CoachTube Founder Wade Floyd Sees Passion Project Grow Into Successful Instructional Video Service

In a digital age, being able to do something on demand is a desire of many and on the front page of the CoachTube website reads “Master Your Sport” and learn from the greatest coaches in the world

With every sport and numerous other aspects of everyday life shutdown for nearly a month and for the foreseeable future due to the Coronavirus pandemic, doing many things remotely is even more popular from distance learning to big events such as the NFL draft, which is slated to be conducted virtually April 23-25.

The concept of doing things remotely also is popular in the realm of sports instruction and aiding that is CoachTube. It started as a passion project in 2014 while founder Wade Floyd was coaching youth baseball and then was officially launched in March 2015 as a way to sharing coaching and instructional content in a setting that could be described as academic.

“I love learning online and loved a few popular e-learning platforms that I can learn from the best online,” Floyd said in an email interview. “When I started looking to better myself as a coach I couldn’t believe there wasn’t a place in sports that had all the best coaches in one place with reviews like I has experienced with business courses I have taken.

Immediately after it launched, CoachTube already had approximately 100 coaches and 200 courses available to users. Now, that total is 675 coaches, 2,500 courses with creators adding over 50 more offerings covering 40 sports from football to basketball and even to e-sports.

All of this is done without coaches having to concern themselves with the costs of marketing, technology and distribution. Coaches also can establish their rates, decide to donate the proceeds to charity or even make their content free.

Among current basketball offerings are a free throwing shooting drill by Hall of Famer Rick Barry and a shooting instructional visit by Hal Wissel, who was an assistant coach with the Atlanta Hawks, Milwaukee Bucks, New Jersey Nets, Memphis Grizzlies and Golden State Warriors.

For baseball, video instructors include former Minnesota Twins third baseman Gary Gaetti and former pitching coach Tom House, who has been dubbed the “father of modern pitching mechanics”.

CoachTube was also aided by its acquisition of PlaySportsTV, which allowed many notable coaches to offer instruction. Among coaches who featured courses were Urban Meyer then of Florida, Auburn’s Gus Malzahn and basketball luminaries Izzo and Hubie Brown.

A recent development for Floyd is getting two international basketball coaches to sign on. Recently, he was able to get German national team coach Henrik Rodl and Spanish national team coach Sergio Scariolo, who also is an assistant with the Toronto Raptors. 

“Having them added to the live clinic helps expands our reach as a truly international platform,” Floyd said. “Sports has the power to bring people together as well as anything and really exciting seeing coaches from around the world collaborate with each other.”

Another aspect that is helping CoachTube is the desire for instant access whether it is on the phone or tablet.

Coaches love if it’s not just videos but they can assess downloads and documents as well as take quizzes and get certified,” Floyd said.

And with time to fill due to most states telling residents to stay home except for essential reasons, Floyd is seeing more growth and estimates sales are up over 300 percent.

“As you can assume the stay at home movement has had a significant impact on our growth the last month and has forced user behavior to adopt online learning at a much faster rate than they would have,” Floyd said. 

“We have had influx of creators and learners over the past month. Over new 200 courses have been published because coaches moving their business more online. And bookings and visitors are booming. We’ve had close to 20,000 course bookings and 200,000 unique users with in the last 30 days.”

While eventually sports will return to some of normalcy, Floyd is banking on the increase in course bookings to continue after people are allowed to leave their homes.



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