SEC
download the PDF
Learn How the SEC Built a Powerful Content Engine for the Most Passionate Fans in College Sports
Summary
The SEC is one of America’s most successful conferences, known for its dominance in the ”big two” college sports. But with 16 universities, 22 sports, and thousands of student-athletes, SEC leaders wanted to make sure all of its athletes are represented for their achievements.
As Herb Vincent, Associate Commissioner for Communications, puts it: “It’s a real priority for us to show the accomplishments across all sports. The swimmer works just as hard as the football player. The gymnast works just as hard as the men’s basketball player.”
Managing content at that scale presents a unique challenge. The SEC doesn’t just need to keep up with high-profile moments. It’s the responsibility of the digital team to ensure every athlete receives meaningful exposure across all sports — and that means keeping up with the stories happening outside the arenas, like inside the classroom, and real-life accomplishments.
To meet the demand, the SEC built a digital strategy centered on speed, quality, and scale. By integrating automation into its workflow, the conference transformed how it captures, produces, and distributes content, enabling its team to operate in real-time and expand coverage across all sports.
KEY RESULTS
- 9M views on TikTok
- 30% increase in YouTube subscribers (the strongest growth period in the channel's history)
- 16.5 videos created per game during college football season
- #1 most-followed platform of all college conferences
Results are based on content published during the 2024 – 2025 seasons.
The Challenge
The SEC boasts a history of excellence and an engaged fanbase made up of millions of loyal followers, alumni, and students.
Every game, meet, and match is an opportunity to engage fans; but capturing those moments and delivering them in real-time requires speed, coordination, and resources.
Historically, content production relied heavily on manual workflows. Teams had to monitor every minute of live broadcasts, clip key moments by hand, and quickly format and distribute content across platforms. This process wasn’t only time-consuming, but also limited how much content could realistically be produced and shared.
At the same time, the SEC was committed to its broader mission. Not just highlighting marquee sports, but ensuring that all student-athletes receive visibility.
Scaling that level of coverage without sacrificing quality or speed was the core challenge.
Watch the video below…
The Solution
To reach the social and digital team’s goals of increased reach and engagement, the SEC turned to AI automation, at first starting a pilot for men’s basketball and eventually rolling the platform out to include all other sports.
By integrating WSC Sports into its workflow, the conference significantly improved the way content is captured and distributed during live events. Instead of relying on manual clipping and editing, the system automatically identifies key moments and generates ready-to-publish content handed off to the content team in near real time.
The digital team keeps the drive alive, publishing in multiple formats and on every channel, including broadcast clips, multiple vertical formats, and platform-specific edits.
The impact is evident on game days. As soon as an exciting or important play happens, content is made available to the social team via a shared Slack channel. Videos uploaded there are pre-formatted to a variety of sizes including 9:16, 4:5, and 16:9, enabling each team member to quickly grab the content they need and publish instantly to the channel they’re responsible for. What once required constant monitoring and coordination is now streamlined into a fast, efficient process.
This shift enables the SEC to operate at a completely different scale. More content, from more sports, delivered faster than ever before.
Just as important, it frees up the team to focus on storytelling, creativity, and expanding coverage beyond the most visible events.
Takeaways
-
Automation Maximizes Fan Engagement
During college football season, the social and digital team published 2,338 videos (16.5 per game). In total, 80% were created automatically, enabling the team to deliver fans the best moments as quickly as possible.
-
Unprecedented YouTube Growth
The SEC has maintained a lively YouTube channel for the past 15 years that features some of the best highlights in sports. Since partnering with WSC Sports in August 2025, the channel gained nearly 11,000 new subscribers – a third of the overall lifetime growth.
-
Discoverability on New Platforms
The SEC’s 9 million views on TikTok marked over a 300% increase compared to the same time period during the previous year. Their presence on the platform is essential to engage with students and younger fans alike who are more likely to get their sports content on TikTok than any other channel.
