Parents of kids who play sports, their coaches and the players alike, pay attention: ESPN and YouTube have put a call out for your user-generated content. If you have any original sports highlights you’d like to share on YouTube, be sure to submit them to ESPN as well.
While it’s not necessarily called a contest — YouTube’s blog entry simply calls it the “second version” — the YouTube/ESPN-sponsored “Your Highlight” will pick a number of favorite entries, and from them, a winner will be picked based on the number of votes it receives from the YouTube collective. Winners will be flown to Bristol, Connecticut, and they will be given the red carpet treatment by the Worldwide Leader.
A special segment will be filmed and during this portion of SportsCenter, the winning highlight will be shown. Naturally, there’s a video explaining the contest even further:
While the contest seems to be aimed at the soccer families in the US — that is, parents who very active and supportive of their offspring’s amateur sports career — the rules indicate the contest is open to anyone who was 13 or older on September 8, 2010. That means that youth players themselves can submit their own content without parental oversight if so choose.
Of course, mom and dad would probably want to know about any upcoming trips to Connecticut. ESPN’s rule page has more details about the submissions:
(a) Include an original sports video; It must be an original, unpublished work that does not contain, incorporate or otherwise use any content, material or element that is owned by a third party or entity.
(b) Must be in one of the following formats: .avi, .mov, .mpg, .mp4, mpeg or .wmv.
(c) Should be no more than two (2) minute(s) in length and 200 megabytes in size. Entries longer than two minutes may not be reviewed by the judges or considered for the prize, at ESPN’s sole discretion.
(d) It must not be derogatory, offensive, threatening, defamatory, disparaging, libelous or contain any content that is in appropriate, indecent, sexual, profane, indecent, tortuous, slanderous, discriminatory in any way, or that promotes hatred or harm against any group or person, or otherwise does not comply with the theme and spirit of the Contest.
(e) It must not contain content, material or any element that is unlawful, or otherwise in violation of or contrary to all applicable federal, state, or local laws and regulations the laws or regulations in any state where video is created. Specifically, it must not contain: any music other than Entrant’s original works OR any footage of any professional sporting event.
(f) It must not contain any content, material or element that displays any third party advertising, slogan, logo, trademark or otherwise indicates a sponsorship or endorsement by a third party or commercial entity or that is not within the spirit of the Contest, as determined by ESPN in its sole discretion.
(g) It cannot contain any content, element, or material that violates a third party’s publicity, privacy or intellectual property rights.
(h) Entrant has not engaged anyone appearing in or associated with the Video Submission under any union or guild agreement that would result in any ongoing obligations resulting from the exploitation of the Video Submission.
As you can see, the desire is for original content, not something that’s been run through the “flashy production” machine. Submissions are accepted at ESPN’s YouTube page and must be received by May 4, 2011.
Lead image courtesy of this thread.