Key Takeaways
- Perfect Game signs YouTube creator Doubted Athletes to broadcast one full-length marquee matchup each month across its national event schedule.
- The deal formalizes an organic relationship. Doubted was already covering PG events and tagging the brand in highlight posts.
- 92 percent of players drafted in the 2025 MLB Draft had competed in Perfect Game events, the scouting credibility behind the audience.
- The partnership opens new sponsorship inventory across equipment, apparel, training, nutrition and hydration, recruiting and NIL services.
- Doubted shoots and produces in its own style while PG scouts select the matchups and flag prospects and storylines.
Perfect Game, the world’s largest youth baseball and softball platform, has signed a media rights partnership with Doubted Athletes, a creator-native YouTube channel, to broadcast select games and events throughout the year. We sat down with Perfect Game Chief Content Officer Josh Gotthelf to understand what the organization is actually building.
A Partnership That Started in the Highlights
The deal did not begin in a boardroom. Doubted Athletes was already covering Perfect Game events and tagging the brand in its highlight posts, and the engagement told PG everything it needed to know.
“The demand for Perfect Game content was already there, with exactly the audience we care about,” Gotthelf said. “So rather than treat that as something to manage from the outside, we brought them in.”
That is a sharp rights posture for an event owner watching creators build audiences on top of its IP. Instead of policing the coverage or ignoring it, PG monetized it.
Why a Creator Beat a Broadcaster
Gotthelf was direct about the choice to skip a traditional broadcaster. “A traditional broadcaster reaches a broad, general audience. Doubted is native to the young athlete in that they speak that language, they’ve earned that trust and they move the demographic that lives inside amateur baseball.”
The structure reflects that. Doubted produces the broadcasts in its own style, and PG’s scouts help select the best head-to-heads and surface the prospects worth following. PG brings access and the scouting layer. Doubted brings the audience and the production.
“Fans love their content because it’s genuinely them. We’re not trying to change that,” Gotthelf said. “We’re just a partner in it now, opening the gate so they can do what they already do well, with full access.”
He framed the move as additive rather than a replacement for PG’s owned channels. “This is us widening the funnel, not replacing anything.”
New Sponsorship Inventory Built Into the Broadcast
The monetization headline is integrated advertising and branded content woven into live broadcasts throughout the season. Gotthelf pointed to categories that already live in the youth baseball world as natural fits: equipment, apparel, training, nutrition and hydration, and recruiting and NIL services.
The pitch to brands is the audience itself, young and highly engaged. “Because it’s integrated, it reads as part of the broadcast for the viewer instead of an interruption to the action,” he said.
What Athletes Get in an NIL Era
Perfect Game already delivers scouting and recruiting exposure at scale. Gotthelf said the creator format adds something different: personality and peer reach.
“It shows the athlete beyond the stat line in front of an audience of their peers,” he said. “In an NIL world that kind of visibility carries real value for a young player building a brand.”
One Game a Month, and a Test of the Model
The cadence is deliberately modest. One marquee matchup per month, kicking off with the 2026 Ultimate Baseball Championship out of West Palm Beach. Doubted is also on site this week at the 17U WWBA National Championship in Marietta, Georgia, where nearly 400 teams will play more than 1,200 games over eight days.
A single broadcast a month reads less like a full slate and more like a proving ground, a way to validate the creator model and the sponsorship inventory before scaling. For an organization repositioning itself as a media platform rather than an events and scouting business, that is the number to watch.
Source: Perfect Game Announces Media Rights Partnership With Doubted Athletes, Perfect Game, June 24, 2026, with exclusive commentary from an interview with Chief Content Officer Josh Gotthelf.
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