Digital and Social Media Sports
A business-minded look at digital and social media in sports
On episode 280 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Sean McIndoe (aka Down Goes Brown), Sportswriter (NHL/Hockey focus) for The Athletic, author, host of Puck Soup and The Athletic Hockey Show podcasts.
What follows are some snippets from the episode. Click Here to listen to the full episode or check it out and subscribe to the podcast via Apple or listen on Spotify or YouTube.
Listen to episode 280 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, in which Neil chatted with Sean McIndoe (aka Down Goes Brown), Sportswriter (NHL/Hockey focus) for The Athletic, author, host of Puck Soup and The Athletic Hockey Show podcasts.
59 minute duration. Listen on Apple, Spotify and YouTube
Posted by Neil Horowitz Follow me on Twitter @njh287 Check out my LinkedIn articles
Athletes have an unfair advantage in the creator economy. It’s always been that way. That’s why the opportunity for athletes to capitalize on their leg up by adopting even the most minimal tactics of full-time creators is so vast. The athletes are starting to understand that advantage, with many surpassing the legacy media outlets and building brands that’ll last (and continue to grow) after their competitive career ends.
Your talent is making you the minimal viable product. Because of your talent, because of the fact that you’re a professional athlete,” veteran sports marketer and The Athlete Brand author Thomas van Schaik told me in a recent interview. “What we see more and more is that athletes are starting to understand how this industry works. Content creation, brand building, and distribution have commoditized. Everybody can do it. And now they’re learning how to actually be better storytellers, how to be better entrepreneurs, how to be better content creators, and they are beating the established media outlets and they are beating the rights holders at this game already in large numbers.”
Thomas van Scahik has spent decades in sports business, from helping to grow challenger sports and athletes at NFL Europe and the Dutch Olympic and Paralympic Committee to working with superstars at adidas — and he’s seen the convergence of athlete social media with the dominance of creator platforms. But it’s not as easy as just flipping on the figurative lights. If that were the case, the viability of athletes’ holistic platforms would be an exact match with their place on the league depth chart. Then explain Pat McAfee. Explain Livvy Dunne. Explain JuJu Smith-Schuster.
As creators proliferate across platforms and monoculture diminishes, the key for athletes is to not try to beat every creator and media outlet or even to beat every athlete creator. That’s not the point. Athletes just have to be the best at being themselves.
“The only thing that’s better than better is different,” said van Schaik, invoking the aphorism put forth by author and speaker Sally Hogshead. “So you need to be distinctive. And once you look at yourself and you say ‘Which elements of me, of my appearance, of the way I play, of how I feel about this game are different from everybody else?’
“Either you are different or you are invisible. Which part of my distinctiveness do I actually enlarge? Which do I intentionally showcase? Which of them do I not want to amplify? But looking at yourself and saying, what is distinctive about me is crucial.”
This intentionality starts by thinking like a brand. There’s a clear distinction between branding and marketing, van Schaik tells me, and that difference is key as athletes build their platforms.
“Branding works only from the inside out,” he said. “Marketing starts with the fan in mind and you adjust the product, you adjust the price, you adjust the design, you adjust the promotion in order to attract the right customer. That’s what marketing does. You change the product to get as many customers as you want. Branding is the other way around. You can’t change who you are on the inside to fit better to the audience that you’re trying to attract.”
Once athletes decide who they are and how they want to portray themselves, the strategic foundation is built. They don’t have to be everything to everybody. Even athletes in niche sports or smaller leagues and programs can achieve the ‘1000 true fans,’ said van Schaik, referencing author and journalist Kevin Kelly’s well-known principle.
“The next question is who would you want your 1000 fans to be?,” van Schaik said. “Who is your ideal fan? Who are you actually creating content for? Where are these people? What is it they love about you? Why are these people your fans? Get to know these people. Because your vibe attracts your tribe. You attract the best and you repel the rest. Once you start creating content, for your most valuable audience, that audience will grow.”
The brand and business picture becomes clearer now. My own eyes light up as van Schaik talks through this logical, easily digestible process of defining a brand, the fans, and then the business. This is the creator business model in action, it’s no different for an athlete. Attract fans intentionally, get to know them, and then figure out how to give something valuable — and monetizable. I’ll let van Schaik take it from here:
“Challenge number one is defining which people am I actually creating content for. The second is actually connecting with them and that’s what digital channels perfectly allow you to do. You can target your ideal customer. You can find them anywhere they are. You can go to the channels where they already are and you can attract them there, making a digital connection with them.
“The third step is once you get to know them and once you’re connected with them, now you can actually ask and interact with them — what would be the products and services that they would love to buy from you? You already have the know, like and trust factor. You know them better than anybody else. They are already digitally connected. The challenge with AI is not product creation. The biggest challenge is distribution. And within this niche authority, this niche fame that you have already built with your community, now you are the authority. You are the authority on yourself, right?
“What is it that these fans would love to buy from you? Is it a T-shirt? Is it a book? Is it a clinic? Is it a stream? Is it an NFT? What is it? Once you get to know your true fans, really, you can offer the value that they are looking for.”
This all makes sense. It’s easy to comprehend and one thing leads to another. But what about the messy middle? Athletes may have a better understanding of who they’re trying to reach and why, what about themselves and their life they want to showcase and why — but a lot of the best-laid strategies can get lost in the tactics. It’s the day-to-day posting that intimidates most athletes. They’re used to having plans laid out for them, how many sets and reps to perform in training, drills dialed down to the minute, and schedules and meal plans just as rigidly set for them.
This is where van Schaik helps break down the intimidating book into approachable chapters and pages. When the big goals are broken down into achievable parts, it feels a heck of a lot more doable.
“I have five building blocks that I recommend every athlete includes”, said van Schaik, citing posts can be broken down into 30% personality, 30% performance 30%, 15% community 15% monetization, and 15%, passion (he elaborates on each of these areas in his book and in our interview). “Of course, all of the percentages are flexible. What I’m advocating is that you actually make a conscious choice about them, that you intentionally decide what your holistic brand profile is actually going to be. And depending on the archetype that you select, those influences might actually change…
“Let’s just say you’re comfortable posting twice a week as an athlete. Now you’re committing to posting twice every week, which means 104 times a year. Now you start applying those percentages to all of your annual posts, and now you’re creating a content plan for 104 posts as opposed to randomly live-casting the fact that you’re eating, you know, a plate of pasta today.
“All of a sudden, you are creating narratives surrounding your passion, surrounding your community, and you know that you’re going to have to post 24 times about your community. All of a sudden, you’re in a different creative challenge.”
The new era of athletes is here. Where they think less about securing the next endorsement deal (those aren’t going anywhere, to be sure — especially because they directly benefit the agents that solicit and manage them), but as the athlete economy becomes bigger than the legacy media platforms that rely on them, empires of all sizes will be built. Every athlete will realize the opportunity they have. This isn’t about Ronaldo and Serena and Messi and the other single-named athletes, but the average pro athlete who can aspire even higher.
This isn’t some pie-in-the-sky dreaming, it’s a real business opportunity that, if it’s thoughtfully planned and executed, will succeed. Athletes just need to formulate that plan and put it into action, van Schaik explained, with fascinating detail.
“The five steps that I recommend every athlete takes is step number one, make a plan. Step number two, optimize your socials, which basically goes back to coming to your plan, establishing a frequency, coming up with a narrative.
Three is build your own digital home base, which is basically a website. You can do there whatever it is that you want, whether that is crowdfunding, whether that is e-commerce, whether that is collecting [user] data — build your digital home base. Number four is predominantly for athletes that enjoy a little bit less visibility of traditional media outlets like a javelin thrower or a gymnast or somebody who’s not [an everyday player] in the NBA, get a newsletter so that out of your followers you can get [them] to subscribers, people that actually follow you.
“The fifth is to think about an annual live in-person or virtual event. Even if you only invite 10 of your hardcore fans or 20 or 25, what is the annual event that you could organize to engage your most passionate audience? Because the idea is that even that event could be a content engine where people actually create content around you or you are capable of creating content. The idea should be that your 1000 true fans should want to be there next year.”
The blueprint for athletes is there. Their stories have already been driving multi-billion dollar businesses and massive attention empires for years. It’s time for them to understand the power they really have. Creators run the media world, athletes can be creators with built-in advantages and the highest ceilings. The athletes have already won, and they’re just getting started.
BONUS INSIGHTS
This interview was so packed with value that I felt compelled to include a couple of other thought-provoking insights from Thomas van Schaik. There’s even more in the full interview!
On how the value of a given athlete is about their ability to attract people and their attention. Competitive greatness is still a key factor, but it’s not the only factor.
van Schaik:
“What we see is that entertainment and sports are more personality-focused rather than performance-focused. That the value lies not in their ability to compete, but in their ability to attract attention…but they’re still being outperformed by individual athletes, and I think that opens up a range of opportunities for people with the willingness and capability to understand and service and facilitate athletes.
“I think not only partners will start doing that, but also the rights holders. Because rights holders without icons will lose the competition for eyeballs. Icons equal eyeballs. The roadmap into fandom for the young sports fans is through the individual athletes, which means that rights holders will have to invest in actually building up these athlete brands because it is the shortest way to attracting a valuable audience”.
A fascinating excerpt discussing ‘multi-player brands’ and ‘open-source branding.’ When your brand is a platform for further activation, development, expression, and community, this is so great.
van Schaik:
“What I will add to this is this idea of multiplayer brands, this open source kind of branding. If we look at Taylor Swift, then the beauty of this is that, you know, an individual can never out-produce in terms of content volume her community, right? That would be impossible for her. Every event that she organizes is a content creation hub. There’s not a person at the Eras Tour that doesn’t make a photograph, that doesn’t make a video, and that doesn’t amplify this event and her brand message to their individual audience. So all of a sudden, everybody in their audience is a creator. And that makes Taylor Swift not only a great content creator, but also a great content director. The environment that she has created enables each of her fans to amplify her message, to amplify her love, to amplify her passion, to amplify her narrative.
The future of brand building is not at your audience, but with your audience. And what we see in sports, but also with athletes, is that they are increasingly looking for opportunities to enable their community to produce this content.
On episode 279 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Thomas van Schaik, Founder of The Athlete Brand, author of The Athlete Brand Book, and sports/athlete marketing and branding expert with 15 years at adidas.
What follows are some snippets from the episode. Click Here to listen to the full episode or check it out and subscribe to the podcast via Apple or listen on Spotify or YouTube.
Listen to episode 279 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, in which Neil chatted with Thomas van Schaik, Founder of The Athlete Brand, author of The Athlete Brand Book, and sports/athlete marketing and branding expert with 15 years at adidas.
97 minute duration. Listen on Apple, Spotify and YouTube
Posted by Neil Horowitz Follow me on Twitter @njh287 Check out my LinkedIn articles
Journalists are as replaceable as ever. But good journalists are as valuable as ever.
There’s no need to recite the countless headlines of publications shutting down or writers getting laid off to convey the challenges facing the media industry in sports and beyond. But that just augments the value of individuals who bring something unique to the table and command an audience.
Dan Wetzel knows what it’s like to face an uphill battle, to earn attention. The renowned sports reporter and columnist was part of the early days of Yahoo Sports (where he continues to work today), back when a lot of fans were still reading their sports stories in print or on whichever website could win the SEO or home page game. (Yahoo.com was one of those ubiquitous home pages, of course). Today it’s a different sea of competition, but more fierce, with innumerable options, personalities, and platforms where fans can find and consume sports stories. Throughout the eras, a consistent lesson continues to stick with Wetzel — you can’t blend in. There has to be a reason for fans to find you, follow you, and come back to you.
“My favorite one of the [advanced baseball stats] is VORP: value over replacement player,” he explained in a recent interview with me. “If you’re not delivering value over a replacement player, doing what the other people aren’t, then you’re failing. Because you can get the same stuff everywhere. So what are you contributing that’s above that?”
Fans have felt connections to their favorite writers for years, but, for prior generations, much of that was constrained. Way back, what fans read and watched about sports was limited to their local newspapers and newscasts, with a special treat perhaps arriving in the mail in the form of a Sports Illustrated magazine, for example. Now, it’s a battle. As Wetzel noted that’s where ‘VORP’ comes in for individuals, but professional journalists, and their publications, aren’t just trying to win the internet. Sure, a single story or tweet going viral is great and all, but if you’re looking to have fans come back for days, weeks, and years to come, that requires something more authentic, repeatable, and rooted in a relationship.
“Throughout time there’s constantly these mini trends where everyone will get all excited about this or that, and you get a lot of people in media going, ‘This is the next big thing.’ It doesn’t last, and then that whole thing falls apart,” said Wetzel. “So you always have to be true to yourself.
“Whether it’s people reading the column or hearing you on talk radio shows or listening to your podcast or getting to know you some through social media, the more of a relationship you have with them, I think your trust level is better. I think people people have an understanding and that’s not just with each individual, but an entire site. What’s the ethos of the site?”
Wetzel was referencing the way Yahoo Sports built itself up and sustained the brand over time. The ‘ethos’ of the site plays a big part in why sports fans (myself included) choose to click, listen, and watch what Wetzel and his colleagues put out. ‘You can get the same stuff,’ everywhere, remember, as Wetzel said a few paragraphs ago. So whether you’re a publication, a creator, a reporter, or even a sports team or league — do you and your content have a ‘brand’ that’s unique? If you asked ChatGPT to describe what differentiates you from other places sports fans can go, would it have a legitimate response?
I’m restating this key theme of this story because Wetzel and Yahoo Sports do have a unique brand, VORP and all. They’re informed but often irreverent, they’re credible and respectful of the serious stories, they deliver information, insight, and opinion in a relatable and digestible manner. Read or watch Wetzel and this ethos comes out. He has covered difficult stories throughout his career (Larry Nassar, Jerry Sandusky, Aaron Hernandez, for example), and also spends much of his time in the melodramatic but big-money world of college sports. Wetzel discussed this complex web of content, one in which he understands what matters and why.
“I don’t take the small stuff seriously, I take the big stuff seriously,” he said. “At the end of the day, the games are about the entertainment. I just treat it like a business. I always felt more like a business reporter than a sports reporter. The games are the easiest thing to cover and the least important. You know, they have a huge scoreboard that tells you what the final score is. It’s all the other stories where you don’t have a final score.
“And certainly in college athletics, the controversies, the scandals, the personalities are a bigger part of it than just the games. Because if you want to watch really good football, you want to watch the best football, you don’t watch college football. The best actual football being played is in the NFL. You want to watch the best basketball, you watch the NBA. The players are better, the coaching is better, the rules are better. It just is.
“You’re watching because of a passion and all the other mayhem and the environments and all the other stuff, as well as good basketball or good football.”
The passion in college sports is palpable and drives countless narratives. How many fans are ready to fire the coach after a week 1 stinker? How many coaches have been caught lying through their teeth to steer a story or evade an angle of questioning? As coaches have become more like CEOs and politicians, knowing how important it is to appease fans (especially the wealthiest ones) and recruits (including potential transfers), Wetzel recognizes he has to help fans understand the actual information. And to use his efforts to give fans what they’re not getting elsewhere along with his informed view of where the truth really lies amidst all the noise. That’s part of his value over replacement.
“On a complicated issue, like NIL [for example], it’s just trying to be reasonable, understanding it, and carving out like, ‘Okay, this is what I think,'” he explained, about covering the endless storylines around name-image-likeness in college sports. “Not just repeating. The easiest thing to do with NIL, and probably the most profitable would be to to cry that the sky is falling. That’s what everyone wanted…But coaches are the worst sources because they know almost nothing other than what they’re coaching…I mean these coaches are telling you that all the laws of economics no longer exist in this one entity because their feelings are hurt. So you try to explain it as best you can on something like that.
“If it’s a trial, you’re trying to convey information and to describe the situation and severity. If it’s a game you’re trying to show people things they can’t see on television.”
Fans don’t know what they don’t know. But any sports fan who spends a minute on social media (or message boards) knows there is no shortage of often anonymous users who claim to have information other fans don’t. While some of the ‘scoops’ individuals with often humorous usernames and pseudonyms sometimes turn out to be true, their hit rate tends to be somewhere near the odds of a jackpot lottery win. Is it the job of a journalist in 2024 to sift through all the slop and assess and inform their audience on what’s credible and what’s not? That’s a Sisyphean task and why it’s so important for someone like Wetzel to have a relationship with fans who know they can trust what he puts out.
“It’s not my job to police the information out there,” said Wetzel, whose exasperation with all the misinformation on social media can’t help but come out a bit. “There are credible news organizations that put false stuff out there. There’s the teams or the coaches, they put out false stuff [out] themselves on purpose. So all you can do is try to sort through it. But you can’t really spend much time.
“I mean, people will say, Oh, you’re wrong because I saw this. But I think, again, it goes to the long-term relationship. If people trust that you’re reasonable, and you don’t overreact to stuff, then maybe they have more of an understanding. That’s all you can go with.”
Wetzel continued: “Clearly social media allows anybody a voice and it can go big really quick. That guy could have been the guy at the end of the bar, guy calling in to talk radio. Now it’s out there and they can make things so you can disinformation things really easily. It’s all how it’s presented and it can be quite effective and people are good at it. What am I supposed to do about it? I mean, I don’t care.
“If an organization is listening to what’s getting said on social media, they’re failing, because what seems like a lot on social media is not. It can be one guy with 200 accounts. 20 people yelling at you can seem like it’s 20,000, whereas most fans are reasonable and still support the team and all that or don’t even know. But that’s not my job.”
There are a lot of voices, there’s a lot of noise. But if fans have a reason to seek you amidst the noise, to listen for your voice — you might just have a chance to survive in this new era (the new normal). As our conversation came to a close, Wetzel reflected on what it takes to make it for a journalist today, where the VORP lies.
“There have been so many people that come and go because they don’t really provide value. They’re replaceable. But if you can uncover information, get people to talk to you, if you know how to be a reporter, there’s probably a future for you. It’s a tough business, though…
“At some point it comes down to, why are you listening? And unless you’re incredibly gifted and charismatic it’s really hard to do without being a reporter or already previously famous because it’s just such a competitive industry.”
On episode 278 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Dan Wetzel, National Columnist for Yahoo Sports, NYT best-selling author, documentary producer, and host of the College Football Enquirer podcast.
What follows are some snippets from the episode. Click Here to listen to the full episode or check it out and subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or listen on Spotify or Stitcher.