Content Strategy – Digital and Social Media Sports

Building a Content Strategy That Serves the Feed and the Brand

It’s hard out there for a content producer these days.

Content should be professional, but not too polished. It should be on-brand but also go viral. Content needs to reach the right audience, but also have broad enough appeal to accrue big numbers. Oh, and ideally the content should be conducive to cross-platform distribution and packaging, from giant billboards to tiny screens. And sometimes the best content is the B-side or behind-the-scenes, not the main hero piece. Or other times, content production is best left to creators with built-in audiences on their channels.

Did you keep up with all that? Me neither.

But such multi-faceted demands of content and campaigns are the new normal. Justin Whiting has been in the trenches for years, adapting as the aperture for content production has expanded and the definition of ‘good’ content has evolved. From early days at GoPro, when POV video was a revelation, to the onslaught of raw-feeling UGC (which also came during his GoPro tenure), to years producing content for brands like Red Bull, he has a unique perspective on what content strategy looks like for brands today. Now, from his perch as co-founder of sports creative studio north of normal, Whiting is right in the middle of this new era for content, where the answer to polished vs. raw is a singular ‘Yes.’

“I see that now very much the split between authenticity and premiumness,” said Whiting, who, after leaving GoPro, spent time as a content leader at adidas. “I see a lot, especially with a brand. You look at something like Adidas. Adidas wants to be high-end. They want their content to look amazing. You don’t want something to look like it’s made by someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. They don’t like that style. But the authenticity, especially around an athlete or a personality, gets the views and gets people watching it and gets way more of that interaction…”

Whiting continued, describing how the need for more diverse content types and formats affects production shoots.

“Sometimes we would shoot a campaign with an athlete and say, okay, we’re going to shoot the TV spot or the global campaign, but we’re going to have someone walk around with the phone and capture some real moments with you in between.”

There’s an economic reason for such an all-angles-and-aspects production, too. The proliferation of short-form feeds, and the ability to rack up views in these environments, means there’s insatiable demand for content, where one more captured video could translate to millions more impressions. It’s an all-hands-on-deck operation now, with some shooters sporting the fancy, expensive cameras, while others, by design, record on iPhones. No shot is missed, and the hero shoot is just one aspect of the overall output.

“I remember there was one drifting video we did at one point,” said Whiting, “and we were shooting the main video, and then when we were shooting the story bits, we had a social media filmer and a drone pilot just with the driver, getting pickups and getting other social media content, getting funny little one-off videos, because we knew we put a lot into that campaign, so we wanted to get the most out of it. And we wanted to make sure we had 10 or 15 different assets that could live at different times on different platforms, but still in the same world.”

Pay close attention to the last part of what Whiting said there. Even if the packaging and platforms differ, the content should still feel cohesive. This is easier said than done, whether it’s different teams doing the editing and execution, with their own ideas, or just trying to balance adherence to ‘best practices’ and anticipating what will ‘work’ on a given platform. And some variance is expected; that’s by design. But, said Whiting, “The most important thing, I think, for a great campaign is having that through story, where a piece of content that is shot on a phone that lives on TikTok for an athlete, all the way through a TV spot, can live in the same story and feel like it’s coming from the same thread.”

A great campaign has a purpose. It carries a message, activates a brand, and is designed to reach and resonate with a specific audience. The answer to the question of ‘What’s the purpose of this content?’ is decisively NOT ‘to go viral.’ Virality, Whiting explained, is too random to chase, and having virality as a goal can often divorce a creative team’s strategy from the actual objective of a campaign.

The key is to ask the ‘why’ questions. Because there are a lot of pathways to reach certain metrics, but it’s all for naught if there’s no alignment with business and brand objectives.

“A lot of times what goes viral and what blows up with 100 million views is not what you would expect…,” said Whiting. “So what I think of when I approach these projects is really coming up with the best story for the brand that’s going to resonate with their target audience. And it’s a lot of strategy discussions in the beginning and really understanding what they’re looking for, what they need, what’s the point of making the content.”

That’s not to say the metrics don’t matter. Part of the calculus in devising brand content IS to maximize its impact, of course. Data-driven analysis in content production is as dynamic as ever — because content production nowadays is both art and science. Every element and creative decision is made with consideration and purpose, combining the creative instincts of a seasoned veteran like Whiting with what the data says about those instincts.

“It’s a bit of a give and take, and toeing the line, because you don’t want to be sitting there spending 100 hours looking at, okay, how can I get 10,000 more views?” said Whiting, whose biggest GoPro hit racked up something like 150 million views. “But also, especially on something like TikTok, you can take a very analytical approach to TikTok and look at, okay, here’s my last 25 videos. These ones performed; these ones didn’t. Why? What happened at this point? What happened at this point?”

There exists the potential for a Ship of Theseus conundrum to play out if you start manipulating content too much, however (swap out enough planks to please the algorithm, and is it still your brand?). Yes, brands want to attract awareness and attention, but it should be in a manner that enhances brand equity, not one that dilutes it. Trends and best practices aren’t mandates; they’re guiding principles that can inform brand campaigns and strategies, but the best brands aren’t subject to the whims of a capricious culture, algorithm, or edit.

Whiting invoked the thumb test as a gauge for brand fidelity. If you cover the handle or logo for a given piece of content, would the brand behind it still be identifiable? He went on to explain in more detail what he means by that, using Nike and adidas as examples, and why defining what a brand is all about is paramount.

“You can tell by the tone, you can tell by the look and the feel, the color correction, the videography,” said Whiting, who worked for big brands GoPro, adidas, and Sixt before co-founding north of normal. “Everything screams that brand, from the way it’s lit. And those are huge, well-established brands, so they’ve had years and years of amazing agencies and creatives and internal teams building that…”

“And a lot of that is just building the brand in the beginning, experimenting a bit,” he said. “Sometimes you try different things, or sometimes you come out of the door shooting and you say, okay, we’re going to be the challenger brand. We’re going to be the funny brand. We’re going to be the serious, intense brand. We’re going to be the urban brand, etc. And know that, and then build the voice around it. And when you do that authentically, and you lean into it, it performs really well.”

Whiting cited Red Bull as a shining example of a brand that’s unmistakable through its content strategy. (Whiting has worked with Red Bull in the past.) The best brands build a culture around themselves, he said, and the content they produce exists to thrive in a world where the most entertaining and engaging content wins every time. But the brand behind the content is clear. Look at a piece of Red Bull content, cover the cans and the helmets, and apply the thumb test. I have a feeling it’ll easily pass.

The path to effective brand content is coming more into focus. A method to the madness that isn’t merely beholden to metrics, but backed by actual strategy. Whiting got into the nitty-gritty, and for him, it starts with two questions.

“When we’re building that strategy out, we want to know, for each campaign, what’s the goal of this and what’s the target audience?” he explained. “And then you have to build the campaign around that. That’s partly on platform, partly on the style of content, partly on who you put in front of the camera, how you shoot it. But there’s very little content that’s going to be universal…”

“In brand content, you’re not going to hit everybody with something,” he continued. “So you really have to say, okay, what is needed in this? Who’s the one buying the product? Who are we really selling this to? Who do we need to do this? Because you could make a piece of content on TikTok that gets millions of views but doesn’t turn into a single sale if your target consumer is a 50-year-old guy and you’re targeting 12-year-olds because you know you’re going to get the numbers. So you really have to think about that.”

The content production field — heck, all business sectors — has been obsessed with best practices for years. But best practices have always been a slippery slope to sameness. And AI is the looming specter amid all of this. When AI and large language models declare what’s ‘best’ and what science (big data) says is correct, originality and creativity diminish. It wouldn’t have been best practice to create campaigns around amateurish UGC when GoPro was coming up. An AI trained on all the brand advertisements of all time likely wouldn’t realize a 30-second vignette shot between scenes of a six-figure commercial shoot could end up the real winner.

But this isn’t a rejection of AI. Whiting himself leans on it for the admin side of running a company, but made a conscious decision to keep writing his own emails rather than lose his voice. Think back on everything this piece presented. When brand creative strategy is informed by campaign goals, by asking and answering the right questions — it’s no longer a battle between chasing virality and creating value. It’s not a dichotomy of polished or raw, of this platform or that one. The answers are readily evident because the foundation is defined and everything feels connected. That’s where creativity can shine.

So, yes, it is a challenging time for content producers. But it’s an era of endless possibilities, when the permutations of packaging and platforms present an unparalleled canvas for content. It’s not easy, and it’s not supposed to be. Embrace it.

WATCH OR LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH JUSTIN WHITING

CHECK OUT NORTH OF NORMAL

Content Strategy, Fan Development, Social Media ROI

Why a Sports Team’s Social Media Touches Everything and Can Reach Anyone in 2026

It was so simple in the early days.

When social media first hit the sports world, most teams and leagues had their single @ handle or official Page across the few major platforms. ‘Content’ mostly consisted of links to press releases, website videos (which were mostly interview scrums and the occasional ‘feature story’), ticket links (oh, yes, ticket links with camefrom codes), and answering the occasional fan question about logistics or policies.

Safe to say things have changed a bit.

The scope of social media for sports teams has transformed, to say nothing of the nature of social platforms in general. (Some may argue it’s inaccurate to call most of the major apps ‘social’ networks these days). Fans have more options than ever to learn about and engage with their favorite leagues, teams, and athletes. Even when they ‘follow’ the official accounts, there’s no guarantee they’ll see the content those accounts post. Heck, even what it means to be a ‘fan,’ or a general consumer of ‘sports’ content, has such a loose definition nowadays.

So what is the purpose of a team’s social media presence in 2026? How can they even begin to earn attention amidst the crowded sports ecosystem across social? These are a couple of the questions Andrew Taylor and his colleagues wrestle with day to day.

“You need to rely on what makes you unique content-wise,” said Taylor, Senior Manager of Club Social Strategy for the NFL. “For the NFL clubs, that’s access to their players that no one else has. We call it helmets-off content.

“So all those fun videos of them walking around at practice, answering the funny questions — we call that helmets-off content. And that’s the best performing content across NFL clubs, because it gives fans the opportunity to see a side of players they don’t get to see on the field, that they don’t get to see on ESPN or Fox or CBS on Sundays, Mondays, Thursdays, occasional Saturday. The content is what really drives everything. And that access.”

It’s that access approach to content that will get football fans to consume what’s on team accounts, because they’re not getting it elsewhere. The actual football? Whether that’s highlights or X’s and O’s or transactions or hot takey arguments — there is no shortage of sources for that. So teams do what only they can do to earn fan attention and engagement.

But, at the same time, sports teams want more than a larger slice of the existing fan pie. And in today’s content-driven, interest graph-fueled, recommendation-based feeds, users are ripe for attraction. New fans need not form first from an exciting touchdown, a buzzer-beating three, or a home run robbery. Their first exposure could be only tangentially related to the sport or team; the fan funnels are as numerous and diverse as ever. Team social media strategies have evolved to take advantage of this new world, Taylor explained.

“You’re casting that wide net, especially on social, where we’re in this post-TikTok world, where followers aren’t as important as they used to be, because content is being served to so many different people,” he said. “This is life in social — you have to react to what the platform algorithms are doing. And the platform algorithms are saying you need to be broad and reach a wide group of people. Yes, it’s still important to cater to your diehard fans. But to survive on social, you need to do what the platform is telling you.

“And I think that’s just the top of the funnel,” Taylor added. “And then they like a video because they like food, they like an NFL video because they like fashion…”One of the best performing videos last year from NFL clubs was their kitchen staff going through what a team eats every year. And I think the broader an audience you can go after, that’s a win.”

Reaching a broad audience and flooding the top of the fan funnel is only part of the strategy, however. And while a viral kitchen staff video deserves to be celebrated, those massive metrics exist in a different bucket than the ones tied to content that creates lifelong connections to the team. These goals don’t exist in a vacuum; it’s perfectly fine to have fans of your content, even if they don’t end up caring about the team’s playoff push. The deeper consideration is how much the content leaves a mark on someone, such that there’s a connection to the brand, and it’s not just another faceless account with an interesting piece of content amidst the sea of others.

Billions of views happen daily, and users don’t know, and oftentimes don’t care, who produced the content they’re watching. That brings both opportunities and challenges, adding a wrinkle in how to think about social media strategy, KPIs, and defining success in this new era.

“I think there’s a difference between having quality interactions with fans and more vanity interactions, like a post that goes viral,” said Taylor, as we discussed how impact differs across content. “Yeah, it’ll hit a lot of people, a lot of eyeballs. But are people going to scroll through and they’ll like it, but then are they going to remember it in two posts, or two hours, or two days? Whereas if you have a really compelling piece of content and it maybe reaches a quarter of the audience as that other post, but people are still thinking about it two days later — what’s more valuable?”

One of the best ways, historically, to know if content was truly developing fans was tracking follower growth. That metric still matters, but getting someone to click follow was once the biggest factor by far in determining the potential audience for content. Today, a user’s following status is just one factor among many affecting to whom content gets served. Which means that while reach and engagement metrics going up can represent meaningful success on social, they’re not as directly tied to fan growth.

Despite this new reality, Taylor and his team still track follower increases and decreases among teams. Because there’s still value and insight in that number.

“I think [follower count today] is best to be used as a barometer,” he said. “I don’t think it’s necessarily important as like an end-all number. A good example is, when a player signs with a team, we can see on the day that you announced the signing, or the day that you posted a video of him coming to practice for the first time, your follower count spikes. That’s usually an indication that people who are fans of this player are now coming to be a part of your team for this journey …

“I still think it’s always important to see growth. But I think it’s just important to see kind of like when there is a spike in followers, why. And I think understanding that why just kind of helps you understand your fans’ behavior. And I think that’s a really important thing … Follower growth can still be powerful. It’s not the same as it used to be, but still it’s a good indicator of popularity, and what’s happening at that given time.”

The breadth of potential audience and the size of the top of the funnel have had significant implications for the scope and strategy of social media. Back in those single @ channel days, arguably no one had a more comprehensive view of everything happening inside the organization than the social media manager. It meant going a mile wide but often an inch deep in most areas. Then the single @ multiplied into many, and all of a sudden there were dozens of channels across several platforms. There is more value to capture, more opportunity to lean into a specific department or element with a unique POV, strategy, and content production.

Org charts expanded and roles evolved, whether it’s the vertical video specialist, the YouTube strategist, the UK account manager, or, as Taylor offers as an example, the person running one of the increasingly massive mascot accounts.

“I think the smart organizations will have their social team do it all,” said Taylor, reflecting on where the teams overseeing the ancillary accounts reside within an organization. “And I think if you have the resources, you can have someone who’s just the mascot person, or just the international accounts person.

“And I think that, similar to kind of what we talked about back at MLB, it’s so important to know everything that’s going on. So if it’s your job to just know everything that’s going on with the mascot, that makes your life so much easier. That makes the content that much better … That’s, again, where resources come into play. It’s crazy to say, oh, we have one person on social that just does a mascot account. That’s the use of a very precious head. But then you can be like, well, this mascot generates these millions of views for our organization, which you wouldn’t be able to do without the person running it behind the scenes.”

So what started way back when as a simple feed of glorified press releases and a one-person show has evolved into an ever-expanding team telling stories that extend beyond sports into lifestyle verticals, and finding new ways to reach people and define ‘fans.’ The old joke that the social media reins were in the hands of the intern is farcical now, with social an indispensable part of the business, not merely an amplifier of everything else, but the fulcrum around which the organization’s strategies get built and implemented.

The earliest social media coordinators and managers are among the senior leaders in sports now. They recognize the power of these platforms: that with focus and investment, you can turn just about anyone into a fan. And that may be the most important evolution of all.

WATCH OR LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW TAYLOR

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College, Content Strategy

Why the Next Great Media Company Might Be a College Athletics Department

Over the last 5-10 years, the content produced by college athletics programs got good. Like, really good. Hollywood and Netflix good.

It was the blockbuster-like hype videos from Ohio State, the chill-inducing videos from LSU in 2019, the incredibly-produced storytelling from South Carolina, the mini movies from Michigan and BYU, and so much more.

But ask any college athletics veteran about the pioneers in driving the step change in college sports content, and the majority will point to one school: Clemson. Initially led by luminaries like Jonathan Gantt and Jeff Kallin, and a marvelous tree that grew from there, the Tigers showed what can happen when you invest in talent and content. Now, with Clemson Ventures and an ambitious commercialization team sitting alongside all that content talent, Clemson is looking to pioneer the next new era for content in college sports, turning creative departments into production houses, and building robust businesses that go beyond campus borders.

And it’s coming at a time when college athletics programs need revenue more than ever. Kevin Richardson is among the leaders driving this revolution in Clemson’s content business. As Vice President of Content at Clemson Ventures, Richardson is helping to reimagine the value extracted from content, in fan development terms, dollars, and long-term platform growth. Because while ticket sales have a cap on capacity (only so many seats in the venues), there is no ceiling for content and, as you’ll learn in this article, the lifespan of content is far greater than the daily media treadmills would suggest.

Content produced by sports teams, especially college, has for years lived on digital and social platforms. In the feeds, on YouTube channels, and on the school’s websites and mobile apps. But Richardson and his colleagues think bigger. Content is currency, and it has value (and can attract audiences) that media companies covet.

“It’s not just living on our social and digital on YouTube,” said Richardson, who spent years working in marketing and content at Louisiana Tech, Rice, and Texas, before making his way to Clemson. “We did deals with Gray Media, so now it’s on Fox. We’ve done deals with ESPN and ABC, so now it’s on ACC Network and ESPNU…We have some streaming options where we’re placing original content that is all in-house made onto streamers to allow other people to see our content and go, Oh, whoa, I kind of like what Clemson’s doing. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be about [the games]. It’s all about lifestyle off the court and all this other cool stuff.”

Distribution strategy is just one way that Clemson Ventures is thinking like a media company. Think about how such businesses operate today — they showcase their programming plans to prospective sponsors and advertisers, provide projected performances, and secure sales often before the full slate is even produced. But the coolest part is that sports organizations are not legacy media companies; they aren’t retrofitting production and packaging plans to meet the new consumption patterns of the day. They’ve thought in multi-modal and cross-platform terms since day one.

Richardson described the overall approach, presenting the formats and figures to potential distribution and corporate partners, and equipping Clemson Ventures’ sales team to go into the marketplace fully armed.

“There can be the spec-up, but then you can also build similar to what Hulu, Disney, Apple do — you create an upfront and say, hey, streamers or external partners or even our sales team and our content team, here’s what the next year and a half roadmap of content looks like,” he said. “Here’s snackable content, here’s features, here’s docu-series, here’s podcasts. Here’s where everything’s going to go. Here are our impressions and our CPMs and KPIs based on what people need. You can build that out, and everybody’s aligned from externally to internally on what we’re building, when it’s going out, and why it’s going out, from data-informed decisions.”

The data component is essential. And it’s another area where programs like Clemson have a leg up, driven by the natural way of doing business, over traditional media companies. While the old-school networks rely on pilots and test audiences, and the new-age streamers like Netflix and Prime Video have big data that can identify genre and viewership patterns, Clemson has an always-on testing platform — its daily output of content to its social and owned/operated platforms. Their pilot could be a TikTok post or Reel, or even an overperforming podcast or feature story. That’s how the less-followed sports can break through, too; Clemson has 19 sports and, within each of them could be lying a story with enough interest.

Such performance data mitigates the risk before a bigger investment in production and sales. That enables Clemson to bring big ideas to life with a degree of certainty that they’ll hit and be worthy of wider distribution and partner backing.

“If you believe this content is so good, go test it,” said Richardson, as we discussed the built-if-sold or built-to-sell dichotomy in content production and investment. “Go put it on your YouTube. See if somebody will take it. Chop it up for social. So, the debate of built-if-sold is tough because a lot of consumers or media buyers want to know what the impressions and CPMs are. Oftentimes — and I’m thinking of how we first started — if you don’t have that footing to stand on of, well, this is how many impressions this got and CPMs is where it can go, and you’re just building to build, just to see — you’re going to be doing a lot of pilots and spec episodes, especially us (with internal) MMR, we’re trying to figure that out.”

Something happens when you start thinking less like a sports organization and more like a media company that shares a brand with a sports team or program. For years, the spectrum of content looked like highlights, memes, Hard Knocks-style all-access, and interviews. The rise of TikTok and short-form unlocked a new kind of creative thinking, widening the spectrum of sports content. The schedule release video as a creative showcase and YouTube’s broader rise, especially on the living-room TV, have played roles, too. But the majority of that outside-the-box thinking still lives inside the feeds, in posts just a few minutes long.

Yet the bigger picture means thinking beyond the feeds, producing content more at home on Netflix or ‘television’. That means supplementing the traditional sports genre content with the other genres prevailing that are produced by other professional media companies. The total addressable audience goes beyond sports fans and beyond Clemson fans.

“I have this grand idea of like, when people see our content in the future, I want them to go, Clemson made that? Oh, wow,” explained Richardson. “It’s not just wins and losses. It’s what you see in culture and media today…I don’t want people to see our content and go, Oh, Clemson football, great. Oh, Clemson basketball, great. No, I want it to be non-endemic. You don’t have to be affiliated with our teams at all. But we’re making great content that pulls you in. And that could be like the shows I just mentioned — MTV Cribs style show, a cooking show, a lifestyle show…

Richardson added: “How do we get the non-Clemson fan who doesn’t care about wins and losses, who doesn’t care about if we won a championship or not, but they care about something else? They care about — they have a new kid, they care about family-friendly television. How can we create something that’s built for children to learn about Clemson stories that’s family-approved, that can be on our Clemson Plus app that people watch?”

Social platforms remain an important distribution channel. But it’s just that they’re one of many places content can go. It’s not either/or, it’s AND, with licensing windows and packaging the variables that dictate the flow of content. Shows in ‘traditional’ media often premiere one place, get syndicated in another, can be found on Hulu until Hulu’s license expires, can get consumed in clips on TikTok, and may eventually find a resting place on the original producer’s app or library, and maybe even YouTube.

If the ‘mainstream’ production houses can operate like this, why can’t sports organizations, and their content operations? Richardson and Clemson Ventures, he explained, think in content ‘lifecycles,’ maximizing the reach and revenue of their productions.

“For example, if we’re doing a show — which we’ve done multiple now, I think we’ve got 300 hours of original content in the last year and a half, two years — if we’re doing a show, I’m not doing a show just to put it on social,” said Richardson. “Like, I’m doing a show, and ESPN2 is going to get first run, then it’s going to go to ESPNU, then it’s going to go to ACC Network, then it’s going to go to Gray Media and Fox, then it’s going to go to Clemson Plus, then it’s going to go to YouTube, then it’s going to get chopped up for social clips.

“And all of a sudden — and I’m not saying all at the same time or even a day apart — that’s seasons of a cycle, that could fill a whole year if you plan it right. And it’s non-endemic — it doesn’t matter about wins and losses. You can plan for that out of one piece of content. And guess what, you can sell against it every single time.”

Value gets maximized and extracted at every stop in the content lifecycle, and, in the end, has a lifetime value as it adds incrementally to the ever-growing Clemson content library, residing forever in Clemson Plus. This is also where the diversity of content compounds. Not every title on Netflix is destined to reach millions, but every show could be someone’s, some loyal audience’s, favorite show. That overall appeal keeps the value proposition for Clemson Plus increasing over time, and, while Richardson doesn’t presume to envision Clemson Plus rivaling the streaming behemoths, he doesn’t shy away from the long-term value for the premium platform, within Clemson’s primary audience and beyond.

“Everything we build will come back to our library,” he said. “We own it. We will maintain ownership. Even if it’s ‘loaned out’ or exclusive rights for a year, it will come back to us, meaning our OTT library will continue to expand because we will continue to dive in on that.

“Can Clemson Plus live by itself as a massive revenue driver? I don’t know. Maybe not, maybe so. But it took Netflix 15 years to get there. It’s still taking Disney years to get there. And this is niched down — this is Clemson, this is our OTT platform. Luckily, one thing with that is, every IPTAY member (‘I Pay Ten a Year,’ Clemson’s donation membership platform) we have has access to Clemson Plus, and it’s also accessible to any fan for five bucks a month, and you get access. Cool. But we are thinking of how do I get this content? And this is why we build 22 minute shows and 48 minute shows…”

Content used to be mostly a cost center for college athletics. It was marketing to drive the primary revenue drivers and priorities, whether ticket sales, tune-in (radio and TV), merchandise, donations, and recruiting. The ability for MMRs and in-house sponsorship teams to monetize content, along with revenue from social platforms directly, has only increased as content consumption and the number of options and platforms for fans has grown to infinite swipes and scrolls. And that’s great. But the content engine is just starting to rev up; the flywheel isn’t just forming, it’s expanding in more directions. That’s the bigger vision here for Richardson, Clemson Ventures, and others who will follow their lead.

“From a content perspective, four, five, six years ago and a little bit still today — a lot of it was fan affinity, ticket sales, merchandise,” said Richardson, who has spent over a decade working in college athletics. “Now, I believe content, especially in this space, it’s all about ownable IP, and you’re building media properties to where it’s not just like a secondary piece…

“Content’s infinite. You can have an idea today and I can make it tomorrow. We go pitch it Friday. Seats are limited, tickets are limited, merch is limited based on quantity. Content is interesting. And I think more and more — not just companies, more college athletic entities that are thinking like media companies and building production houses — will get further along pretty quickly, because that’s just where we’re headed in that content space…

“Content is being looked at now as ownable IP. And it’s super interesting when schools can do it at scale.”

That’s the whole shift. Content used to be marketing. It drove engagement, got posted and clipped a few times, then disappeared into the YouTube and player archives. Now it’s an asset, built with purpose and a plan to capture value through distribution and revenue generation, before being licensed or bundled into a library with its own market value.

A few years from now, a woman in Sacramento with no Clemson ties scrolls past a Cade Klubnik House Call episode on Prime Video. She watches it. She finds a Clemson Cribs, where she tours the current QB’s dorm, before getting sucked into a short showing the star gymnast’s daily workout. Then a Clemson cooking show. She didn’t buy a ticket. She didn’t grow up a Tiger. She just watched something good, and the library kept feeding her one show at a time.

Content may have a short half-life in the feed. In the marketplace and in the library, it compounds.

Clemson set the pace once before, when content in college athletics went from homemade to Hollywood, from SIDs to studios. They look poised to set it again, this time turning the creative department into a production house and the library into a permanent revenue engine.

Content is the only lever in college sports without a ceiling. Colleges have invested in high-quality content production for years. Now it’s time to invest in the business around it.

WATCH OR LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE WITH KEVIN RICHARDSON

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Content Strategy

Content as Currency: How the LA Kings Put Strategy to Content to Drive Fandom, Brand, and Business

What does it mean to have a content strategy in sports?

For some, the question may conjure ideas of content pillars or buckets. Others may think in fan development, segmentation, and player marketing. Another notion would consider the most common key performance indicators (KPIs) like reach and engagement. Still others may cite business objectives like brand building and revenue generation.

The thing is, it’s all of the above, and then some. Content serves many masters in 2025, more than ever before. Because it can. Thoughtful content strategy can and should accomplish all those aforementioned objectives. But it’s a strategy, not a catch-all goal for every post and piece of content. Creators create, producers produce, and managers manage. Well, duh. But speak to somebody like Alec Palmer, the Senior Manager of Social Content for the LA Kings, and you’ll appreciate how content strategy is an organizational strategy, transcending the tweets and TikToks that populate fans’ feeds.

Palmer came up as a content producer, picking up skills in college that kick-started his career path. His background, now coupled with years of experience managing content, makes him particularly well-suited to balance the never-ending content needs for a sports team in 2025, while still making the producers feel they have the agency and freedom to be creative.

“There’s an understanding of, Oh, he does know what goes into shooting this video,” said Palmer, who joined the Kings in late 2021. “And maybe he doesn’t know the entirety of like, what all goes into a red camera and a whole studio and production setup, but there’s enough where they know where, if I’m pressuring them to get something done or asking them to do something, it’s something I would ask myself to do as well. That’s what I hope comes through to my team, and even cross-departmentally, is I know what it takes, and I know I can step in at any time, and that trust that builds…

“We want the producers to have an innate green light,” Palmer explained. “That obviously can get you in some muddy waters when you need to rein someone in and be like, ‘I need you to do this thing,’ but we look at it as, like, the risk is worth the reward of like, Hey, we might lose a producer or two on a tangential project that doesn’t play out, but most of the time it’s going to work out in some fashion. That’s where we really hone it, like [harping] on communication…”

Palmer looks after the big picture while helping the content team to bring to life creative projects that fit with organizational goals. Such alignment is essential to getting buy-in and resources to take ambitious, creative swings in content, and tell stories that can drive convertible KPIs and create meaningful engagement that drives lifelong fandom.

That’s how Palmer and the content team found themselves in Switzerland this past summer. The team saw some other teams producing similar content, all-access content series, and remote shoots in player hometowns, and the Kings knew they wanted to tell their players’ stories with such a rich tapestry. Requesting to fly thousands of miles with a content team is not an insignificant ask, but when you have a plan and can connect the initiative to important objectives for the organization, the picture becomes pretty clear.

“We pitched [the idea], it was going to be expensive, we didn’t have the money,” said Palmer in describing the pitch to profile players in their hometowns. “In that pitching process, we said, ‘Here’s the content we would pull from these. Here’s roughly the amount of deliverables. Here’s the crew and the staff that would go; here’s the rough budget. And also here’s the story we’re telling and why this story is important.’…”

It’s understanding the why behind content that gets at the heart of strategy. Too often, reports and KPIs are reduced to a few surface-level numbers that, left unchecked, can lead to perverse incentives. If it’s just about hitting a certain number of engagements, impressions, and views, that leaves out a whole lot of substance. The goal isn’t to hit certain metrics, it’s to hit certain metrics that can tie to the actual goals. Hitting big numbers alone isn’t a strategy. Palmer talked about the blend of art and science in presenting reports and defining success in his position with the Kings.

“People learn in all different ways; people understand performance and success in all different ways,” he said. “So when you’re presenting something back, you need to be able to tell the anecdotal and the qualitative successes or failures, and the quantitative and the analytical successes and failures, and sometimes they may be in contention with each other. That’s something where you are the expert, you have to explain why and why that might be okay, or why it might not be okay…”

Palmer continued, also later noting that within the content strategy are nods to marketing, ticket-buying, and other revenue-generating elements: “So what we look at is, yes, we’re always looking at analytics. We have our paces, we have our KPIs, and generally we’re hitting them. But there are also things we are accepting where it’s like we’re taking a risk that this might not perform or it might perform, or it performs to average, but it’s important to tell the story about our team, or about the game, or about this player, because that is what helps drive fandom. And it’s also the age-old question of how are you driving revenue?”

The approach to content strategy is also a massive part of the picture, alongside the marketing-driven elements. In the best of conditions, they all work together. So while storytelling is inherently integral, the way content is presented, the copy used, the tone and voice that emanate, it’s absolutely critical in driving fandom and partnerships.

For years, the Kings had a distinct brand. As Palmer recounted in our interview, the Kings are often credited with starting a pivot for brand communication on social. A new era that welcomed comedy, snark, and sometimes savage or even self-deprecating, instead of the overly formal, official-sounding brand representations and tone of years past. But the LA Kings team that Palmer joined was different from the dominant team of the 2010s, which captured multiple Cups and grew over a massive fan base that loved the Kings’ distinct voice across social (and all fan touch points, really; the in-arena presentation also echoed those LA Kings vibes). It felt like there was a disconnect, as Palmer explained.

“They were going through a rebuild,” he said. “And what was happening was the sarcasm, the poke fun at ourselves wasn’t landing with fans as much. And it started not to land internally as well. Without getting into too many specifics, it was okay, well, we need to change this without losing this thing that got us here. It’s the same thing with the Kings, like the Kings have been known forever as this ‘we’re going to beat the living hell out of you’ on the ice. Our guys are bigger, faster, stronger than everyone, and we’re going to play great defense, and we’re going to just grind you till you can’t go anymore. That’s how they won their Cups. And that has changed and will change, but there’s always this mindset.

Palmer discussed the way the Kings evolved the brand, while remaining authentic and credible for fans.

“So that’s kind of how we approached it. It was, okay, we can’t lose this entire funny sarcastic, fun personality, but we have to make some changes to better suit what’s happening on the ice,” he said, later emphasizing the Kings’ approach to proudly wearing their Kings fandom and leaning into the ups and the downs. “We overcorrected right away to kind of peel so much back, and I was like, Let’s just start fresh, almost. Let’s pull back. And it’s going to be kind of uncomfortable to start, it’s going to be frustrating. Let’s pull back right away to just like a cookie-cutter, let’s start getting back to the team, and let’s reintroduce things, because we had no idea where that line was anymore. We had no idea where the line was that was too much or too little. So we had to reintroduce and kind of build and build and refit that boundary, and we hit that line…

“Over the years, we stripped that back and we started adding it in…As the team got better, we were able to do more and more, and we’ve now developed this kind of voice of we are the best and this idea of we’re going to beat you up. We’re not arrogant. We’re confident in what we do. We’re going to grind you out on the ice, we’re going to be able to just, you know, push through you, and we’re bigger, better, faster, stronger. So this mindset of being that on the ice, we thought, how can we relate that to our social presence?

“We kind of operate, and this is more internally, it’s not quote-unquote our written social strategy on the wall, but we operate as: Be a fan, be intentional, and be excellent…”

The optimal content strategy compounds. All of the elements explored in this article work together, enabling the sum of the whole to be greater. That’s a bigger story than any surface-level metrics can tell.

So, consider all the dots to connect for a content strategy. Create platforms that showcase to fans what the brand is all about, build avenues for connections, develop fans for life. Content is the most valuable currency we have; make the most of it.

WATCH/LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH ALEC PALMER OF THE LA KINGS (TREMENDOUS)

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Content Strategy, Fan Development

Brand Building and Cultural Creativity: How Animation is Used to Fuel Fandom in Sports

The goalposts keep moving for content in sports.

All-access and mic’d-up players are now a part of every team and league’s arsenal. 360-degree replays, video game-like mirrorless cameras, drone shots, aerial cams, POV views, net cameras, cinematic hype videos that could be mistaken for Hollywood trailers — the acceleration in content quality, diversity, and innovation is remarkable.

So how the hell is a team’s content expected to cut through, stand out, and grab a fan’s attention away from the screens and feeds vying for their eyeballs, minds, and hearts?

There’s no single right answer to the challenge (sorry!), but by breaking from expectations, telling deeper stories that feel made for you and command attention, and embracing novelty, there’s a chance to get fans to stop and engage.

Greg Walter and his team at 2Tall Animation aren’t trying to replace the incredible highlights and photos that sports produce. Those continue to play a major role in fan acquisition and engagement, fueled by the daily renewal of more eye-popping plays and moments. But there’s a reason animation is such a powerful complement for sports and sports fans. It can embellish the inherent mythology in sports and bring to life the legends with which fans already identify in sports. And animation can allow teams and leagues to explore and exploit unique places in storytelling, creating and capturing fan passion in the process.

“The way we think about sports media is 99% of it is photo and footage based, and it should be, because people want to see their heroes, they want to see the games,” said Walter, the Owner and Creative Director of 2Tall Animation, the animation production studio specializing in sports. “But what’s the other 1%? We feel like we’re the other 1% that somebody might grab onto if they want to do something completely different, or if they want to create some media where they can control it and go anywhere they want to, because you can go into any storytelling space, you can go into any visual space with animation.”

The versatility of animation means it can serve many masters and aim to achieve diverse goals. But the often-exaggerated nature of animated projects is more conducive to enhancing the avidity of existing fans. Consider those illustrations that leagues such as the NFL and NBA will put out around holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, full of exacting details that only the biggest fans will recognize and appreciate. It’s those types of ‘if you know you know’ elements that strengthen fan identities and lead casual fans to want to enhance their own immersion into the property.

Walter discussed how thoughtful 2Tall is with its clients in identifying those brand elements and esoterica, which bring to life that community and identity.

“Usually it’s to take the current audience and take them to a new place. Like, it’s not necessarily to gain a new audience. It’s to double down on what the audience is already excited about,” Walter said about the nature of 2Tall’s objectives with clients. “Especially if we’re doing something in venue or we’re doing something on social media, what we really want to do is we want to create a piece that looks like it was made by a local for that team.

“And what I mean by that is we’ll dig into all the local Easter eggs. We’ll have a lot of creative meetings to figure out, Okay, where is the team? Who are the heroes? And more importantly, who are the fans? What is the culture around the team? And even more importantly, why do these fans love following this team? Besides geography, what about this team do they put their hopes and dreams in so that they would stick with this team when they’re good, when they’re bad? Is it a blue-collar city where it’s [about] grit and hard work? Is it a flashy city where you want to go big and lights and all that stuff? What’s drawing the moths to the flame?

“And then how do we show something interesting and new to this audience to get it even more excited and to see the team, the city, the franchise in an interesting new way?”

As Walter described the depth of exploration in their animation projects, it became apparent how powerful the animations can be to foment the brand — its messages, totems, tokens, and traits. One may not instantly think of a cool video board hype reel or an illustrative storytelling vehicle on social media to create a brand platform, but the degree of familiarity and fidelity built into the animations, combined with the unique visual appeal, can open (or create) new worlds to explore across mediums and touch points.

“More and more as we approach teams, and we’re creating videos for them, we’re also packaging up still assets for them, and we’re writing into the contracts we’ll also get you some still assets you can use over some looping assets that you can use on your boards any way you want, or in your merch,” said Walter. “And you can cross-purpose this stuff, so you’re not paying for something that’s going to show once or even once before each game. You’re paying for a package of other things that you can then give to your video team, to your merch team, and then they can recompile them in interesting ways.”

Whether animated or not, teams and leagues produce countless videos of varying forms that aim to stir emotion in their fans — at games in the arena or stadium, on social and mobile in the feeds and stories, and on countless other platforms. But while the social feeds may give you some semblance of performance through likes, comments, and shares, it remains difficult to understand when this content truly breaks through. The best content doesn’t inspire tapping a heart; it touches the heart, making the fan feel something, enhancing what it means to them to be a fan.

In evaluating the success of their projects, Walter and his colleagues and clients recognize there are variables they can and cannot control. If the team is mired in a slump or losing situation, that’s bound to affect how any content is received, animated or otherwise. At the same time, when the content does hit with its full intended effect, especially in-venue, there’s no easily quantifiable way to know it. So, for Walter and 2Tall, it’s part-art, part-science.

“You can’t measure ‘Did the audience get a little bit louder when they saw this thing?'” said Walter. “I will say that we did a couple of things for the Super Bowl this year. We did one for the Eagles and one for the Chiefs. The one for the Eagles played when the Eagles were really at their peak, and the crowd went wild for it. The one the Chiefs, unfortunately, played right as the crowd started realizing that this one was really getting out of hand, and it was a dead room, apparently. So it’s little bits of data like that that we can go on.”

Not all animation is meant to serve the same purpose or elicit the same feeling, either. If you haven’t yet gone and looked up any of 2Tall’s work, there’s no telling what you’re picturing as you read about ‘animation.’ Maybe it’s something akin to anime, or perhaps something resembling the Nickelodeon cartoons of the ’90s and ’00s; animation represents a vast spectrum, and to put animation in a single box is inaccurate. So, this whole conversation about animation in sports is multifarious, a menu within the medium that organizations should navigate with intentionality.

“There’s kind of a choice point,” explained Walter, who founded 2Tall in 2012. “Do I want to go into a lane that people already know and work within that, or do I want to use animation? That can be anything. You can go collage, you can go rotoscope animation, which is traced animation, you can do trippy, you can do photorealistic, you can do graphic novel, you can do street art. You can do a whole bunch of different things. You know, what satisfies the assignment the best?

“If you want to do street art, there’s a materiality about street art. You expect pavement, you expect walls. There’s a tangibility to it that we can work with to give something that’s got kind of a solid feel, where your feet are on the ground and you feel like you’re at ground level, or we can do something crazy and trippy that’s got lots of colors and it’s out in space.”

This article started out by lamenting the Sisyphean quest to produce content that stands out. There’s a perpetual arms race in content, not just in sports, but on every screen and frame vying for sustained attention. The velocity and volume may be greater than ever, but the cyclical, one-upsmanship nature of creative is simply part of the game. It’s a feature, not a bug.

Creative is a field that compounds. The evolution and innovation will continue because new ideas build upon existing ones. The roots of just about any creative field can be traced back centuries, so it’s not about eschewing convention, but veering just a bit, taking chances, and playing outside the lines of expectation. As Walter has survived and thrived amidst the accelerated timelines of creative trends and techniques, he welcomes the challenge of giving fans something different. Something that’ll make them stop, notice, and digest.

“People’s relationship with social media is very problematic, but it exists and we are existing to create content for that,” he said. “And people are comfortable with the thing that they like to go on and slide through. But I think people are hungry to be surprised. And anytime that you can give somebody a good surprise, there are bad surprises too, but a good surprise, that’s a little victory. That’s like a breadcrumb that can lead to other things as well.

“And that’s kind of how a lot of this churn happens. It’s like somebody does something interesting, you know, and then someone else sees it and they’re like, I can take that a little bit further, and then it churns into something bigger.”

WATCH OR LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH GREG WALTER

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Conferences, Content Strategy, Fan Development, General Sports Business, Social Media, Working In Sports

What I Learned in a Room Full of the Smartest People in Sports Social

Some of the earliest social media hires in sports are now VPs and SVPs. Social media and content have always been inextricably tied to the underlying business and brand for sports organizations, but for years their impact was mostly acknowledged by vibes. Then likes, impressions, and views added a more data-driven and analytical bent.

Today, an organization’s social media and content strategy isn’t expected to deliver likes and comments, the expectation is to drive direct impact on key business objectives.

With such a lofty ascension, there are better questions being asked, more operationalized workflows, more documented guidelines and guardrails, and more thoughtfulness behind every post, piece of creative, and word that gets in front of fans. The ever-increasing fan touchpoints, an insatiable demand for content, and the realization that social media is where organizations can learn about their fans, grow the fan base and brand, and create new marketing funnels and revenue streams — the level of sophistication and discourse has never been higher.

These were among the key themes at this year’s second annual Gondola Sports Summit, which brought together the leaders and producers who bring sports fans all the content, copy, memes, and more that drive such engagement and earned media — and further key organizational objectives.

I was fortunate to attend the conference, which took place in Denver, May 19-21, and featured speakers from several of the biggest teams and leagues in sports, agencies that work with these organizations, and representatives from many of the platforms where fans consume and converse around all that content. There were countless insights and examples, inspirational stories, revelatory ideas, and warm camaraderie. What follows are a few actionable insights from the panels, which built on the theme of social media and sports growing up. We’ve raced well past the tropes of interns, the power of content and social being recognized and appreciated for all the value it can deliver.

What the sports world needs to know about Reddit

Reddit has kind of been having a moment, and not just in sports. It’s increasingly one of the last true large ‘social’ broadcast platforms left, a place where businesses and brands can get unfettered insight into what fans are saying, and more tied into the information users get, whether querying AI or Google.

Sports are not new to Reddit; there have been tons of engagement and conversation happening on various subreddits for years. But now the teams and leagues themselves are taking notice. Reddit’s Sports Partnerships Lead Christine Wixted Wixted sat on a panel alongside MLB’s Vice President, Social Media & Innovation Cameron Gidari , and they discussed some of the use cases and value props for the platform.

Reddit is a text-heavy platform, because it’s about conversations. But that doesn’t mean photos and videos don’t have a place, multimedia can start and lead those conversations.
Anyone (including brands) can be welcomed when they provide value. For teams and leagues, that can mean content they’re not getting elsewhere. Don’t just post the highlight, post a unique camera angle or clips that’ll elicit conversation.
Niche down. This will come up again later with TikTok, but with the specific, interest-based nature of subreddits, there is opportunity to engage with non-sports communities. MLB mentioned their success posting in the weather subreddit, for example. AMAs (Ask Me Anything) can also be compelling ways to serve different niches; for example, could your head groundskeeper interact with the landscaping subreddit about caring for the grass at an MLB or NFL stadium? (my example!)
AMAs were brought up multiple times by both Wixted and Gidari, and Wixted mentioned ongoing development of the platform’s AMA product. That’s a telling sign! Gidari talked about the success of having AMAs with MLB’s team-specific beat writers, offering deep engagement and conversation when, for example, the Cubs beat writer does an AMA with the Cubs subreddit (again, my example). This is an easy but effective way to get started on Reddit.
You can get value from Reddit even if you never post. Wixted echoed what many marketers will say, characterizing Reddit as your free focus group. Lurk and listen, and, as Wixted recommended, leverage Reddit Pro — which is free, to set up listening flows to keep track of your brand and sport, and spot opportunities for engagement or pick up insights about your fans or potential fans.
You don’t need to worry about constantly feeding Reddit. It’s not as algorithm-driven as other platforms (posts primarily gain visibility through comments and upvotes), so you can pick and choose opportunities instead of stressing about a 24/7/365 presence
If you’re anxious or uneasy about treading into Reddit, where it’s true that brands are not always a welcomed presence, work through the subreddit moderators (or connect with the mods through the Reddit partnerships team)
Wixted talked through some of Reddit’s near-term priorities and roadmap, so pay attention. She mentioned: Continued devleopment and evolution of their video product, improving their mobile app UX, further development of their AMA product (such as scheduling, RSVPs, video answers, activation within AMAs), building more publisher tools and verifications, and enhancing the live event experience with features like live stats, polls, custom flair, and game highlights (my note: just check out the r/CFB subreddit on a college football Saturday, for example!).

My personal Reddit experience (from running Slyke) — the organic opportunity (and paid) is very real. Definitely be mindful of posting as a brand, you may share the same content under a non-brand handle. Think about posts that will start conversations, and note that users are willing to click off to a link to consume content that’ll funnel back into the conversation on the thread; I’ve had posts reach millions and drive considerable clicks. I’ve also found cost-effective ads (but be mindful of objectives). And do your research — Reddit Pro and Gummy Search can be helpful, jumping into subreddits and searching them or filtering by Best/Hot/Top over different time periods, and test different posting formats (link, text-only, carousel, video, etc.). I’ll also note, for a verrrry small marketer like myself, the Reddit ads team is extremely help and hands-on

Learning from the SMSports OGs

Depending on when you mark the unofficial start of the social media x sports era, the field as a profession is about 10-15 years old. It really did start with entry-level staff and, yes, some interns. The first pros whose job it was to write tweets, hit publish on Facebook, and navigate the early days of social media have grown up in the space, many in senior leadership or still hanging around the industry otherwise, continuing to evolve with it.

A few of these ‘OGs’ hit the stage to reflect on the past, analyze the present, and lend insight and inspiration to those coming up and molding the next era now.

“Likes don’t pay the bills.” Justin Karp , an OG now at NBC Universal, isn’t the first to utter that phrase, but it captures the elevated place of social media in any business now. Counting engagements is fine, but now we have to ask ‘so what?’ multiple times in planning add measurement to ensure those engagements and that reach is connected to business goals. That could mean reaching certain audience, driving home messaging, gaining actionable insights and feedback from fan engagement and comments, tying to sales, affecting recruiting outcomes and interest (for college sports), and driving tune-in, subscriptions, sign-ups, etc.
Platforms and what content and packaging work on said platforms change. So audiences. The point is you always have to be mindful of evolving, an insight elucidated by the Las Vegas Raiders’ Gavin Rivera. Learn to love the space as a science to continually study.
There are still only 24 hours in a day and yet an ever-growing supply of content and options competing for that attention. So everything has to start with a compelling story. Regardless of mediums, platforms, and presentation, the story must be one worth telling.
Rivera demonstrated decisiveness, explaining that we must fully comprehend the brand of the organization and know how to implement it across the board. You should be able to articulate the ‘why’ behind every post, heck, every word, and edit. The industry has grown up.
Karp has spent a lot of time and effort to drive tune-in with live sports broadcast by NBC and its platforms. And a key insight, with broad implications for sports pros, is that sports fans have passions and interests beyond sports. They follow whatever stories, memes, and trends are popping in areas beyond sports. So how can you ensure your game feels culturally relevant, significant enough to command engagement and attention by the biggest audience?

Lessons and ROI with Losing Teams

“Don’t read the comments” was never a good idea. Sure, there is bound to be vitriol and salty language, especially in the lean times for teams, but there is no better way to hear from your fans at scale than social media. It’s a constant source of feedback and vibes, in general and for specific content and campaigns.

If you sift through riff-raff, there is gold in all those fan voices and finding those insights is another way the social media team can deliver meaningful value up to the c-suite. This was one of themes at the conference overall and in a discussion featuring social media and content leaders from the Chicago White Sox (Tim Brogdon ), Carolina Panthers (Alex Grant), and Diana Smith (Charlotte Hornets), three teams from three different leagues who share this one thing in common — their teams have suffered a spate of losing seasons, of varying degrees, in recent years.

Remind yourself that the fan sentiment expressed on social media is often unrelated to your performance as a content and social media team, it’s the team performance they’re peeved about. Don’t get down about all the aspersions, but do look for patterns and opportunities within it. When you do something, creating content or commenting, for example, that shows fans you’re listening and addresses a common sore spot, that goes a long way.
What do you do when the season is shot? It’s tough when fans can all recognize that this team just ain’t going to win much, let alone contend this season. The advice for this issue included maximizing the effort around things that fans are excited and feeling positively about. That could mean schedule release, the draft, free agency, training camp, fan traditions and community. You may recognize storylines that fans are interested in; if so, build on that.
If it’s driving behavior, the content is valuable. Fans may not want to hear from you as much amidst losing, but don’t necessarily take negative sentiment or even lower engagement to automatically mean the content didn’t work. Pay attention to other metrics like sends/shares, watch time, and reach, too.
Coaching up is an important skill. You need to be able to communicate and explain strategic decisions to senior leaders and execs in various departments. If you post less, those preseason engagement and growth goals are not gonna be reached. If we want our social media to be among the best amongst our peers, here’s what that’s going to take and why it makes sense. The White Sox’s Brogdon also spoke about high-level conversations about how the team’s self-awareness and even use of memes would help shift the public narrative a bit, and deflect negative attention on the team to more positive attention on the social media team’s approach.
‘Some ideas are worth waiting for.’ This paraphrase, via another paraphrase from the Hornets’ Smith was about not tossing aside ideas when fan sentiment is low, but saving some of them for when the right time comes. Talk to any staff at losing teams and there’s a good chance they have some ideas for content or even strategic direction for when the team becomes a winning one.
Brogdon talked about developing a Whtie Sox fan persona, which guides core strategy and decisions, and enables more thoughtful conversations around the team’s approach. Overall, the panel has a good handle on documenting voice, tone, and brand guidelines, so everyone knows the gospel guiding the strategy and post-to-post decision making.

This panel and others discussed non-traditional KPIs. Engagement is great, but there is so much more value to be tracked and framed. The Panthers’ Alex Grant even mentioned how player comments on content and their feedback as a good sign. As noted earlier, using social listening and comments to drive actionable recommendations and insights, whether based around fan experience [a pain point at the game], reaction to an activation or promotion, or an emerging affinity. Consider community development goals, too. When fans are starting their own conversations and conversing (hopefully respectfully!) with each other, that’s a good sign. If it starts to feel like the team and its fans have inside jokes or their own language, that’s pretty cool.
STN Digital’s David Brickley went into what we mean when we say ROI. Understand the true objective — there is a difference between a marketing and a sales campaign, he said. Not everything is about sales, the objective could be community growth, reaching a specific demo, etc.

Live Coverage and Content

Content producers and leaders from three very different leagues and sports, NASCAR, MLB, and the PWHL, spoke about covering events/games and getting content to the feeds quickly (and why that matters).

Major League Baseball games are full of highlights. They can’t always predict when they’ll be a an incredible defensive play or a monstrous home run, but when it happens they want to own the moment and get it out quickly. MLB’s Brett Blueweiss said the goal is ‘field to feed’ in two minutes, and noted they typically have three different angles to share to make the most of the moments. An over-arching theme was the value of sharing unique content. Plenty of accounts can post the broadcast highlight, but what is the content that only YOU have?
While most sports events take place with fields and courts that are circumnavigable, NASCAR’s Alejandro Alvarez knows he and his content producers can’t possibly be everywhere in their massive speedway venues. So it helps them to be a bit more intentional about the content they want to capture and why. The overall goal, he said, is to convey the visceral experience of being at the race and all the energy and atmosphere of the event.
Both Blueweiss and Alvarez said that data often shows that mobile content (phone-captured) performs better than more polished content shot with more professional video/photo equipment. It looks more like real life, so it’s more relatable, they surmised. Alvarez said the memorable line that ‘the best camera is the one in your hand,’ whether that’s a DSLR or an iPhone. But also be smart about it, recognize the moments where one device or the other makes more sense. Overall, showing the data can also help destigmatize any qualms about phone-captured content that some may harbor.
There’s always risk of montony. Sports are about routine, by design, so content can get stale if every game day looks virtually the same with the live content captured. Some of the recommendations to combat this included giving your on-the-ground content creators some agency to roam around the venue to find unique angles or scenes. And let these talented producers try new things, they can bring good ideas to the table. Even small tweaks, too, can make something feel fresh for fans.

The Perfect Couple: Design and Social

Design and social media are inseparable. The best marriages can make 1+1 > 2, with creative that syncs with the content and copy to enhance fandom and enliven an intentional branding. Every good marriage requires communication, honesty, and compromise, and the discussion among design and social pros from the University of Tennessee’s Athletics and the Atlanta Falcons was full of helpful tips and insights.

Distinct creative looks and techniques are ownable, and can augment brand identioty and equity, stated the Falcons’ Director of Social Media and Influencers, Ryan Delgado .
Tennessee’s Evan Ford explained how the Vols (Volunteers) have creative boundaries around a sandbox in which colleagues can play. This helps maintain integirty while not stifling creative riffs among the school’s many teams. The Vols’ Kellen Hiser (Assistant AD, Digital and Creative Strategy) said that knowing the why behind creative elements and decisions can help inform playing within the guardrailed sandbox and guide future asks, too.
In a nod to the potential for numbness and montony from otherwise awesome creative, there were recommendations about. how small tweaks can mitigate such risks. That could be changing up the font or composition on the creative, or even just the presentation; a new approach to carousels or Reels covers, for example, or a different introductory frame for a Stories post.
Game days can move rapidly (of course!), so it helps to prepare and plan from a content and creative perspective, too. That means scenario planning, so all sides are ready for potential moments. It’s also good to know who is supposed to be where and when, so when content happens, someone is in the right place at the right time, and the director leading the content execution knows who to call on for the content.
A subtle but important point of discussion was honing the creative process from all sides. It can make a big difference when a request or brief is well-written and an informed, reasonable timeline is provided. Knowing how to give and receive feedback are underrated skills. And don’t forget to ensure all sides know the purpose of the creative, how will it be used and why (and if it goes unused, why was that the case?). Close the loop on performance and feedback, that’s a complete creative cycle.
You can win with consistency. Not every post or piece of creative needs to be a home run, consistently hitting singles and doubles can drive consistent impact.
I just loved the Falcons’ Jack Ozmer (Graphic Designer) talk about crafting a team identity that’s consistent across visual and voice. That’s the crux of a lot of this synchronization and synergy of design and social, helping to build that cohesive brand.

TikTok Tips

TikTok continues to be a force in social media and no other platform has been more valuable in broadening the scope that sports can penetrate. The discussion on the TikTok panel was centered around March Madness and creators, and was packed with insights for general application, too.

Search and intentional discovery remains a big priority for TikTok. The moderator of the panel, Kenny Yansen (TikTok leads for sports broadcast partnerships) showcased the key ways the platform activated around TikTok and the tournaments’ hub and search were front and center. TikTok in general remains a major search platform and it appears they’re continuing to lean into that behavior. When was the last time you searched your brand, team, or partners?
Bleacher Report’s Louise Chouinard (Senior Producer, Field Content) articulated their approach to TikTok, embracing a culture of experimentation. And not all good ideas will hit on TikTok the first time you post them. Sometimes posting a second or third time, with or without tweaks, can hit. She also noted the opportunity to experiment and ‘flood the feed’ during those high times, such as during March Madness. Some of that creative spaghetti will stick, reach new audiences, and inform future practices, too.
Content creator and former pro basketball player Trey Phils (and Yalie!) advised to not be afraid to flop. You just have to post. Get reps and try stuff. One of the features of TikTok your content doesn’t get automatically served at scale to users, let alone followers. Only the good content does. The bad content barely gets seen by anybody, so don’t sweat the flops. If you trip and fall while walking and nobody’s around to see it, who cares? (my example there, haha)
When you work with creators, select creators whose style and content fits what you (and the brand) are seeking, said Chouinard. Then let them cook. If you try to force something that deviates from the creator’s content style, that’s not good for anyone.
Lean into niche when you can (and when it’s relevant). TikTok has ‘unmatched discoverability,’ said Chouinard. Oftentimes niche sports or niche topics can over-perform, so look for those opportunities and lean into it. She cited an example of an interview with Stephen Nedoroscik (the bespectacled pommel horse hero for Team USA Olympic men’s gymnastics team) in which his love for the video game Rocket League came up. TikTok did its thing, getting that content to Rocket League aficionados on TikTok and the post took off.

The Growth and Opportunity of Women’s Sports, Athletes, and Content

No sports industry event can take place without a discussion about women’s sports. The growth is undeniable, the athletes influential, and it feels like we’re still just getting started.

One of the content motifs that came up as a propellant, with benefits for women’s and men’s sports and cultural relevance was athlete collabs. That could be across teams in the same sport, teams in the same city, teammates together, or no natural connection like that at all. Numerous female athletes have wider reach on social media, and many are just better at social, even if the teams and leagues foir which the male athletes’ have bigger overall fan bases, for the most part, which means both sides stand to gain. Audiences can multiply quickly with collabs.
Women’s sports athletes are inviting new brand categories and activations into the fold. Beauty and feminine hygiene brands, for example, now have a natural platform in sports that’s growing in scale, and these athletes are creating new opportunities through content like GRWM (get ready with me). Women are, in general, more willing to be vulnerable on social media, which makes them more relatable to fans, and more effective and authentic brand ambassadors.
There is a tangible shift in the way brands play within women’s sports, too. While in the past their activations often came across as patronizing, like an act of charity. Now, it’s more about celebrating women’s sports and the athletes as legit superstars performing impressive athletic achievements.
Fans of women’s sports are fans. They’re often more vehement and even tribal, which helps create a valuable platform for women’s sports. When other leagues/teams or brands engage authentically with women’s sports teams and athletes, these tribes often come with them, and bring their passion and devotion.

Understanding, Activating, and Community Building with Fans

It’s easy when you’re the legacy team account. (Okay, not easy, but stay with me) But how do you become a relevant presence for fans when you’re a media outlet, an upstart content and competition company, or even a multi-trillion-dollar corporate brand? There some insights and ideas with broad applications that I picked up in a discussion with the pros helping to engage communities and fans for ALLCITY Network, Overtime, and Microsoft.

ALLCITY’s Parker Sperry (VP of Partnership Marketing) spoke about how ALLCITY, the parent company behind localized media companies (DNVR, PHNX, among others) thinks about serving fans throughout their gameday journey. From pregame to in-game to postgame, what can they do to engage their fans and add value?
Sperry also spoke about positioning their talent to be brand ambassadors, in addition to how they work with creators. They want to offer fans something unique, so they’ll oftne let their creators try ideas in the moment and overall think about formats that are outside the box. They’re not trying to be traditional media.
Overtime’s Mike Kaufman (Director of Social Strategy) appreciates the platform they have and the communities they can create and serve. He discussed the importance of listening to and learning from athletes (and their parents) to better serve them. He also spoke about discovering communities they can help, using their platform to fill programming gaps and serve those communities fans fans.
Microsoft’s Joey Maestas , a social media and sports vet who today helps Microsoft market its AI as Social, Influencers & Video Lead for Copilot. In devising strategy, the north star for him is to consider what use cases would their audience care about? That guides the creators they work with (and how), the activations they produce, and the content they create.

A few more

Not everything fit in the sections above, so here are a couple other things that stuck with me.

It’s always instructive to pay attention to what the major platforms advise, so we were all at rapt attention when Meta addressed the crowd. Kristen Oh (Sports Partnerships at Meta) shared a breakdown of Instagram’s many products, and how organizations can think about using each. While nothing is absolute, the overview included: Utilize the feed for curated highlights, Stories for ephemeral moments, short and entertainment-focused videos for Reels, go Live and be interactive with fans, and connect with core fans (in general, for specific events, for sub brands, for athletes) in Channels.
Meta also reviewed Threads. It’s no secret that adoption and engagement on Threads is a big priority for Meta right now, and it was informative to learn how they speak about Threads and the frameworks for success on the platform. View the linked image for the full slide summing up the big ideas, but in brief they presented 4+ recommendations to build a community and engaging presence on Threads. 1) Post authoritative content like highlights and behind-the-scenes, 2) ‘Own the moment’ by sharing content that makes a statement or echoes what fans are feeling, 3) Tap into creators and commentators by developing ambassadors and elevating community voices, 4) Drive Community engagement by empowering everyday fans. Ultimately, consistently engage with fans and with the community, and that’ll go a long way on Threads.

STN Digital’s David Brickley cited the old cliche ‘Your network is your net worth.’ But it wasn’t just about how who you know helps you get hired at your next job. It’s about being able to make things happen, too. He’s right in it, as a founder and leader of an agency, but he added another framing to the old aphorism, if there’s a big activation or content campaign to execute, do you have the rolodex of trusted agencies or freelancers to call into action? Building that network is valuable, particularly as you ascend. to more senior roles.

That’s over 4,000 words above. If you made it all the way here, whether you read this in a single sitting or sections at a time, I hope you feel smarter having learned what I learned. Since there is so much, here are some of the lasting themes and insights to ensure you take with you:

Social has grown up — from “vibes” to a strategic, business-impact engine that drives tune-ins, ticket sales, sponsorships, marketing objectives and deeper fan insights.
The communities for your content are broader than you think — Think beyond sports content and communities, and add value to others. Try sharing relevant content to niche subreddits and TikTok fandoms.
Measure what matters — count engagements and views remain important, but aim to tie posts and performance to business goals (tune-in, brand messaging and pillars, marketing communications, community growth, brand affinity, partner activation).
Empower your creators and colleagues — Formalize guardrails; the goal is not to micromanage, but invite safe experimentation, so creators, freelancers, and coworkers can unearth fresh angles and creative ideas.
Content and Social are Strategic — Articulate the why behind the strategy, content, and creative. Decisions and direction should make sense because they align with the why.
Experiment without fear — on TikTok and beyond, embrace rapid “fail fast” iterations; only the best content surfaces, so don’t sweat the misses. You may even reach communities you never thought about
Lean into under-tapped fandoms — women’s sports, niche athletes and underserved communities hold high-value audiences hungry for genuine curation and context.

Somehow, this barely scratches the surface of all the knowledge to gain and stories to hear from the presentations at Gondola. Not to mention all the conversations on the side and the relationships formed outside of the official sessions.

Thanks to the team at Gondola (led by the legend Jared Kleinstein) for putting together a tremendous event and to all the speakers for being so thoughtful and generous and energetic with their discussions. If you haven’t checked out the Gondola platform, I encourage you to check it out, explore the content and creators, learn about the features, and sign up for an account. Visit Gondola

And shoutout to my employer Greenfly, who got several unsolicited shoutouts from the guest speakers, praising our software and service for being so valuable to their content operations and ability to achieve business goals.

Content Strategy, Social Media

The Content Flywheel: How Strategic Social-First Storytelling Creates Premium Value in Sports

We’re in a golden age of content in the sports world.

Think about all the new categories of content that have sprung up in and around sports in the last decade. It feels normal today, but fans didn’t always get to consume content about athletes’ fashion choices. They didn’t get to learn about what went into landscaping the field’s grass or get an inside look at the planes and hotels that are part of the athlete experience. It’s hard to remember a time before fans knew about players’ tastes in music, food, and pop culture, let alone their takes on the controversies of the day, like whether the dress is blue or a hot dog is a sandwich.

It’s still sports content. But it’s so much more.

The evolution is not limited to subject matter outside of gameplay. Incredible plays and magic moments still generate massive engagement and exposure, but they’re often just the starting point to richer storytelling. Today, moments get magnified. The live broadcast remains paramount (for now), but as sports fans increasingly consume clips and feeds more than live broadcasts, the opportunities that this new golden era of content presents feel limitless.

Russell Simon saw it happen in real-time. He and his colleagues at the National Football League (NFL) realized that fans couldn’t get enough content. The infinite scroll of the social feeds meant the engagement to earn from fans’ insatiable appetittes was limited only by the volume of quality content the leagues and teams could produce from their weekly live events (aka games). Thus was born the live content correspondent program (LCC), which today is a staple of major leagues around the world.

“We had creators in every market shooting mainly video content on a mix of DSLR and phone, primarily in the beginning, and we realized pretty early on that we had accidentally created a new rights category of real-time, social-first content from every game,” said Simon, who today is a partner at Zero Blitz Media, which works with brands, athletes, and creators to produce premium social-first content. “We had the best moments from the minute the first player walks in the door for arrivals until the game ends, and you get a player signing off, speaking directly to the fans 20 seconds after the game ends. It started to very quickly open up a world of possibilities just on game day.”

It wasn’t that the LCC program was capturing solely never-before-seen content. Game broadcasts had evolved across sports, driven by innovations in the 1990s and the influence of NFL Films, to show the players walking in the arena before games (so-called ‘arrivals’), amplifying increasingly ostentatious celebrations, and showcasing unique pregame player routines, among other elements. But where broadcast directors saw quick shots to intersperse or bumpers heading into breaks, Simon and the producers and leaders behind the LCC program saw the potential for something more. The otherwise afterthought shots and sights and sounds could be elevated and, in many of the social feeds today, are the main event, garnering more engagement and reaching more diverse audiences than even the most incredible catches, dunks, or hits ever could.

“I would say it was really about presenting [the content] in more of a social first native experience was really what the LCC program did,” said Simon. “We were able to take a shot, a really cool entrance shot of Patrick Mahomes or a really well-dressed player, and we were able to take that literally seven second moment from just something that flashes across the pregame show to a really elevated moment that can live across social, across the player channels, across this whole distribution network.”

The program continued to get even better because the LCCs (live content correspondents) stationed at each game brought their own ideas and vision to the content. (One of those talented LCCs, David Kushner, is Simon’s partner at Zero Blitz Media today.) They got the basics down pretty quickly, ensuring they were in place to capture all the big plays. But give creatives time and agency, and let them also bring their own flair to the production process. Simon and his team saw these LCCs evolve the content over time. And, before long, the program had not just the trust of the league and its teams, but also the interest in this unique cache of content.

“You can teach people how to shoot a football game, you know, where to stand, the best spots to be to maximize your chances of getting the best moments,” Simon explained. “I would say that the LCC program became a place where your skills and experience and the work that you had put in to get to that point put you in a place to shine and grow in terms of being able to capture the best moments as they happen very quickly became just table stakes where everyone is going to be very solid and have sort of this the level that we would expect. And then it was how you go beyond that and that, you know, all of our creators were able to sort of make their own in a different way…”

Simon continued: “On Sunday, we were there with them for 15 hours managing all of our creators, making sure that we captured everything we needed to capture, beyond just the moments, if there were special sponsor asks, special player asks, you know, really being cognizant of how we could be helpful to this ecosystem that we built out. And that’s really what made it effective. People trusted us…”

The value produced from the LCC program was magnified exponentially when that NFL ecosystem was activated. When one thinks of ‘social-first’ content, it conjures ideas of content in the social feeds, naturally. But this content isn’t just for followers of the team and league accounts. It’s not even just for the social networks. That’s just the start. When you take that content and throw gas in the distribution engine, the ceiling for reach, engagement, and value grows higher. When you take that content and utilize it as ingredients for more substantial stories, the radius of the content’s effects spreads wider and deeper.

“So Justin Jefferson scores a touchdown and does The Griddy [to celebrate a score], and then he’s got that video from an LCC ready to post right when he gets to the locker room,” said Simon about the dance that the Minnesota Vikings wide receiver made popular among NFL players. “It was Hey NFL fantasy, when people draft Patrick Mahomes, can they see all of the content that we’ve captured from him during a game and get that alert to be like, Oh wow, he just did something cool, let’s put it on fantasy. It was, Hey, [to] our college partners, Justin Jefferson’s got a big following at LSU, LSU, Here you go. Take this footage and make it something that will reach your audience. People are creating GIFs and sending GIFs in their text chat with their friends. Let’s take this Griddy dance that Justin Jefferson just did that we just shot and put it on Giphy. Hey, let’s tell a story about the dance on the NFL’s TikTok channel. Let’s bring in an influencer to do the Griddy with Justin Jefferson and make a viral moment out of that. Let’s, of course, give that footage to ESPN, NBC.

“The program worked because we were able to take one moment or something that happened in a game and make it so much more by building out our, I’ll call it the creator ecosystem.”

Stick some compelling, social-first content into the flywheel and that’s how you develop new fans while also giving existing fans more avenues to engage and content. That insight drove Simon and his NFL colleagues to dive in deeper (and guides him at Zero Blitz Media today). And the upside of producing content in AND around the fringes of sport, combined with the interest-driven algorithms of social and creator distribution engines, and you have the recipe to reach more messaes than ever.

Simon elaborated: “There’s definitely an element of any good strategy right now in terms of how you reach and grow beyond your core fans,” he said. “I think a lot of that, frankly, is stuff that is not just the highlight, but talking to the doctor, talking to the equipment manager. We worked on a show when I was at the league on the [business development] side, ‘Most Interesting Jobs’. That’s a show that my fiancé will sit down and watch, and think is really interesting, and they’re barely showing a highlight at all. Like, the stories around the game, there’s only going to be more opportunity in there.”

Early in Simon’s career, he worked on Snapchat’s live stories. Fans on the ground at live events (Simons focused on sports) submitted content to Snapchat and Simon and his colleagues took those submissions (sometimes supplemented by Snapchat producers onsite at events) and curated them, sometimes adding in graphical and post-production elements, for users to enjoy on the Snapchat app. These were decidedly social-first and mobile-first videos, clearly captured by fans using their phones, giving the content a cinéma vérité feel. Users tapping through live stories felt like they were there. It was cool.

It didn’t take long for ‘Stories’ (even if not ‘live’) to become a new content format across platforms. (Snapchat’s CEO Evan Spiegel jokingly calls himself ‘Meta’s VP of Product for a reason.) But there’s a next level to social-first content now, to not rest on the engagement it captures in real-time, but to build on it. Content is currency as much as it ever was, and in this golden era of content, organizations — and potential sponsors — appreciate the value of quality content. The ROI picture is developed, we’ve arrived. As Simon and his partner build Zero Blitz Media, they know that when good content is the north star, everything else follows from there.

“If you make really engaging content, good things will happen; if you make good stuff, good things will happen,” he said. “It may take some time, but even when there’s a brand integration in it, we’re focusing on making quality work, and the monetization is going to follow. Obviously it’s a balance, but we see brand dollars and ad dollars flowing towards our world for a reason, and it’s because people are spending their time there, and good things are going to stand out.”

WATCH OR LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH RUSSELL SIMON

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Content Strategy, Fan Development, General Marketing, Social Media

A Modern Approach to Fan Development: Earning Attention, Operationalizing Engagement, and Crafting Reasons to Care

If you’re reading this, it’s a minor miracle.

There is so much competition for attention and mindshare in general, let alone for sports teams and leagues. The established leagues have massive foundations of fans but want unending growth; meanwhile, myriad upstart and emerging leagues are competing to establish their base, often while concurrently growing broad awareness and interest in heretofore relative fringe sports.

It has never been easier to reach masses of people, but it has never been harder to win their hearts and minds.

So how should sports organizations think about earning new fans amidst a cutthroat world where every swipe, click, and second of attention has to clear an increasingly higher bar? And what does ‘fan growth’ even look like in 2025, with endless to ‘engage’ — that oh-so-ubiquitous but nebulous term?

Tom Halls has faced these challenges head-on throughout his career. Today, he and the team at SailGP aim to turn a centuries-old pastime that has persisted for years on the margins of the sports zeitgeist into a sports league that can command the attention of masses around the world. SailGP only had its first season in 2019, born in a perpetually connected world where hundreds of millions of videos get uploaded to platforms every day and social graphs and follower-based feeds were already starting to diminish. SailGP has hit some impressive follower numbers already, but I asked Halls about how meaningful a follower is in 2025 as content consumption and discovery look so different than it did a couple years ago, let alone last decade.

“Our follower growth target is still pretty aggressive for this season, but my point to [SailGP leadership] is if we’re showing an improvement in viewership, if we’re showing an improvement in engagement, if our engagement rate, which is super high, continues to retain at that amount, [that’s most important],” said Halls, who is the SVP of Social for SailGP following a career with stops at several sports organizations. “There are other ways to hook people in now with AI, whether that’s getting smart in how we sign people up top of funnel; at the very purest basis, like email marketing, databases, etc. How do we get them?…

“There’s always an end goal,” Halls continued, after remarking that UGC efforts are another strong signpost of an engaged fan. “A follow is nice, a comment is nice, but in an ideal world you’re watching the broadcast, you’re watching the live stream, you’re engaging, even better if you’re buying a ticket or merchandise. But we’re five seasons in. It takes time, and it takes leagues years to grow these pieces.”

Facebook introduced Pages in 2007. Instagram introduced business profiles in 2014. Those impressive follower numbers many profiles and pages can boast today are comprised of countless users who may not have logged in in a decade, let alone the bevy of bots that have accumulated over the years. That’s not to say one’s followers aren’t meaningful, it’s just that the follower ‘count’ alone falls short, leaving more questions to ask and more substance to (hopefully) uncover.

‘Engagement trumps followers,” said Halls, who spent years on the Meta sports partnerships team. “I’d rather take 150,000 engaged fans than 2 million passive followers,. And I will wager a decent amount of money that if you were to look at the vast majority of follower counts of the big brands, publishers, creators on platform now that have been there for 10-15 years, there is a rather decently-sized stagnant portion of fans.

“I don’t think your follower count opens doors in the same way with sponsors that it used to. I mean, we’ve just re-upped with Rolex for ten years. A brand like Rolex [is] smart, they look beyond follower count, they look at engagement, they look at audience makeup. Sponsors and commercial investors in sports are savvier now than they’ve ever been.”

There’s that word again — engagement. Any engagement is better than no engagement, first of all, but ‘engagement’ in sports can mean a lot of different things. Engagement could mean commenting on a post or creating UGC, it could mean buying some merch or buying a ticket to attend a competition. But no matter where among the engaged segments a user (sure, a ‘fan’) sits, the only way to increase the base of fans overall is to enlarge the surface area of exposure, the addressable audience that even knows you exist.

The key thing to keep in mind is that fan development is not a linear exercise. We can’t grow more diehards without growing more casuals. And we can’t grow more casuals without identifying and converting the curious (Halls discussed a segmenting of curious-casual-core fans). At the same time, the core audience can’t be taken for granted, with all the attention and efforts focused only on the casuals and curious. That’s the challenge and the opportunity — they all matter.

“My point always comes back to that core audience will always be there, and our goal is to increase the size of that core audience and gradually expand each part of that funnel as we go,” said Halls. “It’s okay if you don’t ever come to a race or ever buy merchandise in my eyes; you still have a value to us… When I talk to our commercial and financial teams… I’ll say [those fans are] not as valuable as someone that buys a ticket or a merchandise, but they are still a fan…”

It’s challenging but fun to seek out new fans. It’s easy to target and reach narrow audiences, but when you’re trying to find those potential curious and casuals, developing a broader and more diverse fan base, creativity, diversity of thought, and the willingness to try new things (and at times fail) are critical. The number of interests and trends, the scale of micro-communities, and the avenues of discovery are innumerable; the idea of diverse creative teams and canvassing ideas from everyone is not lip service to some noble ideal — it’s essential if you want a wide, heterogenous, growing fan base. For Halls and SailGP, creativity can come from anyone and anywhere. And in the increasingly algorithm-fueled world of content consumption and discovery, any quality content can find its audience.

“There’s a lot of creativity that flows through that team…So when someone thinks they’ve got a great idea, what we’re trying to do is ensure that that great idea has an audience and it has a fit for it — how do we utilise the fact that so many platforms these days have got A-B testing opportunities? said Halls, who lauded the ability to target unfamiliar audiences explicitly using Instagram’s Trial Reels. “With the ephemeral nature of social, it’s gone and forgotten in 24 hours if it tanks.

“It’s giving social teams that creative freedom and recognizing that what works for senior leadership isn’t going to work for the fan base. We create content based on what we know the platforms want versus what we know we want. And sometimes we have to let go of, you know, being super comfortable around some things, but it works.”

Halls and his team have learned what the platforms want. They know how to ‘go viral’ on TikTok or maximize engagement on Instagram. Sure, senior leaders may want to promulgate the incredible techniques of its athletes and the impressive analytics the competition delivers on its broadcasts — and there’s certainly an audience for all that — but they know that there’s nothing like a capsize or a man overboard if they want to reach millions (expand that surface area) on TikTok. Those viral clips are opportunities, the first touch point on a funnel where some nonzero portion of those millions of viewers will engage and progress along the fan funnel.

All those viral NASCAR crashes or hockey fights or unexpected incidents in SailGP (Halls referenced an innocent ferry interrupting one of their races) — those clips can be catalysts.

“We posted a clip on Instagram [and] we didn’t think anything of it,” said Halls, referencing a clip of a man nearly going overboard. “It did 40 million views in 24 hours. It hit 105 million views [overall]….We know why it went viral because it was eight seconds, you’re watching, you’re waiting to see what happens. When it does happen, you’ve got so many questions.

“And the way we parlayed that into follower growth was everyone that asked a question about that video, we tried to address it either in comment format, or we went and created explainer content around it. So why did he not fall over the boat? Why was he safe? There’s an explainer video and the fact they’re all tethered and they have to run with the tether. What was he even doing on the boat in the first place? Like, why did he fall off the side? It just looks like, because of the angle, it looked like quite a slow turn. Actually, it’s pulling three G’s at that point. Like the guy, you see him, it almost looks like he passes out. So there’s an explainer video on the G forces these guys are going through…

“So how do we introduce all these unique elements to our sport, or how do we introduce it to a new fan?”

There are stories behind every viral clip. And within those stories lie the elements that attracted the casual and the core fans in the first place. Getting the views, those micro-moments of attention, is just the first step. Are you ready when hundreds, thousands, or millions of fans are there sampling what you have to offer with an open mind to find a reason to engage and consume and learn more? Halls called out the alt-casts, so prevalent in sports now, as an example of trying to cater to new, curious or casually interested audiences. Drive to Survive got millions to sample an F1 race, but they’ll only stick around so long if they have no idea what’s going on.

“You have to make that explainer content simple enough that casual fans feel that they can get it,” said Halls, who was admittedly a relative sailing novice before joining SailGP. “And to me, that comes back to that ‘Explain it to me like I’m five’ principle.

“It’s a more subtle way of doing the Nickelodeon broadcast of the Super Bowl, how they break it down. I mean, we’re not at that stage…but that’s the space where we can play with creators.

“I’m still looking for my Snoop [Dogg]-Martha [Stewart] commentary combo. I can’t get Snoop and Martha, I don’t have those kinds of budgets, but can I do something with a KSI or a Kai Cenat; can we get them to commentate alongside?”

In addition to finding entry points and being ready to cultivate and educate the noobs when they do enter, it helps to give fans a reason to care. A sense of affinity and partiality, something and/or someone to root for as the boats compete for victory. It’s why SailGP produces their ‘Racing on the Edge‘ series (their version of Drive to Survive, essentially). The competition also take advantage of the natural patriotic inclination anyone, fan or not, to cheer on their country in any race.

“To me there’s a natural affinity to root for,” said Halls. “There’s a Canadian team, an American team. There are nationality minimum requirements for each of the teams, they’re nationalistic…”

But don’t mistake the fervent nationalism for jingoism. SailGP knows the best way for the competition to grow, the team valuations to rise, and everyone’s boats to rise (had to do it) is to work together. There are cross-team collabs, democratized sharing of data, and an overall collective that they’re building something special together.

Said Halls: “We have the rivalries and they can be really spicy, but I think everyone across the league and the teams and leadership at the moment recognizes that we have to grow as one unit.”

Fan growth isn’t about waiting for people to come to you—it’s about meeting them where they are, creating sparks of interest and curiosity, and steering them into easy entry points. The signals are everywhere, the bait is working—so cast wide, experiment boldly, and recognize every moment of attention as an invitation. The future fanbase is out there, a light breeze at your back. Come equipped with a plan, catch the right wind, and it’ll be smooth sailing ahead.

LISTEN TO THE FULL (EXCELLENT) INTERVIEW WITH TOM HALLS

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Content Strategy, Fan Development, Social Media

Know Your Fan, Know Your Market: Creating Social Strategy That Fits Your Team

There is no social media strategy that’ll please everybody. There is no social media strategy that’s perfect for every brand.

It’s easy to get lost in a sea of best practices, adopt tactics that’ll drive any engagement, and try to be everything to everyone. But especially in sports, where dozens of local (though concurrently regional/national/global) brands are all marketing very similar products. They have fans who fell in love with the brand before color TV existed and fans who weren’t alive in a world without Instagram. There are teams with rich histories and those just getting started, some are perennial winners while others seem to be perpetually rebuilding.

Zach Galia has navigated all parts of this challenging world across NASCAR, NFL, and now MLB, and, through it all he’s learned the importance of understanding audience, platforms, and creative, intentional strategy and execution.

It was — relatively — in the beginning. When Galia started his career at Michigan International Speedway, a track that hosts NASCAR races, their goal was to reach, well, demographics and psychographs that basically lined up with Galia himself. So if the content appealed to him personally, that was a good sign that it’d appeal to their target audience. It was largely similar when he started with the Pittsburgh Steelers, a team he’s been a fan of for life. But when he got to Arizona, to lead the Cardinals’ social media, he faced a new challenge.

“I think with the Steelers it was similar to NASCAR. I was marketing to me, like a Steelers fan. I knew the lingo. I knew what the Steelers stood for because I had a lifetime of following along and understanding and knowing the history and knowing the players,” said Galia who was the Steelers’ first full-time social media hire before moving to the Cardinals right after the NFL Draft.

“Going from there to the Cardinals, where I wasn’t a fan and I didn’t know the history, I didn’t know the fan base…I picked up what I was planning to do for the Steelers [during the offseason camps and training] and dropped it in Arizona and said, here’s what we’re going to do. And it didn’t work. It didn’t have the same impact. It wasn’t the same…

“That was the first kind of, Oh, I’m not marketing to me anymore. Like, I need to learn the fan that I am marketing to. Different markets, different teams, different fan bases, you had to learn and figure out what they wanted to see and who they were and what they cared about…”

Galia didn’t grow up a Cardinals fan and didn’t know the Arizona market, nor did he come in on day one with a deeply rooted understanding of the history and brand of the Cardinals. But he learned. And through the process Galia was able to grow his acumen in strategy and social, gaining thoughtful understanding of who they were trying to reach with what messaging and why.

“That was a great exercise to like how social is grown,” said Galia of balancing tactics to reach and engage various fan segments. “You obviously want to do right by those diehard fans, but the more people out there that are talking about the Arizona Cardinals, the better.

“So you want to find casual fans, you want to find Suns fans who are looking for something to do on a Sunday, you want to find NFL fans who are like, Oh, that’s a funny video by the Cardinals, maybe I’ll follow along. So it’s like you want to create content that’s kind of accessible across the board, but also doesn’t — not offend, but it doesn’t patronize your diehard fans. So it’s a much more wide range of content.”

Leaders like Galia can (and do) research and learn about fan bases and teams over time, just as any marketer does for their respective brand and industry. But in an increasingly diverse and fragmented cultural and media landscape, with trends, tactics, and platforms that evolve so rapidly, it sure helps to have a diverse team that can contribute perspectives and help keep up with it all. Galia is smart and humble enough to know that it’s more effective and efficient to help others help him than to dictate with omniscience and omnipotence. So as Millennials gave way to Gen Z for that ‘young’ demo, Galia worked to empower and entrust his team to keep up with the kids.

“It started with me marketing to me, but now I’m 38 years old and I need to make videos for 16-year-olds on TikTok to make them interested in the Pirates,” said Galia, recalling the difference in perspective as he progressed through his career and the years passed. “That’s clearly not marketing to me anymore.

“So how do you do that? How do you empower your team, the people on your team that are closer to that age group to do that?… You have to build that trust with the people on your team because [they’re] going to know so much more about who we should be talking to in that age group than I do…So it’s always great to have people like that, and I have them on my team now, where it’s like, tell me what’s cool, and if you think it’s right, let’s go with it and let’s see what happens.”

Understanding the platforms and cultural zeitgeist unique to fan segments and demographics is but a piece of the pie, however. The NFL has 32 teams with 32 distinct brands and fan bases. The shift from a historic organization like the Steelers, for which fans across generations can close their eyes and see NFL Films montages of 1970s glory, to the Cardinals, which has only been in Arizona since the late ’80s and lacks a similar legacy, is a good illustration of the diversity across the league. The same cross-team distinctiveness prevails in most sports leagues around the world. For every Hollywood LA Lakers, there’s a grit and grind Memphis Grizzlies — and a plethora of others. The way fans look at their teams, and experience the seasons, aren’t just for media-driven narratives and social media debates — it affects how teams present themselves and market to their fans. Galia articulated this insight and described how it played out for him at the teams where he worked.

“I think you go back to the Browns when they were just awful, like 0-17, but [former Browns Social Media Manager] Allie Raymond, one of the best in this business with the Chargers now, everything they did was amazing. They had this lovable loser persona, and it just took on a mind of its own,” said Galia, who has had experience with winning and losing teams alike. “Whether you like the [Browns] or not, you loved their content and who they were. That wouldn’t work with the Pirates or with the Steelers, because the fan base is not going to be humorous about losing and performance like that. So it’s knowing and understanding and learning that.

“Same with the Cardinals,” Galia continued. “Like, you couldn’t be the lovable losers with the Cardinals because if the team wasn’t good, people had other things going on [and] just didn’t care. They would go to Suns games, they would watch the D-backs; like, it wasn’t a big deal. Whereas Pittsburgh, for better or worse, our fans care like crazy and they will let you know when you’re not doing well or when you are doing well and you’re still not doing well enough. Like, Pittsburgh fans care. The Cardinals fans, when they weren’t good, it was like, Oh, just let us know when you’re good and we’ll follow along again. So there are little kind of things that you have to learn, and the only way to learn is to be a part of it…

“So you can’t just be tone-deaf and be like, Oh, well, here’s a bunch of memes and it’s really funny because we’re losing and other teams do it so our fans will like it too. I don’t know if that’s the case.”

After spending the first several years of his career in the NFL, Galia made the move to Major League Baseball, going back home to the Pittsburgh Pirates — and going from 16 or 17 regular-season games to about 10x as much in baseball. So while a big win or a big loss in the NFL can color an entire ensuing week, and represent ~ 6% of the entire season, an incredible victory or devastating loss in MLB is a paltry 0.6%, for better or worse. It was a stark change for Galia, who recognizes the condensed windows for celebrations in baseball means they have to capitalize quickly when moments hit.

“In football it’s like you win on Sunday, you have until next Sunday to tell the story of every single thing that happened in the entire history of that game, you can highlight it in every way you want,” said Galia, who is the Director of Social Media and Content Strategy for the 100+-year-old Pirates franchise. “In baseball it’s like, okay, well, how do we do this effectively and quickly because as soon as the lineup goes up for the next game, no one cares what happened the night before.

“So I think it’s not necessarily a blessing and a curse, but like that’s the good and the bad about the baseball schedule is you get to turn the page really quickly, but sometimes you wish you didn’t have to turn the page so quickly. It’s tough.”

The packed MLB season also ups the ante to keep fans engaged and interested game after game, with the specter of monotony looming each day. Fans will scroll right by when daily content starts to become predictable and blends together from one day to the next. It’s not feasible to produce some masterpiece every day, but Galia and his team know that even small tweaks and little surprises and flair can capture attention consistently and ensure fans don’t fly by or tune out while being ready for unexpected opportunities.

“One, you got to keep things fresh,” said Galia, who has been with the Pirates since 2022. “Our creative team does an amazing job. We talk and plan on every template that could possibly be imaginable, we try and make [them] before the season starts just so we have it just in case something happens, because making graphics from scratch is going to take a long time and we might not have enough time.

“Even a starting lineup graphic — if you see the same starting lineup graphic 162 times, by the fifth time, no one’s paying attention to it. So again, our creative team has done a great job, we have 5 or 6 different versions of that, and we’ll make special versions for special weekends. Visually, the information is the same, still the nine players plus our starting pitcher — it’s exactly the same information, the same experience, but it’s packaged differently that at least catches your eye for an extra second instead of just zipping right past it because you already know what it is…

“Don’t let consistency be the enemy of creativity, he said. “Just because you have a plan in place and your brand is set and you know what content is going out; like, celebrate wins in different ways, use content in different ways, post content in different places and make the experience unique and keep people guessing — because as soon as they know what to expect from you, you’re done.”

Galia and his team know the Pirates will have their opportunities to capitalize on during the season, so they have a balance of proactive planning and extemporaneous creativity to make the most of special moments. Any baseball fan, heck any sports fan, was well-aware of some special times for the Pirates during the 2024 season, as rookie starting pitcher sensation Paul Skenes made his much-hyped debut. Skenes is one of many prospects to have made anticipated debuts for Pittsburgh the last couple of years. Galia knows each has a story to tell and can move the needle in varying ways. These are thoughtful, strategic conversations and plans that come together — again, with a healthy combo of preactive and reactive, so that no opportunity gets missed.

“We had so many guys debut and it was like, Okay, well, when Paul debuts or when Jared [Jones] debuts, or when person X debuts, where do they fall into kind of the zeitgeist of our players and who have been called up in the past?” Galia explained. “So you then try and figure out like, well then do we need to crank it up a notch and do even more or do we crank it down a notch and do a little bit, like just keep it kind of normal?…

“You kind of talk about it and make sure that you have a general plan and then, you know, three months later when it finally happens, it’s like, Oh, well, I came up with three other things, let’s do these instead. So it kind of works in both ways…You plan for what you can and then you react to everything else.”

A lot of this is about storytelling and brand building, creative execution and insight. And while certain key principles remain the same over time, constant change and adaptation is just as consistent a part of the game. Just consider in Galia’s career how many platforms have come and gone, product features that have arisen, and new opportunities and challenges to evolve the definition of good, effective, successful content.

Defining success is paramount for those working in social media. The reports and rankings, perhaps too often, showcase overall stats like engagement, reach, and views. The reality is more nuanced — you can feed the feeds to prioritize engagement, and most pros keep a close eye on what each platform is pushing in their recommendation engines at any given time, but achieving success is less about engagement bait and more about adapting your great content and brand activations to favor the forms that the fans and apps expect and want.

“If your plan is to do the same thing on every platform, you’re going to be okay on one of those platforms, but you’re going to fail on the other ones. Like, when you’re creating content, you’re creating these strategies to engage with your fans, but you also want to create content that the platforms value as well,” said Galia.

He continued: “If you’re not bringing in what the platforms value into your strategy, you’re going to miss the mark in some form or fashion… it’s a battle for every four seconds. You want to give someone what they’re looking for on the platform that they’re on…

“Keep your business goals in mind and what you’re trying to achieve, but put it in the packages and in the places that people are going to see it more clearly. So no matter what the goal is, you’re still not necessarily leaning into, like, ‘whatever Instagram’s goal is, is now my goal.’ It’s like now I know what Instagram’s goal is, so I can kind of tweak our strategy to make sure that more people see what my goal and our goals as an organization are.”

Toward the end of the interview with Galia, he recounted some of the more ‘viral’ posts from his time behind social media accounts in Pittsburgh and Arizona, specifically some that came together quickly. To the casual observer, such spur-of-the-moment success may feel like dumb luck with a dash of creative artistry — and there can be elements of that, sure. But it’s kind of kike the anecdote about famed artist Pablo Picasso being asked to draw a quick sketch, which took him minutes, but the price he charged was $1M francs. “The lady was shocked: ‘How can you ask for so much? It took you five minutes to draw this!’ ‘No,’ Picasso replied, ‘It took me 40 years to draw this in five minutes.'”

Where Galia has arrived after over a decade in sports and social is not too different from Picasso, in a sense. He and his team make thousands of micro-decisions every week, but they’re not made in a vacuum. Galia is informed by thinking about audiences, markets, goals, platforms, mediums, markets, strategies — those executions and ideas that take form in seconds in the hyper-paced nature of sports and social media are only possible because of years of experience and robust preparation.

In MLB, where Galia currently works, every swing, every pitch, every game is an opportunity to learn and get better. The same is true for the pros off the field — get better and get smarter with every post, every day. That’s the foundation for a Hall-of-Fame career.

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH ZACH GALIA

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College, Content Strategy

From Websites to AI: The Evolution and Arms Race in Sports Creative

Look across a dozen creative departments in sports and you’ll find a dozen different organizational structures — no two teams or college programs approach it quite the same way.

There are varied levels of investment (and internal buy-in), some collaborate more or less frequently with external agencies and freelancers, and others boast massive teams of specialists. The creative talent in the sports world is more impressive than ever, rivaling any other industry. Even as the creative field gets disrupted by generative AI, the appreciation for the value of strong graphics, video production, social media branding, and digital experiences is stronger than ever.

Bob McKamey can remember a time when the digital presence for major sports organizations and athletes were relative afterthoughts. When he co-founded digital studio UnCommon Thinking, having a dynamic, polished website was a burgeoning opportunity to engage and develop fans online. Then came social media, and multimedia social media — it was mainly just text in the earliest days, kids, so the onslaught of photos and then video and all of the derivative formats and form factor-driven creativity brought us to the current day where creative execution is a key concern for any sports team or college program. In a recent interview, McKamey reflected on the evolution of internal creative teams and what he saw as some leaned into studios like UnCommon Thinking, while others built up in-house capabilities.

“As social media grew, all of a sudden we started seeing the teams that we worked with started hiring their own designers, their own photographers, their own video people,” said McKamey, who co-founded UnCommon Thinking in 2003. “In some cases, you’re exactly right, it completely pushed us out 100%. In other cases, it was maybe 50-50, and to be honest with you, right now, a lot of our clients and a lot of the work we do is behind-the-scenes recruiting work [such as recruiting in college athletics]…

“So, now it’s really more like just a straight partnership. A lot of times they’ll do the front end stuff, game day as an example, and they’ll farm out all of the extra recruiting stuff to us on the back end.”

It’s hard for the public to comprehend how much creative output some of these massive sports teams, and especially college programs produce. It’s that often unseen volume of work, still just as necessary in the NIL and transfer portal era, that separates the big budget programs from their smaller counterparts. It’s not uncommon to see incredible work from the smallest schools, creative talent is thriving all over. The difference is the bigger programs can produce more of it, whether that means availing themselves of a resource like UnCommon Thinking or from beefed-up in-house teams. McKamey described what he sees, as he has worked with college programs up and down the spectrum in terms of budgets ad resources.

“The big difference is,” he explained, “I think if you gave the lead designer at a big school and the lead designer at a small school, and you said, ‘Hey, you got two hours to come up with a great idea’, I think in today’s marketplace, the quality would actually look pretty close.

“The problem is when you need to come up with designs for 50 recruits, [you] need game day content, NIL content — that person that’s only got 1 or 2 people and no access to someone like me to help them out, they really can’t play in the same type of field. So the quality of the quantity of graphics doesn’t really match up to the bigger programs now.”

There’s an infinite demand for creative output in sports, even when time, resources, and budget are finite and often insufficient. The ability to activate and attract corporate partners (and the sponsorship revenue) has been one driver in recent years of increased buy-in and budgets. But especially in college athletics, the biggest needle movers remain the CEO of the college programs (aka head coach) and the student-athletes with their continually increased bargaining power. With creative leaders frequently seeking ways to get more buy-in and budget, McKamey said it’s those two parties that hold the cards more than any other factors.

“I think it has to be coach-driven, number one, they have to understand the value of it, the creative that they get and how it affects recruiting, how it affects the brand impression people have,” said McKamey whose studio has worked with major college athletics program for years. “If they get it, then I think the money comes.”

He continued: “And it’ll be interesting, the whole thing with NIL, one of the things we’re seeing now is, more than ever, the individual recruits are wanting more and more of a say in their own graphics. It’s like the graphics are no longer sent back to the program for approval, they’re sent to them and then sent to the kid and his parents for approval. [It’s like] they’re directing us on creative. You’re seeing more and more of that now.”

No matter who’s making the asks and giving the approvals, all creative teams are reckoning, for better or for worse, with the arrival of generative AI. Veterans will recognize that generative AI isn’t that new (content-aware fill has been around), but no one can deny the ever-improving capabilities of generative AI to produce and edit images, graphics, objects, and even video will transform the industry. McKamey is not running away from these new tools, which some perhaps naively see as a threat to livelihoods, instead recognizing what they can do to empower others, enhance communication, and allow creatives to work better. For McKamey, who concedes that actually producing the creative is not his area of expertise, he noted how tools like Midjourney helps him work better with clients and his team of creative producers.

“A lot of times what I try to do with our team — this is more on how our process works — like, if we get a new project, I’ll try to give the designers as much information as possible about what it is. So as many samples, as many ideas, as many adjectives and things that they can handle,” said McKamey, who commented that savvy gen AI prompters seem to be able to get good enough to pass as legit creators. “So for me, it’s helped; like, I’ll go in and I’ll do samples through Midjourney and then as part of the creative brief include that for the actual designers themselves to go off of.”

Even as these generative AI tools continue to get better and better, there is little for existential crises within the creative field. But the field is changing. Whether one is starting with a blank canvas in an Adobe application or a blank text field on Open AI’s platform — there remains a need for creativity, originality, and the ability to go from something in your head to speaking and producing it into reality. For those who don’t consider themselves professional creatives (this author included), generative AI tools force us to appreciate the details that go into creative production, the minuscule but meaningful elements that the pros hone over several years and projects. McKamey has produced creative briefs for years and he’s continuing to educate himself by practicing and watching the words that can lead to the foundations of creative masterpieces.

“A lot of times I’ll just sit there in Midjourney and I’ll watch all the other prompts that are coming through, and I’ll pick up ideas just based on that to see what they’re doing,” he said. “A lot of times it has nothing to do with sports, but it’s like you said, the right angle, the sizing, the lighting, whether you want it to be an illustration type of thing, a cartoon type of thing, a portrait. It’s opening a lot of windows, but I think if you just learn how to control it and use it in the proper way, it can really help out what you’re doing on the end result.”

The creative landscape in sports continues to evolve, presenting both challenges and opportunities for creative leaders. The pressure to serve multiple masters – from coaches and athletes to sponsors and fans – while maintaining creative excellence requires adaptability and strategic thinking.

Successful creative leaders in sports will be those who can navigate this complex terrain, leveraging both internal talent and external resources to produce innovative, impactful content that drives engagement and supports organizational goals. As the industry moves forward, the ability to blend creativity with strategic vision and embrace new technologies will be crucial for those at the helm of sports creative teams.

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH BOB MCKAMEY

READ THE SNIPPETS

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