The self-proclaimed worldwide leader in sports began as a way to broadcast some hockey games.
Today, ESPN is owned by Disney and has a dozen channels or more broadcasting every sport known to man in many languages. Kyle Wilson, owner of Rapidplay Productions LLC, first began broadcasting high school football.
The Possum Neck (near Kosciusko) native came to the Delta as a Mississippi Delta Community College student. After three semesters, he started his work career first with Apple and then starting a wedding production company.
“I worked in the Apple Store for a little while but after six months to a year, I was training new people to work for Apple. I did that for two to three years and then got into video tech full time,” Wilson said.
He called it Rapidplay and has never looked back.
“It is mainly live production but that’s mainly 90 percent IT. Knowing how to put stuff in a network and having it communicate. It’s more than just knowing how to run a camera,” Wilson said. “I rarely touch a camera unless I’m setting it up these days.”
He spends his days working at Indianola First United Methodist Church as a college pastor and in charge of all broadcast production. At night, he’s onsite with his production truck broadcasting football, basketball, baseball and softball for MDCC, MVSU and others.
“WDMS was originally doing Indianola Academy. Their streaming service was not smart and the quality wasn’t good enough. I wanted to do it better. After two years, I got them to move towards YouTube.”
A few years later, there was a switch from WDMS and Wilson got more involved but he got a call from MDCC Athletic Director Domino Bellipanni in the spring of 2015.
“He was like, ‘hey, we want to stream and we love what you do at IA but we want to be bigger,’” Wilson said. “I rolled over to Mississippi Valley and was running three cameras for a softball game and the assistant athletic director liked it. Two months later, he called and said to ‘come over and talk to the AD and figure things out for us.’”
Now he was working high school, JUCO and Division 1 athletic events. He then worked to create a system where he could just set up a couple of cameras and get going.
“It’s been a long, long process though,” Wilson said. “I make do with what I have but I get ideas from other productions. I’ve got a van and a portable rig I can roll in somewhere. It’s plug and play.”
Using his own ingenuity and “cheapness,” Wilson enjoys figuring out how to create a quality streaming broadcast but not at a huge expense.
“I figured out how to write a piece of software that takes six different camera outputs and my replays come from that. A separate computer is my replay machine,” he said. “It’s a very unique thing that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world.”
As a competitive person, Wilson’s athletic past includes playing high level (4.0) USTA tennis but these days he’s on the pickleball court.
“I used to be on the tennis court three days a week but now I’m in Bible Studies twice a week and Wednesday night stuff. I’m at church every night I’m not at a ballgame,” he said.
Wilson’s wife, Cassie, works at the Indianola branch of the Sunflower County Library system and they are expecting their first child this year.
Bringing Delta area sports to a streaming service near you, Sunflower County’s own ESPN – Rapidplay Productions’ Kyle Wilson.
