using-data-analytics-to-supercharge-venue-marketing?hsLang=en)

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