Why One Hockey Company’s Streaming Rules Matter To Soccer Parents
I don’t want to be an alarmist, but with a background in media I know a little about intellectual property and streaming video, and in that context if you haven’t heard about Black Bear Sports Group yet, you very well may. It could be good news, but I wouldn’t take that for granted.
Black Bear Sports Group And Youth Sports Streaming
Black Bear Sports Group has become a high‑profile test case for how far private operators can go in locking up streaming and recording rights for youth sports, and what that means for families who just want to watch and share their kids’ games. At U.S. Soccer Parent, the story reads less like a hockey‑only controversy and more like an early preview of pressures that could easily migrate into youth soccer.
Inside The Black Bear TV Subscription Model
Black Bear owns and operates dozens of ice rinks and controls multiple youth hockey leagues. As part of that footprint, it has rolled out Black Bear TV, a subscription streaming service that it positions as the exclusive way to watch many games played in its facilities and leagues. Critics and business reporters note that policies at Black Bear venues often bar parents from livestreaming full games or practices and, in some cases, from recording them at all, with threats of penalties or device confiscation if they do so. Subscription offerings for Black Bear TV can run from individual game fees to monthly packages in roughly the $25–$50 range, layered on top of already significant participation costs.
How Black Bear Frames Privacy, Consent, And Safety
Black Bear defends these policies by framing them around privacy, consent, and child safety. The company argues that unmanaged parent streaming makes it impossible to guarantee that every player and family has agreed to be broadcast, especially when games involve very young children. It points to prior lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny involving youth sports streaming as evidence that facilities and leagues have real exposure if they allow open broadcasting without robust consent processes. From Black Bear’s perspective, centralizing cameras and rights under one controlled platform is a way to manage risk, standardize consent, and provide reliable coverage.
When Privacy Justifications Become A Paywall
Parents, journalists and advocates counter that, while privacy concerns are not fake, they can be used as a convenient justification for exclusive commercial control over what are, in practical terms, public‑facing events. Legally, people generally have no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in truly public places, and informal filming of kids playing sports in parks or open school events has long been commonplace. What changes the equation here is not that the underlying privacy law suddenly prohibits recording, but that youth sports are increasingly taking place in private or semi‑public facilities that can impose their own house rules as a condition of participation.
Buried Consent And Loss Of Parent Control
This is where the buried consent issue comes in. It is easy to imagine, and in some cases already see, broad media and streaming consents folded into dense registration packets and platform terms: if you want your child to play in a given league or club, you effectively agree that a private operator can hold exclusive rights to record, stream, and monetize their games. There is rarely a realistic way for a single family to negotiate those clauses. Even parents who understand the tradeoffs often click “accept” because the alternative is their child being left out.
Why Youth Soccer Parents Should Pay Attention
For U.S. soccer parents, the risk is that this hockey model becomes a template for soccer complexes, tournaments, and club platforms: exclusive streaming deals, contractual bans on parent recording, and consents buried in registration workflows that quietly shift control of youth soccer video to private entities. The core questions for this community are:
Who should control youth soccer video—the families, the clubs, the facility owners, or the governing bodies?
How do we balance legitimate safety and consent concerns with the long‑standing, reasonable expectation that parents can film and share their own kids’ games?
And what norms do we want to advocate for now, before “no filming, subscribe instead” becomes the default architecture of American youth soccer?
A Warning For The Future Of Youth Sports Access
Framed that way, Black Bear isn’t just a hockey story; it is a warning flare about how power, rights, and revenue around our kids’ sports experiences could be structured in the years ahead. I believe there are ways this approach could benefit the youth sports community, but the tack Black Bear is currently taking seems disingenuous to me, and it’s not hard to imagine “mission creep” leading to effective banning of “non-official photography” including short segments as well as full games and practices. If we are not careful, it could become an additional expense for parents that can “afford” to pay, and yet another accessibility problem for everyone else.
Ron Stitt
Co-Founder, U.S. Soccer Parent