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Little League to livestream gamesFree Access


GROSSE POINTE WOODS, SHORES — T-Mobile, the official partner of Little League, launched a program in partnership with GoDog Sports that allows select Little Leagues nationwide to livestream games free of charge. With Woods council approval Monday, Jan. 24, the Grosse Pointe Woods-Shores Little League became one of these select leagues — and the first in Michigan — that will be able to provide the service to its families and friends.

“It’s pretty exciting,” Woods-Shores Little League President Paul Summers said. “As I mentioned in the letter to council, there’s a great deal of passion that this community has for Little League and for baseball, and to know that there might be a family member or somebody who can’t make it out to a game who can now potentially log on and see their grandson or a family member play, it’s just nice. It’s just another pretty cool extension of what we can do with the league with our community.”

The livestreaming program is in its second year with Little League. Footage will come from a camera likely to be placed above and behind home plate, though an exact location has not yet been solidified. The camera will go live five minutes before the game and capture audio for viewers to hear calls made.

“I want to make sure that this doesn’t become something on social media where a bad call was made (and gets reviewed and talked about),” Summers said. “I want parents to respect the reason why we’re doing it and that’s for extended family to be able to watch this.”

To access the live stream, viewers will need to get credentials from the Woods-Shores Little League to create an account through the streaming platform. Game footage will be available to view up to 10 days after play, at which point the files will be deleted. Families will have the opportunity to download a few highlight clips through the program.

“Families have an opportunity to download maybe a couple clips if their son had an awesome hit or great play, they would download that,” Summers said.

Live-streamed games will be played on Field 1. Each family must sign a consent form allowing the player to be filmed.

“If the player or family says that that’s not something that they would like,” Summers explained, “we can make adjustments, for example, that that one team perhaps … won’t play on Field 1. So we would like to be able to give as many people that opportunity, but we do recognize that there may be a handful of people or one person that isn’t comfortable with it and we’ll accommodate accordingly.”

Summers anticipates the livestream ability to launch with the start of the 2022 Little League season.