News
Schoolyard Social: Where Competition Builds Community
Brooklyn startup launches app that transforms local tournaments into real-world connections—and proves people are hungry for authentic experiences beyond the screen.
Remember when competition meant showing up somewhere real, not just climbing digital leaderboards from your couch? A Brooklyn-based startup is betting that nostalgia—and a growing appetite for genuine human connection—can reshape how we play, compete, and build community in 2025.
The Problem: We’re More Connected Than Ever, Yet More Isolated
Schoolyard Social launched its flagship app in October 2025 with a simple premise: technology should bring people together in person, not keep them glued to screens. In an era of endless scrolling, algorithmic friendships, and virtual everything, the platform offers something refreshingly analog—real people, real competition, real community.
“People are craving real-life ways to meet and belong,” said Win Smith, CEO and co-founder. “Competition gives you a reason to show up, and there’s less pressure to ‘click’ socially. Instead of swiping or making small talk at a bar, players build community around a shared interest.”
It’s a pitch that resonates. In just one month since going live, Schoolyard Social doubled both its revenue and number of tournaments compared to the entire previous year. From 800-player basketball tournaments at Barclays Center during the Aptos Crypto Conference to Sunday pickleball leagues sponsored by Sixpoint Brewery, the app is proving that people will show up—literally—when given the right reason.
How It Works: Tournament Tech for Everyone
Built in partnership with ISBX, the digital product agency behind work for Nike and other major brands, Schoolyard Social combines everything you need to run a tournament into one streamlined platform: hosting tools, bracketing, scoring, leaderboards, messaging, and payment processing.
The genius is in the simplicity. Anyone can organize a local, skill-based tournament—no tech background required. Whether it’s college beer pong leagues, corporate wellness competitions, neighborhood bakeoffs, or city-wide basketball brackets, the app handles the logistics so organizers can focus on creating memorable experiences.
And here’s the kicker: cash prizes. Players aren’t just competing for bragging rights; they’re getting paid for doing what they love. It’s a model that turns casual players into invested community members and one-off events into recurring traditions.
The Origin Story: Whiteboard Brackets to Venture-Backed Startup
Schoolyard Social wasn’t born in a boardroom—it was born from real demand the founders couldn’t keep up with.
“When we started, we were organizing events with whiteboard brackets and Instagram buzz,” said Harry Stanton, co-founder and COO. “The interest quickly outpaced us; venues, clubs, companies and creators all started asking us to organize their tournaments. So we built an app anyone can use to scale what hosts were already doing manually.”
The founding trio brings serious credentials to the table. Smith is a former Wesleyan University tennis captain and Sony Music executive producer. Stanton is a former NCAA lacrosse national champion and early hire at Fanatics Betting and Gaming. Peter de Saint Phalle, the third co-founder and CMO, is an experiential marketing veteran whose agency work includes global campaigns for Ogilvy and George P. Johnson.
Together, they’ve combined backgrounds in sports, technology, and brand activation to build something that feels both nostalgic and necessary—a platform that turns everyday rivalry into community.
The Brand Play: Authentic Engagement Beyond Digital Impressions
Schoolyard Social isn’t just attracting players—it’s attracting brands looking for deeper customer relationships. Sponsors including Sixpoint, vitaminwater, PaddleSmash, and Justworks are partnering to activate products and build brand awareness through live demos and in-office events.
“Just as people crave lasting connections, brands want sustainable relationships with customers,” said de Saint Phalle. “Schoolyard Social lets brands meet audiences where they play, activating products and creating real-life connections that deepen over time—not just experiential advertising or fleeting digital impressions.”
It’s a smart positioning. In a world where digital ad fatigue is real and consumers are increasingly skeptical of online marketing, brands that show up in authentic, community-driven spaces have a competitive advantage. Schoolyard Social offers that access—not through banner ads or sponsored posts, but through meaningful participation in the moments that matter to players.
What’s Next: Campus Expansion and Nationwide Growth
The company recently raised $860,000 through an oversubscribed SAFE note to accelerate growth. Expansion plans include a nationwide College Ambassador Program and collegiate events at business schools like Stanford and Columbia.
It’s a strategic move. College campuses are natural breeding grounds for competitive social experiences, and students are often the early adopters who set cultural trends. If Schoolyard Social can embed itself in campus culture, it has a shot at becoming the go-to platform for a generation that’s increasingly vocal about wanting less screen time and more real-world connection.
Why This Matters: The Post-Digital Playbook
Schoolyard Social represents something bigger than just another app. It’s part of a growing movement toward what the company calls “the post-digital age”—a recognition that while technology has connected us in unprecedented ways, it’s also left many of us feeling more isolated than ever.
The platform’s tagline says it all: “Competition tech designed to get you off your phone.”
In a media landscape dominated by endless content consumption and passive scrolling, Schoolyard Social offers active participation. In a social ecosystem built on curated personas and performative posting, it offers genuine interaction. In a world where “community” has become a buzzword stripped of meaning, it offers the real thing—people showing up, competing, connecting, and building something together.
That’s not just good business. It’s a blueprint for how technology can serve humanity instead of the other way around.
The Bottom Line
Schoolyard Social is betting that the future of social connection isn’t more sophisticated algorithms or immersive virtual worlds—it’s getting people back in the same physical space, doing things they love, with other people who share their passion.
If the early results are any indication, they might be onto something. Because at the end of the day, no amount of digital engagement can replace the feeling of showing up, competing, and belonging to something real.
Ready to turn your passion into community? Download the Schoolyard Social app on the App Store or Google Playand find your next tournament.
For more information about Schoolyard Social, visit their press kit or explore upcoming tournaments in your area.
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Last Updated on March 8, 2026 by Daily News Staff
Jay L. Zagorsky, Boston University
With the Olympic torch extinguished in Paris, all eyes are turning to Los Angeles for the 2028 Olympics.
The host city has promised that the next Summer Games will be “car-free.”
For people who know Los Angeles, this seems overly optimistic. The car remains king in LA, despite growing public transit options.
When LA hosted the Games in 1932, it had an extensive public transportation system, with buses and an extensive network of electric streetcars. Today, the trolleys are long gone; riders say city buses don’t come on schedule, and bus stops are dirty. What happened?
This question fascinates me because I am a business professor who studies why society abandons and then sometimes returns to certain technologies, such as vinyl records, landline phones and metal coins. The demise of electric streetcars in Los Angeles and attempts to bring them back today vividly demonstrate the costs and challenges of such revivals. https://www.youtube.com/embed/9X78ZqGyc5o?wmode=transparent&start=0 The 2028 Olympic Games will be held in existing sports venues around Los Angeles and are expected to host 15,000 athletes and over 1 million spectators.
Riding the Red and Yellow Cars
Transportation is a critical priority in any city, but especially so in Los Angeles, which has been a sprawling metropolis from the start.
In the early 1900s, railroad magnate Henry Huntington, who owned vast tracts of land around LA, started subdividing his holdings into small plots and building homes. In order to attract buyers, he also built a trolley system that whisked residents from outlying areas to jobs and shopping downtown.
By the 1930s, Los Angeles had a vibrant public transportation network, with over 1,000 miles of electric streetcar routes, operated by two companies: Pacific Electric Railway, with its “Red Cars,” and Los Angeles Railway, with its “Yellow Cars.”
The system wasn’t perfect by any means. Many people felt that streetcars were inconvenient and also unhealthy when they were jammed with riders. Moreover, streetcars were slow because they had to share the road with automobiles. As auto usage climbed and roads became congested, travel times increased.
Nonetheless, many Angelenos rode the streetcars – especially during World War II, when gasoline was rationed and automobile plants shifted to producing military vehicles. https://www.youtube.com/embed/AwKv3_WwD4o?wmode=transparent&start=0 In 1910, Los Angeles had a widely used local rail network, with over 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) of track. What happened?
Demise of public transit
The end of the war marked the end of the line for streetcars. The war effort had transformed oil, tire and car companies into behemoths, and these industries needed new buyers for goods from the massive factories they had built for military production. Civilians and returning soldiers were tired of rationing and war privations, and they wanted to spend money on goods such as cars.
After years of heavy usage during the war, Los Angeles’ streetcar system needed an expensive capital upgrade. But in the mid-1940s, most of the system was sold to a company called National City Lines, which was partly owned by the carmaker General Motors, the oil companies Standard Oil of California and Phillips Petroleum, and the Firestone tire company.
These powerful forces had no incentive to maintain or improve the old electric streetcar system. National City ripped up tracks and replaced the streetcars with buses that were built by General Motors, used Firestone tires and ran on gasoline.
There is a long-running academic debate over whether self-serving corporate interests purposely killed LA’s streetcar system. Some researchers argue that the system would have died on its own, like many other streetcar networks around the world.
The controversy even spilled over into pop culture in the 1988 movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” which came down firmly on the conspiracy side.
What’s undisputed is that, starting in the mid-1940s, powerful social forces transformed Los Angeles so that commuters had only two choices: drive or take a public bus. As a result, LA became so choked with traffic that it often took hours to cross the city.
In 1990, the Los Angeles Times reported that people were putting refrigerators, desks and televisions in their cars to cope with getting stuck in horrendous traffic. A swath of movies, from “Falling Down” to “Clueless” to “La La Land,” have featured the next-level challenge of driving in LA.
Traffic was also a concern when LA hosted the 1984 Summer Games, but the Games went off smoothly. Organizers convinced over 1 million people to ride buses, and they got many trucks to drive during off-peak hours. The 2028 games, however, will have roughly 50% more athletes competing, which means thousands more coaches, family, friends and spectators. So simply dusting off plans from 40 years ago won’t work.
Olympic transportation plans
Today, Los Angeles is slowly rebuilding a more robust public transportation system. In addition to buses, it now has four light-rail lines – the new name for electric streetcars – and two subways. Many follow the same routes that electric trolleys once traveled. Rebuilding this network is costing the public billions, since the old system was completely dismantled.
Three key improvements are planned for the Olympics. First, LA’s airport terminals will be connected to the rail system. Second, the Los Angeles organizing committee is planning heavily on using buses to move people. It will do this by reassigning some lanes away from cars and making them available for 3,000 more buses, which will be borrowed from other locales.
Finally, there are plans to permanently increase bicycle lanes around the city. However, one major initiative, a bike path along the Los Angeles River, is still under an environmental review that may not be completed by 2028.
Car-free for 17 days
I expect that organizers will pull off a car-free Olympics, simply by making driving and parking conditions so awful during the Games that people are forced to take public transportation to sports venues around the city. After the Games end, however, most of LA is likely to quickly revert to its car-centric ways.
As Casey Wasserman, chair of the LA 2028 organizing committee, recently put it: “The unique thing about Olympic Games is for 17 days you can fix a lot of problems when you can set the rules – for traffic, for fans, for commerce – than you do on a normal day in Los Angeles.”
This article has been updated to indicate that Los Angeles has four light-rail lines.
Jay L. Zagorsky, Associate Professor of Markets, Public Policy and Law, Boston University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The Bridge
Celebrating International Women’s Day!
International Women’s Day is celebrated globally on March 8th to honor women’s achievements and promote gender equality, originating from a 1908 march in New York for better rights.
Last Updated on March 7, 2026 by Daily News Staff
International Women’s Day is a global celebration that honors the achievements of women and highlights the progress still to be made in the fight for gender equality. On this day, people around the world come together to recognize the amazing contributions of women everywhere and to rally for greater gender equity in all areas of life.
The origins of International Women’s Day can be traced back to 1908, when 15,000 women marched through the streets of New York City to demand better working conditions and the right to vote. Since then, the celebration has grown to be an international event, with more than 100 countries recognizing the day. The United Nations even declared March 8th as International Women’s Day in 1975, to honor the struggles of women around the world.
This year’s International Women’s Day theme is #ChooseToChallenge, meaning that everyone is encouraged to call out gender bias and inequality when they see it. We’re also encouraged to celebrate women’s achievements, support each other, and take action for equality.
It’s important to recognize the progress we’ve made in terms of gender equality, but we still have a long way to go. International Women’s Day serves as a reminder that we must continue to fight for gender equality in all areas of life. Let’s use this day to honor the contributions of women around the world, and to continue the fight for a more equitable world.
https://www.internationalwomensday.com/
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Entertainment
Byron Allen’s Starz Stake Signals Bigger Moves in the Streaming Industry
Byron Allen’s Starz: Byron Allen has acquired a 10.7% stake in Starz Entertainment for approximately $25 million, signaling his long-term media strategy amidst industry consolidation. This investment positions him influentially in the evolving streaming market despite intense competition.
Byron Allen’s Starz investment
Media entrepreneur Byron Allen has taken another step toward expanding his growing media empire. Through his family office, Allen recently acquired a 10.7% stake in Starz Entertainment, purchasing the shares from a fund managed by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
The transaction, valued at approximately $25 million, gives Allen a significant minority position in the premium cable and streaming platform. While the investment itself may seem modest compared to the billion-dollar deals common in Hollywood, analysts say the move could signal a larger strategy unfolding in the rapidly evolving streaming industry.
Why the Starz Deal Matters
The shares were sold by Mnuchin’s Liberty 77 Capital fund, which previously invested in the company when Starz was still connected to its former parent, Lionsgate.
In 2025, Lionsgate completed a corporate restructuring that separated its operations into two distinct companies:
- Lionsgate Studios – responsible for film and television production
- Starz – focused on premium cable and streaming services
Following the spin-off, Starz became an independent publicly traded company. As a result, investors are still determining the platform’s long-term value in an increasingly crowded streaming marketplace.
A Streaming Platform With Loyal Audiences
Despite facing intense competition from larger platforms such as Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video, Starz continues to maintain a strong subscriber base and recognizable content franchises.
- Outlander – historical drama series
- The Power franchise created by Courtney A. Kemp and executive produced by 50 Cent
Byron Allen’s Long-Term Media Strategy
Allen’s investment strategy has long focused on owning media distribution and infrastructure rather than simply producing content.
- The Weather Channel
- Dozens of local television stations across the United States
- Multiple niche cable networks and digital platforms
Over the past several years, Allen has also pursued larger acquisitions, reportedly exploring deals involving companies such as Paramount Global and BET Media Group. While those deals did not materialize, they signaled his ambition to expand Allen Media Group into a major force in global media ownership.
The Bigger Picture: Industry Consolidation
Allen’s investment arrives during a time of significant disruption in the entertainment business. Traditional cable television continues to decline as audiences migrate toward streaming platforms. At the same time, major studios and media companies are struggling to make streaming services consistently profitable.
Industry observers believe these pressures could lead to a new wave of consolidation across Hollywood and the streaming sector. Smaller platforms like Starz could become attractive acquisition targets for larger companies seeking additional subscribers and content libraries.
A Potential Hidden Opportunity
For now, Allen’s 10.7% stake does not give him control of Starz. However, it does provide influence as one of the company’s larger shareholders and leaves open the possibility of increasing his ownership in the future.
If consolidation accelerates and streaming platforms begin merging or forming partnerships, assets like Starz could become significantly more valuable. For Byron Allen—whose career began as a stand-up comedian before evolving into one of the most prominent independent media owners in America—the investment may represent another calculated step in a decades-long strategy built around media ownership and long-term growth.
Related Coverage
- Byron Allen Acquires Stake in Starz – Hollywood Reporter
- Starz Spin-Off from Lionsgate: What It Means for Streaming – Variety
- Byron Allen’s Media Acquisitions: Building a Modern Empire – Forbes
- Starz in the Streaming Wars: How It Compares – CNBC
- Why Byron Allen is Betting on Streaming Platforms – Deadline
Dive into “The Knowledge,” where curiosity meets clarity. This playlist, in collaboration with STMDailyNews.com, is designed for viewers who value historical accuracy and insightful learning. Our short videos, ranging from 30 seconds to a minute and a half, make complex subjects easy to grasp in no time. Covering everything from historical events to contemporary processes and entertainment, “The Knowledge” bridges the past with the present. In a world where information is abundant yet often misused, our series aims to guide you through the noise, preserving vital knowledge and truths that shape our lives today. Perfect for curious minds eager to discover the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of everything around us. Subscribe and join in as we explore the facts that matter. https://stmdailynews.com/the-knowledge/
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