Katz has found a unique niche in the digital space and is now taking his channel to new heights after winning the WooTank Intercollegiate Showdown, a pitch competition where college students present their business ideas and receive funding to grow their startups.
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Noah Katz, a rising senior marketing student at Clark University, turned his lifelong love of baseball into The Umpire Channel, a social media platform offering audiences a behind-the-scenes look at the role of an umpire while promoting youth sports. What began as a fun side project has evolved into a platform with more than 300,000 followers and millions of views. Katz has found a unique niche in the digital space and is now taking his channel to new heights after winning the WooTank Intercollegiate Showdown, a pitch competition where college students present their business ideas and receive funding to grow their startups.
What inspired you to create The Umpire Channel?
I have played baseball all my life and love it. I started umpiring when I was 16. It was a great part-time job. I was able to make money while outside and doing something I really enjoyed, but no one I knew had become an umpire before. I went online and was looking up how to become an umpire, what gear I needed, and all of these umpire-related questions, but nothing was coming up. There was nothing on YouTube, no websites, nothing on social media.
That was where the idea came about. About three years ago, I went out to the local field with my iPhone and my little brother as the cameraman and made a video about why being an umpire is a great part-time job. The first video got 300,000 views. Now, we are on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Today, The Umpire Channel has 330,000 followers, 300 million views and has generated widespread interest in officiating.
What is the mission of your platform?
The first is to show people they can become umpires, and it's a great part-time job they can do. There are plenty of videos talking about working every other part-time job, but there was a gap when it came to umpiring. I want to get more people interested in doing it. Secondly, I want people to treat umpires and officials with more respect by showing they are humans, too.
Our goal is to make youth sports a better place for everyone.
Why do you think you’ve gotten such a strong response?
Because no one has really done this before. Every video we make is the first of its kind. No one has ever seen what it's like to be an MLB umpire or watched a day in the life of a little league umpire before.
We have interviews with them and show their perspectives. We film at local fields. I'll umpire a JV game, a high school game, or a little league game in the local area, both in Massachusetts and at home in Virginia. We’re traveling the country to capture content at some of the biggest events in sports. We attend MLB games and NBA games and film with other officials. The channel also follows my umpiring role with the Savannah Bananas, and at places like Fenway Park, so our content features a wide range of places and events.
It's something people are very interested in and something no one was creating content for previously.
How has the trajectory of your business changed since winning WooTank?
I made some great connections at WooTank. The judges were fantastic, and I received some good pitching experience and ended up receiving $3,750, the top amount of funding from the competition. We are using those funds to invest in some equipment we need for our channel. We can purchase new software, new camera equipment, and a new laptop for editing.
What is your vision for The Umpire Channel’s future?
The goal is to make The Umpire Channel a full-time business, which we've recently hit the point where it can be, which is very exciting. We want to be the go-to voice for officiating. We want to be at the biggest sports events covering stories from the officials’ perspectives. We just want to continue to build up and scale up our operations. We want to put out more content and continue to make a bigger impact.
This interview was conducted and edited for length and clarity by WBJ Correspondent Sloane M. Perron.
