Category: General Sports Business

Fan Development, General Sports Business

The Sports Fan Experience Through a Parent’s Eyes: What Marketers Should Know About Fans with Families

It’s easy to fall into a trap after years of working in sports (or any industry). It’s just difficult to see things from an objective point of view, taking on the perspective of the ‘normal’ fan or consumer.

That’s why I love peppering friends, family, and, heck, complete strangers with questions about their experience as sports fans. Avoiding an insular point of view is critical to effectively understand the fan experience — the motivations, challenges, and opportunities. And that’s why each year when my Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast hits a milestone (12 years this year!), I’ve had friends and family members appear on the pod to ask about their relationship to sports and experience as a fan. I learned from my brother, an avid fantasy player and diehard San Diego Padres fan, my mom, a non-sports fan who became one of the biggest Anaheim Ducks fans you’ll meet, and, this year, my brother-in-law, Richard Schulman.

Rich grew up a sports fan, cheering on the Los Angeles Dodgers and Lakers. He became a big fan of Cal during his undergrad experience in Berkeley. For years, he’s always been aware of the sports zeitgeist, tuning into the biggest events and having enough knowledge to carry on a conversation about the sports news of the day or debate the biggest topics. Today, he’s a father of four, working (quite successfully!) in real estate, challenged for time to follow sports, but a season ticket holder for Angel City FC, because he’s raising girls who love to play soccer (and go to ACFC games with their friends).

I came away from my interview with Rich with a ton of insight about what it’s like to be a time-strapped father trying to balance keeping up with sports while keeping up with his kids, who adopted a team that didn’t exist when he was growing up, because it’s fun to do with his daughters. Here are some key lessons and takeaways:

Time is the Limiting Factor for Fandom

The days are still 24 hours as one starts to build a family, but the days are necessarily more managed and time feels more crunched. Rich can recall days in the past when he’d settle in to watch a day of sports or attend a game not knowing what time the game would end, but now such uncertainty is downright daunting. That’s part of the appeal for Angel City games (and Savannah Bananas games), he explained.

“Now I’m constrained on time. Like, I took my seven year-old to a Savannah Bananas game. I’m sure you’re familiar with them; and the same with soccer, it’s like you get there and you sit down and exactly two hours later you’re walking to the car.

“I can take my kids to an Angel City game, which is the women’s pro team in LA, it’s like on a schedule. It’s like 7:00 game; I like to go early with the kids, we can walk around; but I can leave my house at 6:00, I can sit down at 6:30, the game starts at 7:00, the game is over by 8:45, I’m home by 9:30. It’s a pretty tight time. And the kids like it…

“So sports now has to fit into a box. Like, I can watch playoffs. But you know, I used to watch college football Saturday all day, and I could just watch a random three-hour football game. You can’t do that anymore.”

Takeaway:

We’ve already seen Major League Baseball, in particular, take proactive steps to limit the duration of its games, introducing a clock to the sport that had been distinct by its lack of a countdown time function. Recognize that parents, in particular, are balancing mealtimes, naptimes, and school nights. Part of the appeal of sports is the escape, leaving worries and clock watching aside, but that’s often not realistic for busy parents (and many adults, in general). While we can’t build in assurances, we can be more proactive about helping fans fit in their sports, whether that’s providing average duration and end times, recognizing some fans won’t stay or watch the full game (in person or at home), and helping them still be fans and have enjoyable, stress-free experiences nonetheless.

Following Sports Closely Ain’t Easy

There are days when there’s an exciting buzzer beater or an unreal comeback, and it feels like everyone has to be aware of this, right? But the reality you are the minority if you’re refreshing the Twitter feed every few minutes or locked into notifications for Adam Schefter and Shams reports, and planning your weekends around sports. There are certain transcendent news stories that break through for Rich, however; I offered the Luka Doncic trade, as an example. And while Rich rarely finds time to sit down and watch most of ant game, the playoffs, especially when they involve his team, can be an exception to the rule.

“For something big like [the Luka Doncic trade], like that’ll show up on the regular news or my social feed will pop because I have friends who care more than me about it…But now it’s crazy that people would even think about spending that much time watching.

“You know, when the playoffs come around, I’ll get interested. I watched most of the Dodgers playoff games last year. Except, of course, the game they won the World Series, I was at soccer with the kids and they went down 5-0. I’m like, Well, I guess we’re not watching that game. We’ll just watch tomorrow’s game. And then on the drive home, they tied the game. But I watched the whole game one with the kids with the Freddie Freeman Grand Slam, so they all saw that.”

Takeaway:

When I worked on the team side, I often reminded myself that, as unlikely as it seems, some fans really were learning about big news for the first time from the team’s social posts or emails or text alerts. Don’t take for granted the median fan of the team is as informed as the top 1-5% who engage with every post and have their fandom listed in their IG bio. But do recognize, too, that less-engaged fans often still have avid, informed fangelists in their social circles or friend groups that are on top of things. They’re the ones pinging the group chat or whose posts make it to the Facebook feed of their friends and family; help those vocal fans be the messenger.

Sports are Social and Season Tickets are about Convenience as much as Benefits

There are lot of reasons fans decide to become season ticket holders across any professional or collegiate sport. Just as there are myriad reasons fans enjoy attending games. For Rich, going to Angel City games was not necessarily because his daughters, avid soccer players themselves, wanted to see professional soccer; it was a social outing with friends. For young kids, and by proxy their parents, sports are an early social vehicle (along with school, of course). Friendships are formed through playing sports, and attending sports events are great, novel ‘play dates,’ where friends can have new experiences and make memories together.

In addition, make special note of the difference Rich saw in the way his girls responded to Angel City (NWSL) and LAFC (MLS). It’s great that we tend to see both little girls AND little boys enjoy women’s sports, and interesting (and powerful) for little girls to be awestruck by seeing women as superstars, competing in front of big crowds at the highest level.

The decision to invest in season tickets ties together a lot of the aforementioned ideas in this piece — predictability, social, and convenience.

“We had gone to some LAFC games, me and the girls. We had friends that had tickets, so we would occasionally go with them on their tickets or buy tickets near them, and they liked it. I mean, it was neat for them. It was really interesting when Angel City came around, the same friend and another friend got season tickets and we thought, Oh, we’re not going to go to all the games, and then we went and the girls had a much better reaction to girls playing soccer than boys playing soccer, which to me, maybe it sounds obvious; I was surprised just because, like, I didn’t really ever think about it. We had pretty good seats. It’s a small stadium, it’s a nice, intimate venue, but you’re still like 100 feet away from a player. And if they do a throw in right underneath your seats; like, I can throw a baseball probably to the players that are closest to us.

“But [my daughters] really responded. So then we ended up getting [season tickets]…“There’s only like 10 or 12 home games, so it makes sense, once you start going to them. You can have your tickets that you want to have…We like to have the same seats, next to friends. The seats are good, it’s reliable, I don’t have to worry about going online. You know, Ticketmaster is still a poor experience to buy tickets. So it’s just nice to see, Okay. I have my tickets, I don’t have to think about it.”

Takeaway:

For many fans, sports events are a third place. It’s where you see or spend time with friends, sometimes it’s the only place you see certain friends. How can we better integrate this behavior into sports? Could purchasing tickets (especially directly from the team) be negineered to make it easy to be paired with another buyer or could we rethink what ‘group sales’ means when it’s 2-3 families instead of a company, church, or youth team? And while season ticket membership benefits are great (I spoje with Rich about some cool experiences on the field his girls get to have because of season ticket member or group sales benefits), don’t overlook the little things — the convenience, the reduction of stress, the reliability.

[Still thinking about the remark about the ‘different response’ his girls had to watching women play, too]

Accessibility is an Underrated Aspect for Kids Becoming Fans

Sports fandom has evolved in the last couple of decades, and many fans tend to follow athletes as much as teams. But, especially for kids at that vital age range (~ 8-11 years old, give or take), there is a greater correlation between proximity and their favorite players. There’s still a bit of magic for little kids to meet any professional athlete, they’re demigods even if kids don’t know their names. And while fans may follow stars like Messi or Ohtani or LeBron wherever they go, for little kids, it’s the star players they’re able to see IRL that have a higher likelihood of capturing their young hearts. With all that in mind, it’s worthwhile to note what Rich says about the flux nature of the Angel City roster and how that affects the propensity for the kdis to get to know players by name and, in turn, want to follow them (and the team) more avidly on and off the pitch.

“[The girls] don’t follow it like I used to follow sports, but they know the best players, like the main starting players. Angel City seems to have a constantly changing roster of players, so it’s been a little challenging to attach. But like, you know, let’s say Alyssa Thompson is their best or most notable player, like when we met her at the stadium after the game, they go down and try to get autographs, they’re really excited. Hannah recognized her and her sister at the mall, and we tracked down Alyssa Thompson at the mall…“But they probably couldn’t tell you 11 players on the team and we don’t really follow — like, Angel City has not been successful at winning soccer games. So we haven’t really been following their games that we don’t go to…

“[His daughters] get excited even when they meet [any] player. You know, they got an autograph last week at the game, and we don’t know who the person is. I have a picture of her, I have to figure out who it was. But she was excited, it was a former player who signed her jersey. So sometimes, if they go down to the field, they’ll get a signature from some of the other team, like the backup goalie from their team, but they’re still excited.”

Takeaway:

There’s not much we can do about the dynamic nature of rosters these days (incidentally, Rich also lamented his Cal fandom diminishing as the program’s top football players annually enter the transfer portal). The issue is a big one in sports — the dilution of unconditional love for a team, exacerbated by closer ties to individual players, the majority of whom won’t be on the team for their entire careers. But the good news is that because of that smaller world for young kids, when they’re at the age that their lifelong fandom can form, they’re more likely to latch onto the local team and its players. Make it easy for young fans to fall in love with the team, every last one of them. One of the best parts of women’s sports, especially, is before and after each game, a lot of the athletes (including the superstars) make time for kids, giving them lifelong memories and special moments that can form powerful connections. Give more kids more opportunities to make lifelong memories that involve the team, stories that’ll be etched in stone and in their hearts and minds for life.

A Couple More Quick Quotes

I wanted to include these additional quotes, but without extensive analysis.

The first represents the challenge of trying to balance sports participation for four kids. At a time when sports specialization is increasingly prevalent, and increasingly questioned, Rich’s girls have primarily stuck to soccer. Parents drive a lot of early exposure to sports and recreational participation, and it’s not easy when the kids and their social and sports and other obligations start to pile up. But also take note of another theme from my interview with Rich, how soccer has become a fulcrum for friendships. Specialization and playing club soccer and tournaments isn’t about just about playing more soccer, it’s spending more time with their friends.

“I don’t know how people do it with multiple sports. I mean, I know it’s probably better for the kids overall. It’s probably better for their sports. But at some point you have to say you gotta play soccer year round if you want to advance in soccer. Like, it’d be neat if you also had time to be like a swimmer and a volleyball player, but with four kids, it’s just not going to happen….It’s not really challenging because, you know, they are invited to play on an all star team and they get excited for that, and they generally tend to become friends with the other all stars. So it’s like you want to do more soccer with your friends? Of course.”

Rich has taken his kids to a handful of different sports events over the years, so we talked about the experience of being a parent and taking a young kid (or group of kids) to a game. What’s the right age to start taking them, how the kids experience it, and what their particular experience with Angel City is like.

“Probably around 6 or 7 [is the right age to start taking kids to games]. I mean, Leah will watch a whole game, but last game we went to, they wanted to go buy candy, and I’m like, there’s 20 minutes left in the game, you’re not going to go buy candy. You know, wander the stadium and go buy candy and miss the whole game. So you know, something like that…

“[Angel City] has a lot of stuff going on before the game, which is nice. The food options have dwindled as attendance has trailed off. They always have a local musical thing happening. They have some celebrity fans they highlight, which is neat. But they should focus on putting out a winning product on the field and that will kind of solve [things].”

Thank you again to my brother-in-law, Rich, for being a great dad to my nieces and nephew, and for helping us celebrate 12 years of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast by offering his experiences and opinions as a fan and father!

WATCH OR LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD SCHULMAN

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Fan Development, General Sports Business, Photos of sports biz

A Day at the Premier Lacrosse League: Notes and Review

HELPFUL RECAP AND REVIEW — I went to a Premier Lacrosse League game and captured the experience, fan engagement, activations, partnership, game presentation, and more. Scroll through to get a look at the fan zone and game day (in San Diego). Here are some top-level observations and insights:

🥍 A lot of touring teams (and teams in general) do fan zones and this one was particularly well-conceived. Backed by a QR code-led scavenger hunt, among other QR code CTAs, and fun, well thought-out partner activations, this was good for kids, experienced lax players and noobs, and to develop the brand, league, and further capture and cultivate fans.
🟢 This was only open to admitted fans, but I could also see them allowing any fans to come in (with pre-registrations if space is limited). With annual tour stops, the publicly-open fan zone could be a good way for fans to tell their extended network to come out.

🥍 Pretty much all the activations involved getting lacrosse sticks in hands, exposing the game. Though the vast majority of fans (I mean, probably 75% if not higher) appeared to have at least family or group member with experience playing lacrosse. The games were simple enough for a novice like me to give it a go with a stick and ball multiple times, one of the few times in my life I’ve had the opportunity to do so!
🟢 Despite the high concentration of experienced players, I was still surprised to not see local organizations onsite that could provide the answer to ‘How do I get started’ for an interested parent and child, such as a local youth lacrosse league, clinic, or camp (they do have a lot of resources on their website). There were a good amount of youth players and teams in attendance (and a youth team got recognized before the game on the field). Relatedly, the PLL could do better to engage noobs like me, such as explaining penalties when a power player is awarded, describing what’s being challenged in a review (I had to ask fans next to me), and doing more with stats with fans in general (face-offs, ground balls, power plays, even the two-point shots unique to PLL, etc.)

🥍 The PLL had plenty of data capture opportunities and much of their promotion was less about finding new fans than about getting fans to join PLL Nation, their premium membership platform (more details in the deck). They had the aforementioned QR codes posted with various CTAs, they handed out cards with QR codes for enter-to-win opportunities, and signage + in-game CTAs to scan a QR code to enter to win — solely open to PLL Nation members.
🟢 PLL Nation membership is similar to other team/league memberships — season tickets (but with their single annual stops that’s less of an incentive) along with merch discounts, the exclusive contests and sweepstakes, and exclusive content. It’s a good opportunity to identify and activate their biggest fans and something a lot of leagues and teams — with a surfeit of remote fans — are doing or exploring to monetize their fan base at a global level

🥍 The demographic was very very young. Most sports outside the big four leagues tend to skew younger, but the PLL even more so than others I’ve checked out seemed to be like 60% of the attendance was kids (mostly boys) in the 6-14 age range. The diversity was lacking a bit (an issue lacrosse in general and the PLL are aiming to improve), but the density of young kids excited to see pro lacrosse and looking up to these players is a great sign
🟢 The thing about young boys — it’s hard to get them to sit still too long. Not in a bad way, but from what I could tell there were a lot of kids in and out of their seats throughout the game (and the games move fast with lots of scoring!). The game presentation is often limited by the venues where the PLL plays, but there could be room for improvement here — just more opportunities for young kids to scream (literally, the WNBA and NWSL games I’ve been to do a good job of that). They did have a flex cam and some in-game contests and a t-shirt toss, but there could be more video board games (hat shuffles, et al.) and PA-led cheers.

🥍 The PLL does a good job of carving out revenue opportunities at their games. You’ll see in the photos below the way they create premium in a way agnostic to the venues and offer various upgraded experiences fans can purchase while at the game. They also had a nice traveling pop-up merch tent with diverse offerings (more so than you see at most merch kiosks at sporting events)
🟢 They also had a nice display showcasing the team jerseys (and team brands in general) around the merch tent as they aim to continue to drive forth the team branding. (Go California Redwoods!) The player-specific posters, jerseys, and bobbleheads also help promote their star players. I could also see a mini pop-up ode to the sport and the PLL, a mini pop-up museum or Hall of Fame of sorts, honoring the sport’s native origins and the upstart league’s history (and the Rabil brothers who founded it)

🥍 The game experience overall felt ‘big league’ — they had instant replays, in-game animations, and even custom songs for each PLL team (Like, for real, a California Redwoods song?!? This should be even more feasible in the age of gen AI )
🟢 Perhaps limited by the venue (and alluded to earlier), there seemed to be a dearth of stats available to fans in-stadium. Little things like shots, let alone more advanced stats like caused turnovers, ground balls, face-off percentage, two-point attempts, etc.) and no promotion of their PLL Fantasy game that I caught. Getting fans more engrossed in the stats will only help with engagement and more ways to gamify the event opens up the opportunities for those juicy partnerships with sports gaming companies

I could go all day on this stuff, but hopefully if you skimmed through all of that you learned something! It was a great day out and, as you can see in the slideshow below, full of great engagement, fun, and value for fans and partners. The Premier Lacrosse League is a remarkable story and they continue to grow as a league and brand, and in turn lift up the sport of lacrosse with it. They had a great All-Star weekend on ESPN/ABC this past weekend and lots more gamed to play this summer. (The WLL, too, though there was surprisingly limited mention of them onsite). Cheers to the PLL!

Fan Development, General Sports Business

Why Storytelling and Community Drive the Real Value in Collecting in Sports and Beyond

What creates a community?

Consider all the diverse things that can unite groups of people — a favorite sports team, a beloved musical artist, a story (aka ‘IP’), a shared hobby, and the list goes on.

Everyone is passionate about something. And in our instinctual yearning for connection, there’s a powerful feeling when we encounter others who share that passion. Mutual interests become conversations, which evolve into meaningful relationships, and over time, a collection of individuals coalesces into a united community. They may take on other monikers — a fan base, a subreddit, a Tok (i.e. BookTok), a BeyHive, but these are powerful collectives that, together, can drive moments and propel culture (and commerce) forward.

Evan Parker learned the power of community early on in his career, coming up in roles at Edelman, where he worked with XBox 360 (among other brands), and at NASCAR. Businesses spend so much time, effort, and resources trying to propagate their message and build their brands, but there are people already out there with a passion for the areas in which brands play. To harness that passion is more effective and efficient than any PR campaign or advertisement.

“There’s only so much reach that any brand has,” said Parker, “but if you can talk to the right people and they talk to their friends, they talk to their communities, you’re able to expand that way. And it’s a lot easier to go pitch somebody who already loves what you’re doing, or is already interested in what you’re doing, than it is to go pitch The New York Times and try to get them to write the article that you wish that they would write that’s going to get read by all these people…

“Before social media was really a thing, community was the best way to go build a business. And if you could get people to love what you were doing and be evangelistic about what you’re trying to build, you have a shot at doing something pretty special.”

Parker is working to do something special now. Last year, he, along with Alexis Ohanian and Brent Montgomery, launched Mantel, a social network and content platform for collectors. The three individuals had been part of the fragmented coterie of collectors for years, with investor and Reddit co-founder Ohanian boasting an impressive sports collection, Montgomery, whose Wheelhouse is behind such shows like King of Collectibles and Pawn Stars, and Parker a collector himself and veteran of the sports space — and they saw an opportunity to bring all these collectors together, to give them a place to call home.

The collectibles space is booming, in case you haven’t noticed. There are countless creators, and platforms dedicated to ‘breaks,’ auctions and sales making headlines every day, it seems like, and a still-evolving paradigm for digital collectibles. Regardless of whether someone is moved by history, a hope for a financial return, or some sentimental value, collectors all appreciate the stories behind the items. That’s what Parker sees in Mantel, and the promise ahead as the platform continues to grow and brings together the items, the stories, and the people telling them.

“All of these people are in it for their own motivation,” said Parker who is CEO of Mantel, which launched publicly in December 2024. “I think what connects people, though, is the excitement of it, and the feeling that it brings; the nostalgia or the connection to these athletes, the stories behind it. We really are trying as much as we can to make sure that people are not just saying, ‘Here’s a card that I pulled’, but ‘Here’s a card that I pulled, and this is why it’s interesting to me’, or ‘this is what I’m thinking about’, or here’s a question I have about it.’ Like, can we get one level deeper?…

“How do we just break it down to the reason why people are interested in this, or if you’re not interested in it, what’s the thing that we can get you interested in?”

Parker continued, noting that while some may collect baseball cards, others seek stamps, and still others love movie memorabilia or comic books. Mantel is a place for all of them.

“I really believe that [for] everything that exists, every physical item, every digital item, there are communities that collect it, there are people who are interested in it,” said Parker, “and if the story is interesting — there are people who might not care about that topic at all, but because you told an interesting story, it’s like, ‘Okay, I don’t want to go collect that myself, but I really respect that you do. I’m really excited that I learned about that. I know more now than I did yesterday.'”

It’s the stories and collective interest that make certain collectibles so valuable. There are plenty of 1-of-1 or otherwise extremely rare items and cards that are worth pennies, while others are worth millions. Take a moment and consider the logic and rationale behind that. Why is a mint-condition Michael Jordan rookie card worth so much? Where does a Mickey Mantle card derive its value, or even a hat once worn by Abraham Lincoln, as opposed to any other 19th-century stovepipe? These are values that render any economic models meaningless. Supply and demand are part of the picture, to be sure, but some special forces are driving that demand.

It was revelatory and thought-provoking to consider this overarching question as Parker and I talked through the most famous collectible in sports, the T206 Honus Wagner card. Honus Wagner was one of the best shortstops of all-time, but he wasn’t Babe Ruth or Willie Mays or otherwise all that important to history. And yet it’s his 1909 card that has commanded small fortunes every time it has passed hands over the years.

“You hear all these reasons why [the T206 Honus Wagner] was [so well-known], the one that Wayne Gretzky bought, and the one that was altered and the one that was sold for this amount of money and that had this grade and that,” Parker described. “You know, every year [at] the National Sports Card Collectors Convention, there are dinners that get put together [and] the only way you get to go is if you own a T206, and all this stuff sort of builds this intrigue. And now this card, more than 100 years after it debuted, is a card that people who never watched sports, who don’t really care about baseball, they know that this card is interesting. And I think that’s sort of the magic of collecting.

“But it comes down to storytelling and community. Because the community decided that this was the card, not other cards from the T206 series…that [card] helps kind of illustrate to me why what we’re building at Mantel has the chance to be something really powerful, because we can bring people together and to tell stories and to build community that can then transcend in the same way that that card has.”

The best collectibles are imbued with meaning. They’re something collectors are proud to display (and post on Mantel), they’re conversation starters, relationship accelerants, identity enhancers. These traits are where sports teams can take heed, said Parker, when I asked him what sports leagues and teams can learn from the community and industry of sports collectors. They have no shortage of items — t-shirts and caps, bobbleheads and rally towels, and of course every piece of equipment and apparel associated with milestone achievements gets marked and pulled for posterity.

But the vast majority of things teams give away and sell don’t accrue more value over time, they rarely carry grander and broadly accessible narratives.

“I think that teams need to be spending more time thinking about how to create things that have interests beyond when it gets handed to you,” said Parker, who, like many collectors, laments the gradual disappearance of physical tickets in sports. “You know, a team will spend a lot of money putting towels on every seat for a playoff game, and at the end of the playoff game, half of them are still in their seats. Somebody will bring it home and it’ll end up as a dish rag. Somebody else will put it on their wall, but it kind of loses its appeal at that point.

“But if you can create something that has lasting value, that somebody wants to show their friends, wants to post on Mantel or another social network, that might have monetary value down the line, I think it just kind of anchors you to those moments, to those teams, to those athletes in important ways.”

The paradigm that assigns monetary value in the sports card and collectibles space has persisted for generations. There’s no set date when all of a sudden the value of sports cards increased exponentially, but the industry has been around for several decades now, with ebbs and flows throughout. Few really question the model that propels the space, just like we all accept that rare works of art (only by specific artists) are worth a lot more than others.

Well, then digital collectibles came along and the paradigm fell apart. Consensus gave way to speculative bubbles and discord about where digital collectibles and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) fit. Should the value of tokens come from exclusive community, not too far off from the T206 owners and their get-together at the National Sports Card Convention each year? If the value is in the eye of the beholder, there’s a certain trust and belief that the beholders comprising the collectible community will persist, if not grow, over time. Parker isn’t taking a hard stance on digital collectibles, watching the space with curiosity and the context of being immersed in a diverse community of collectors every day.

“It’s hard to discount what happens over time,” he said. “You know, we care about certain baseball cards that have been around for more than 100 years now. We grow up, and it’s something, before we [have] money, we’re liking it because our parents liked it, their parents liked it, we ended up liking it, [so did] our friends. Now we’re older and we have this connection of more than 100 years worth of this history. It’s rare.

“NFTs didn’t exist, and then all of a sudden they existed. We’re older, we could say, does this make sense? I just think that maybe had you and I been around in 1909, we would have had a different perspective of the T206 [Honus Wagner card]. ‘This is stupid. You could go buy a pack of smokes and get this card. Honus Wagner was good, but who cares? There’s all these other players.’ Walter Johnson was in that set. But we weren’t there then. So we’re now just inheriting these stories that took place before we were alive that have helped shape our worldview. Whereas with NFTs, we got to make it ourselves…

Parker continued, offering a balanced take on the uncertainty of where NFTs will go and the most important element to track as the space evolves.

“I just think the world is changing at such a high pace, and people are skeptical of it because they want to say, ‘Okay, is this thing going to be around? Am I just going to buy it because it’s a get-rich-quick [scheme]? Or is there a chance that I’m going to really care about this in 5 to 10 years?’

“If you’re building a brand in the NFT space, I would be thinking about how do I make sure that this is something that people are still going to care about down the line, versus how do I make sure that people are going to just go buy and trade these really quickly, I make my money, I disappear, and all these people are now left with something worthless.”

There’s no pyramid scheme at play when the beliefs of the community are driven by passion. The value of collectibles, in whatever form, persists (and grows, through scarcity and demand) because a critical mass of people believe in the meaning, the stories, and the connection these otherwise worthless items convey.

There are billion-dollar industries fueled by otherwise worthless endeavors, held up by stories and ancillary businesses that develop around them, which further buttress and grow said industry. That emotion you feel screaming at your TV because you’re watching a group of men or women playing a child’s game, the pride you feel in having a home run ball hit by your favorite player, the intangible mystique and aura surrounding a bank receipt stained with blood from Bonnie and Clyde (a real item posted by a user on Mantel!) — that’s all real and why the community of collectors is so strong. Parker lives in it every day, endlessly astonished by the treasures that collectors share on Mantel. And it’s why he and his team are so excited to keep building and engaging, bringing these people together and surfacing and amplifying more stories. The hunt, he reminds me, is just as important as the treasure one’s hunting. We’re all looking for a good story to tell. It’s about the exhibition, sure, but it’s about all the stories that live within it.

“The stuff that really gets me excited is seeing the things that get the community excited, because that’s why I’m into it,” said Parker. “I love to go to a museum. I love to go to shops and see things that I’ve never seen before. I get to sit at my desk all day and just see this endless stream of content of people showing me their personal museums, the things that get them excited. I don’t have to leave my desk.

“It’s like Cooperstown, the Smithsonian, all these things that exist on my screen 24 hours a day because the community is so passionate about the things that they’re interested in.”

Photo source: Sports Collectors Daily

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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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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).
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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
  7. 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.

Athlete Social Media, Content Strategy, Digital, General Sports Business, Sports Media, Streaming and Video

Beyond the Playbook: Bold, Trend-Driven Considerations for Sports Business in 2025

There are a myriad of reasons that make social media in sports unique.

The schedule and routine nature of sports can create predictability — but well-laid plans can also go up in smoke in an instant due to sports’ inherent unpredictability. Customers are fanatical about your brand (‘fans’) but that emotion can also turn negative by factors outside your control. Sports are perhaps one of the last (potentially) monocultures left — sports teams and leagues, and the fans, can relate to nearly every rabbit hole and trend.

All this to say that while leaders in sport may be able to count on a certain routine part of their jobs, there’s a whole lot more nobody can see coming. The exciting uncertainty gets compounded for social and digital media, where just when you think the pace of change is slowing, new opportunities, features, and platforms arise; all the while the half-life of trends and fads is shorter than ever. And while teams and leagues remain influential brands and retain massive platforms, they’ll find their fans gravitating more and more to creators and individual athletes.

So as the calendar turns from 2024 to 2025, it’s time for our annual column on what to have in mind for the year to come. It’s a part behavioral analysis and part reading the tea leaves of where the platforms are going. We can rest assured that certain principles of fandom and human psychology remain the same, while also embracing the untapped potential of what may lie ahead.

Re-Imagining In-Game Social Strategies

There’s no doubt Twitter isn’t what it once was. The platform still has a sizable, engaged sports audience, to be sure, but its ebbing numbers and diminishing value cannot be denied.

Sports teams and leagues will not abandon Twitter in 2025, but should it remain a top priority during games, with one or more team staff dedicated to filling the feed?

Combined with the dilution of Twitter is the increased homogeneity in in-game coverage. It’s game highlights (sometimes with unique angles), a stream of templated graphics and GIFs, and attempts at clever copy—often culminating in a ‘savage’ post after a win.

Could we see teams start to lean into the formulaic nature of in-game tweeting, let a combination of AI and semi-automated processes feed the feed with clips and graphics, leaving manpower to focus on more original and higher-value content? What is the role of a social media manager if they’re not hovering over the keys for the whole game?

Supported by a consistent feed of clips, could the social media team focus on curating the best fan and journalist content? Will there be a focus to push fans into owned and operated channels for a superior in-game experience (and could fans be more willing to go as more abandon Twitter and find alternatives like Bluesky and Threads to be lacking)? Or should social media managers treat their role more like hosts, checking in from the game like your creator friend on site at the event?

I can’t imagine going anywhere but Twitter when a big game is on, but substantive change will eventually come and 2025 may be the start.

The Evolving Social Media Role: Community Management vs. Content Creation and Strategy

For years, and largely still today, ‘social media manager’ was a catch-all term. It’s actually a bit of a joke that the job title can encompass a plethora of responsibilities like content creation, graphic design, video production, paid social, project management, analytics, and this list could go on. Community management was just kind of a given and still is, at least in the sports world.

But in the year ahead could we see an appreciation for the role of community management, even a separate dedicated role that accounts for the importance and full-time nature of such a responsibility? Community is becoming increasingly important as social platforms fragment, and engagement shifts toward interactions between fans and friends rather than big brands or scaled broadcast feeds of traditional social. Community management is a specialized role — discovering, developing, participating, listening, moderating, and monitoring.

Communities exist everywhere, which require a deep understanding of the language, culture, interests, memes, influencers, and angles. How many different communities thrive on TikTok? How many different places could a team or league be a central or tangential part of conversation and engagement? In 2025, let’s give community the attention and importance it deserves. Which relates to the next topic…

Micro Communities 

The emergence of micro communities is not new, it has been happening across industries for years, but really picked up in 2024 and expect to continue growing in the year to come. Reddit has seen substantial engagement growth—highlighted by recent PR efforts focused on sports—and community-based strategies are becoming more prevalent across platforms and industries. With some exceptions, social media is becoming less, well, ‘social,’ with algorithms that favor engagement, regardless of who it’s from, and the interest graph leading the way.

Look at the way the platforms are evolving to serve this need, too. TikTok touts its micro communities, whether BookTok or RushTok or the like, Facebook Groups are keeping big blue relevant for younger users, and Instagram is encouraging its biggest brands to carve their audiences with broadcast channels.

What could micro community strategy look like for sports organizations? Thinking about fan cohorts became common several years ago, largely driven by socioeconomic, demographic, and avidity measures. And every year sees plenty of theme nights and promotions targeted to specific, sometimes very small communities. But what can this look like on digital and social media? How can teams and leagues seek out and serve (or learn from) existing micro communities, or perhaps even cultivate their own? As users (and fans) seek more authentic connections and genuine conversations, micro communities will continue to grow.

Even More Niche Content

This could’ve been addressed in the previous section, but there’s value in considering niche content, as well. Social media pros once lamented (and some still do) that organically reaching one’s followers was a thing of the past. But consider the possibilities that have opened up in the last few years, as more social media users stick on the For You feed over the Following alternative. There is so much good (and bad) content, it’s easier to let an algorithm surface the best content as it gets to know us better than we know ourselves.

So while your followers may not all see your content, the users that are likely to enjoy the content you put out will see it (if it’s good). Brands and teams can unleash their content and let the algorithm show it to the right audience (while avoiding the the wrong one). Instagram may even find that a certain tile in a carousel post is more attractive to a certain audience.

Embrace it and don’t be afraid to try content that’s specifically not meant to appeal to the masses, but will be welcomed (and engaged with) by an intended audience. The goal of every post and piece of content isn’t to reach millions—that’s the wrong way to think about it. Embrace the increasingly savvy algorithms and lean into niches that may make no sense to certain segments of your fans (and even yourself) but will be epic for others.

Platforms to Enhance Small Group Chats and Communities

Where does most of the sports dialogue take place? Actual back-and-forth conversations, with darn near 100% open and read rate? Dark social channels like DMs, group chats, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It’s old news now that Instagram acknowledged there’s a heck of a lot of engagement and sharing happening in the direct messages. WhatsApp continues to grow, particularly in the US, and even Snap remains strong among Gen Z for chatting.

Can teams and leagues create a platform so good that it can take those intimate direct communications away from texts and DMs to an owned platform? It’s tough to compete with your device’s built-in messenger or the ubiquity of WhatsApp, the convenience of IG, the fun and habit of Snap — but what could sports organizations try in order to capture all this valuable engagement and these users?

Leagues may provide a feed of clips from games to insert into a chat with one frictionless click. Perhaps fans can access photos and screenshots along with a simple meme-making tool. Or fans could earn points to redeem for merch simply by sending messages to each other during a game. Teams could even provide trained LLMs via chatbots who could discuss the game (with personalities and dispositions to choose from) and answer questions. Maybe there’s no solution—these platforms are too sticky—but as conversations keep becoming less public and sports dialogue continues on dark channels, the opportunity persists.

The Full Embrace of Creators

Sports leagues and teams have been working in some capacity with creators for years now. An increasing number even have job titles that include, and some are centered around, influencer/creator marketing or relations. But if the state of influencer x sports integration were measured on a scale of 1-10, what would ’10’ look like?

While not tens, the industry saw some 7’s or 8’s in the last few years. NBC Olympics and the IOC gave a select group of creators access to events (though with limitations on the content they could capture). The NFL gives some creators access to gameday clips and archival footage, while the NBA has a similar initiative that expanded this season.

In 2025, more teams, leagues, and media partners could not only welcome creators but also collaborate with them even further. Give them access to content AND have them co-create content (for organic and paid). Let them remix highlights or host their own highlights recap show during the week. Invite them to make shows or skits for their own channels at team practices and games. Invite more creators to put on their own ‘ManningCasts’ — as more games shift away from the cable bundle, providing an abundance of alternate streams becomes more feasible and viable. help them activate their communities or fans at games. (JohnWallStreet wrote about this earlier this year)

There’s a greater (and lucrative) opportunity to figure out what a partnership with sports and creators should look like in its most optimized state. Hopefully, we’ll see some swings in the year to come.

(Here’s a solid SBJ article discussing several leagues’ creator initiatives)

Athlete-led Multi-Channel Networks and Content Franchises

By the time you’re done reading this, another athlete will have started a podcast. Athletes (and their management teams) are increasingly realizing the relative ease and significant benefits going on the mic for an hour a week, give or take, can provide them. It’s a platform to build their brand, of course, and control their narrative. It’s an asset on which to activate partners or promote their own causes and businesses. And it’s a lightweight way to seed an engaging presence on YouTube, in particular, as well as TikTok (and Instagram).

Athletes entering the pro ranks now are even more invested, with some colleges even providing studios and training for their student-athletes. In the year ahead, the teams and leagues will begin to realize the opportunity in front of them — and the urgency.

We’ll see more teams provide studios and equipment for their players to produce podcasts. True collaboration could take place, with teams building something akin to a multi-channel network, activating diverse athletes with their unique interests. One athlete might focus on mental health, another on spirituality and religion, a third on interviewing comedians and actors, and yet another on re-watching famous games. The possibilities are endless and can align with players’ interests. Packaged together (or not), these could form a significant platform to attract new partners or extend existing ones. Some athletes are so big they’d rather do their own thing or work with a platform like Wave or Blue Wire. But plenty would jump at the chance to get this kind of access and audience (and revenue sharing) a team could provide.

With more teams closely tied, if not owning, their RSNs or DTC solution for games, such content can fill those coffers with new programming, in addition to the feeds of YouTube and TikTok. Which leads to…

The Team (or RSN) App as the AVOD or SVOD for Fans

While regional sports networks have survived longer than many expected, some teams are taking things over or working closely with a partner, and many teams are prioritizing first-party relationships with fans, often through apps. The productions that teams create rival anything fans will see on Netflix, Max, or Peacock. The training camp all-access content and game recap mini-movies are incredible. More colleges are building robust content-based DTC apps, with livestreams of coaches shows and extensive catalogs of content.

Many teams have impressive serialized series (and podcasts) on YouTube (and even TikTok) playlists, some are sitting on decades worth of content newly digitized (or some still sitting on old VHS tapes and DVDs). All of them boast impressive production teams. In the year to come, teams and leagues will envision their fans flipping to their app the same way they would Netflix to watch on-demand content. Not just for an hour a week, but consistently—even during the offseason.

The bigger opportunity may even be in licensing proven content and creators. Look at how ESPN licensed distribution rights to the Pat McAfee show as an example. Now, sports teams and leagues won’t lay out tens of millions of dollars like ESPN did for McAfee, but what’s to stop them from acquiring emerging talents and properties. Or perhaps they could go the route of Colin Cowherd’s The Volume or Alex Cooper’s Unwell Network and create mini media empires that can benefit from their distribution and advertiser relations.

Perhaps there will even be membership tiers, similar to those offered by major players, with options for ads or ad-free viewing/listening. It’s exciting to imagine, which coincides with…

+ Experiences for Fans

Over a decade ago, I learned that sports teams in Australia didn’t have season ticket holders—they had ‘members.’ Being a member was about more than having tickets to games, it was an identity and a connection to the team. Many American teams started calling their season ticket holders ‘members,’ but it was mostly an exercise in nomenclature. When tickets to games became moot during the worst days of the pandemic, there was more experimentation with what paid ‘memberships’ could mean, but nothing really took off beyond a few teams launching more inspired loyalty programs.

The + is now ubiquitous across consumer products and services, as are subscriptions in general. However, beyond ticket subscriptions (like season tickets or mini plans), there hasn’t been much of a membership model in sports. There is NFL+, which offers access to audio streams and archives and college athletics (including NIL collectives and booster clubs) are innovating in the space, but what could + programs look like for sports, in much the same way Amazon Prime feels for its millions of members?

In the coming year, teams and leagues around the world can continue to imagine memberships — premium memberships — for fans local and remote. There is more data being collected than ever, which can enable personalized benefits and partner co-promotions. Experiences are more valued, and more diverse and amenable to unbundling, whether in-person (separate entries) or remote (like early access to limited merch drops). As the previous section noted, too, with teams able to build ever-increasing catalogs of content, a + experience could also mean something akin to Prime Video — content…

Get Bold with Generative AI

It’s been over two years since ChatGPT launched to the public, and generative AI continues to improve (insert a cynical take about the rate of acceleration slowing). The arms race keeps going and tools like NotebookLM reset the goalposts on what can be created from source materials. And you know who’s sitting on decades’ worth of brand content? Yep, sports teams and leagues, who also have fans with insatiable appetites for content about their team, with nostalgia often irresistible.

Even as questions persist about how consumers will tolerate AI-generated content, these factors point to opportunity. Could the archives of thousands of interviews turn into binge-worthy podcasts and documentary-dramatizations or page-turning oral histories? Or how could terabytes of game notes and stats be put into action through diverse generative AI packages, from compelling content to endless games and trivia?

We’re just beginning to scratch the surface of generative AI, in all its multimodal forms. There’s a treasure trove of latent content (and sponsorable assets) just waiting to be mined for fans.

Leaning into Novelty and Micro Culture for Games and Live Events

For decades, ‘gimmicks’ were seen as beneath pro sports, novelty was the domain of minor league sports. Major pro sports are beginning to embrace fun, recognizing the value in ephemeral and sometimes esoteric online trends and cultures as lucrative opportunities.

There have been monoculture themes present in pro sports for years — Star Wars Nights are omnipresent across major and minor (and college) sports. But culture is now more fragmented and trends come and go quickly; few viral moments or movements resonate with the majority of fans in a packed stadium or arena.

In the year ahead, teams will embrace the countless microtrends and communities that form and proliferate across platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. They’ll capitalize on trends within niches as much as, if not more than, the well-worn monocultural motifs. How can teams make every game an event and inspire FOMO for some cohort[s] of fans who want to be there for it? Gone are the years of forced formality and pompous self-importance — there will be more fun ahead in the future.

Strategy Around Condensed Games

Younger generations don’t watch full games. Some may say that narrative has become so widespread that it’s become overhyped — but it’s largely true. This trend coincides with the continued rise of condensed games. Go on the NBA YouTube page, for example, and you’ll find a playlist of ‘full game highlights’—10-minute videos that summarize the game and showcase key plays, often garnering hundreds of thousands or even millions of views. So while the dream of getting Gen Z and Gen Alpha to sit in front of a TV and give their mostly undivided attention for 2-3 hours seems naive, getting them to watch condensed games feels more plausible.

In the year to come, leagues and teams can operationalize condensed games, experimenting with formats and activations, and building them into valuable assets rather than YouTube afterthoughts. They could license condensed games to creators, allowing them to relive and recap games (while sharing in the revenue). Sponsors could help deliver condensed games to the masses, allowing fans and wannabe creators to remix and put their own spin on highlights and game stories. Broadcasters and leagues can experiment with unique angles and POVs for condensed games. For instance, iso-cams have already been part of the NBA on TNT’s strategy, as well as the ‘Caitlin Clark’ cam during her last season at Iowa.

There’s an interesting future to consider for condensed games, but even while the future remains uncertain for full games, nothing can truly replace live content…

More Live

2025 will mark ten years since Live entered the social media picture, when Meerkat and Periscope launched and allowed anyone anywhere with a mobile device and a decent connection to go live to the world. In my recent interview with World Wide Wob (Rob Perez), he remarked about the continued value of live, content where anything could happen and anything could go unexpectedly go wrong. Even mundane content becomes more compelling when it’s live. Many prognosticators assert that 2025 will be the year live shopping takes off in the US, with platforms like TikTok reimagining QVC for younger generations.

In the year ahead, sports teams and leagues will continue to innovate and try new things with live (and that includes games!). As more fans get on DTC and streaming apps to find their team’s content, that’ll compound the already ever-present platforms like YouTube to find fans who will tune in to see it live. For games, streaming parts of games live will be a key tactic to drive sign-ups and perhaps even open the opportunity for PPV or micro-transactions to watch an exciting finish (the NBA talked about this years ago, Buzzer had a strong go at it, too). But there’s even more.

There are plenty of narratives about the oncoming onslaught of AI slop filling feeds today and moving forward. But you can ‘t AI-ize ‘live.’ Stretching and warming up before practice is boring and monotonous — but what if it’s live? (I’d watch a livestream of an NHL team playing sewer ball before a game!) The dance team preparing a routine can be great live content. Who wouldn’t watch a live stream of a hockey equipment manager sharpening skates or an NFL clubhouse attendant setting up players’ lockers. Or how about a livestream of a producer editing a hype video?

We’re starting to see more games-based content, so perhaps there’s a future of livestreams featuring players competing in beer pong (with water — or some sponsors’ sports drink). Live trivia games with fans or players would fit in that mold, too. An always-on livestream of a stadium’s VIP entrance or an arena’s transformation from hockey to basketball could be content gold (time lapses are cool, but they’re not live!). And, yes, the drops culture has already come to sports, so live reveals of exclusive merch and collectibles would seem to work, too. (Including ‘breaks’ performed by a player/alum/mascot/broadcasters).

Short-form, long-form; Stories and Feed — live is one format that’ll always offer unique value and the creativity, originality, innovation, and value creation is just getting started.

Retail Media and Commerce-Driven Sponsorships

Over the last couple of years, it seems every major corporation with a sizable database of users, detailed information about them, and a steady flow of traffic has created retail media networks where advertisers can bid for inventory. Sports has forever been an industry built on brand partnerships, with some performance-driven marketing baked in (e.g., ‘the team won, so get a discounted pizza’). And while there is a step back to brand marketing, after an overcorrection, partnerships and advertising with trackable, countable results are still gaining priority.

Even the biggest leagues or college conferences may not be able to, nor does it make sense to, support actual retail networks. But this industry trend could creep its way into the sports world as organizations continue to collect more first-party data, have increasingly robust user profiles, and establish more connected touchpoints with fans. For the most part, teams and leagues have operationalized fan data to sell them more of the stuff they produce or license themselves — tickets, merchandise, collectibles, etc. — but how could they start to more effectively segment their fans so that the offers and products, and even the advertisers, are the right ones for each fan and in each context. And as the data infrastructure continues to mature, there could be valuable, increasingly smarter and high-converting ads (for b2c and even b2b businesses).

I’m not smart or informed enough to know how quickly or whether such a vision could materialize, but sports apps—especially those supported by content and live games—will likely remain among the few apps where users spend significant time, creating a world of opportunities.

Novelty Merch Drops and Collectibles: Beyond Game Giveaways

2024 was the year of the novelty popcorn bucket. Movie theaters capitalized on the surprisingly intense fan interest to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. The Carolina Hurricanes introduced a Zamboni popcorn bucket, while the Detroit Red Wings have gone viral the last couple of years around Thanksgiving for their Zamboni gravy boats (and even had a design contest for this year’s version).

Novelty items are not new to sports. Heck, some teams even produce giveaways teaser videos with the same excitement as schedule release videos (see this example from the San Diego Padres). But sponsored giveaways largely exist to a) Activate sponsorships (duh) and b) Boost attendance — you have to go to the game to get that exclusive bobblehead! But so many teams boast so many fans who cannot (or will not) go to games, they either too far away, can’t afford to go to many games or mainly express their fandom digitally. The importance of the remote fan grew during the pandemic, when in-person attendance was impossible.

So why are these sponsored giveaway items still positioned mostly as attendance boosters? Combine the novelty, the ‘drops’ culture, the surge of collectibles in recent years, the rise of live and creator-driven shopping — and creative, original novelty merch drops could be a big boon for teams, leagues, and their partners. Fwiw, we have seen more teams in recent years do apparel collabs, which seem to be successful. But take that to the nth degree with tchotchkes and collectibles that fans around the world can’t resist.

There could be millions in revenue on the table, whether through direct sales or through sponsor-driven models where fans ‘pay’ by purchasing a sponsor’s product, providing contact information, or completing a branded game—earning them these items shipped directly to their door. The gate still matters, ticket sales are still a very meaningful revenue stream — but instead of subsidizing gravy boats for 20,000 fans (or up to 60-70-80,000 fans), open up these valuable engagement (and earned media/display) opportunities to the millions of fans around the globe.

Mini Serialized Episodes

It was about a year ago that noted social media consultant and Link in Bio newsletter author Rachel Karten wrote that we should ‘treat your social video channels like you would a TV show’ (read the full piece here). And if you work in social media, you’ve no doubt come across the viral Mohawk Chevrolet content on TikTok. Meanwhile, in Japan (and China), short dramas, with ‘episodes’ typically lasting 1-3 minutes are becoming increasingly popular (read about it).

So, with all that, how can sports teams and leagues create entertainment for their fans that transcends the typical content related to their games, players, and training, and even the ‘lifestyle’ content becoming more prevalent? Could a team (with or without a team sponsor) bankroll an emerging creator to produce a short-form sitcom or sketch show featuring some storylines or ‘product placement’ involving the team? Could there be a meta (lowercase m) series that imagines days in the life of team staff? Perhaps a few characters find themselves in a rom-com that plays at or around games? Teams don’t have to collaborate with creators; they could instead build capabilities in-house or work with agencies and freelancers.

I’m no creator or creative producer, but the point is that even the biggest fans are still consuming a lot of media that is not content produced by their favorite teams (or media talking about the teams), a lot of pure entertainment, much of which is created by TikTokers and YouTubers. In the coming year, teams and leagues could leverage their expertise, channels, brand affinity, and credibility to engage fans in creative, original ways that transcend their sport.

All these topics are not meant to be predictions; the world changes far too rapidly to prognosticate—though plenty of prediction columns try each year. But the only certainty is change, innovation, and advancement. All we can do is watch user behavior change, see how the world around us evolves, and take calculated risks and audacious shots. The only failure is standing pat and leaning into only what works today. Eschew the comfort and complacency of the status quo and don’t be afraid to do what hasn’t yet been done. The only way to realize an exciting future is to create it ourselves.

General Sports Business, Social Media

Skating the Line Between Core and Casual: The Fan Engagement Challenge in Hockey

Which sport’s fans are the most avid?

Not which has the most fans, but the major sport whose average fan is highest on the avidity scale?

It’s an interesting thought experiment because while everybody knows the NFL Rules the roost in the US, do they have the highest concentration of fervent fans? To have a high density of diehards is not necessarily desirable. Businesses, brands, creators — they all love their biggest, most passionate fans, but the common trend is to chase the casuals.

Sean McIndoe has a lot of avid fans. The longtime hockey writer who’s also known as Down Goes Brown learned early on in his career that it was better to be the best in a niche than to try and compete for the generic masses. McIndoe took a new take to hockey content, infusing comedy and (eventually) esoteric minutiae and wit that a subset of fans fell in love with. He’s been number one at what he does ever since.

“If there was a strategy that I mapped out I think at some point I kind of realized — and maybe this would be the advice to people starting out — is first of all, early on when there’s nobody reading you, try a whole bunch of stuff,” said McIndoe, who was working a full-time 9-to-5 when he started blogging about hockey on the side. “Go nuts. Because if it stinks who cares? Five people are going to see it. You’ll know kind of what works for you and what doesn’t or at least you’ll form an idea, and then from there find that niche, find that voice. Try to be number one at something.”

He continued: “It’s better to be number one at something very small than to be number 100 in the ‘I’m (national hockey writer) Greg Wyshynksi’s 100th backup; like if a hundred things happened to all the people ahead of me I’m the new Wysh’ — and you know Greg’s a friend of mine — he’s awesome, but he’s awesome because he can do everything and he can do it fantastic and he’s built this decades-long career doing it.

“There’s no market out there for the 100th-best Wysh, but there might be a market out there for the first or second or third best in some sort of niche.”

McIndoe’s work appeared in several major publications and he spent time at Grantland (RIP) before making his way to The Athletic, where he works today. He recognizes the advantageous equation at play for him at The Athletic. While wholly ad-supported sites are beholden to driving site traffic to every last fan, a subscription site like The Athletic thrives on fans who love journalism and/or individual writers so much that they’ll pay for the right to read.

DGB (an abbreviation for Down Goes Brown) wants his work to be enjoyable for everybody who ends up on his stories, but he also recognizes there’s something special about including some more obscure stuff within his stories, with a wink and a nod that only the geekiest and most ardent will understand.

“As a subscription-based business, [The Athletic] is not just about page views. Every time we write something someone doesn’t like [readers] come in like ‘Oh, it’s clickbait.’. It’s like ‘Dude, we’re a subscription model. What — do you think it helps me to get 100,000 people to click on something that they hate. Like walk me through how you think that benefits me or the site,” said McIndoe. “So it’s been nice to do that in a way that you that I’m not constantly churning out [content], I’m not sitting there going I gotta do ten posts a day and I gotta rank first in Google and I gotta jam keywords into the headline and all of that stuff…

“You’re right, you can’t go completely niche all the time,” McIndoe continued while noting he tries to keep a balance. “If it’s too niche, at some point, there just isn’t enough even if that’s not what you’re being directly measured by. But at the same time that niche audience are going to be the ones who love you the best…”

McIndoe’s niche audience loves him. (I read and listen to just about everything DGB produces) His fans likely have a high average avidity rate. The same could be said about fans of the National Hockey League. You won’t find too many fly-by NHL fans. It’s perhaps a blessing and a curse. The ceiling when it comes to ratings and self-identifying fans for the NHL will never have as many fans as the NFL, that’s a given.

As McIndoe sees it, in some ways the league leans into that too much, focusing on growing revenue per capita instead of seeking more capitas (fans).

I think the NHL — I’ve been banging this drum for a long time — they haven’t done enough to grow the audience they haven’t done enough to make the product appeal to as many people as they can.

“I think what [NHL Commissioner] Gary Bettman has done well is he is figuring out how to squeeze more and more money out of the audience they do have, and to maximize how much they can get from that,” he said. “That can be a business model. A lot of sports or entertainment places out there are realizing that Hey, I can’t grow the audience but what I can do is figure out who my real core audience is and then just grabbing by the ankles and hold them upside down and shake them, and that’s sort of what the Bettman model has been.”

The NHL revenues, like every major pro sports league, continue to go increase — those avid fans are paying off. But the ceiling for the NHL is lower without the finding avenues to bring in new or casual fans. A lot of emerging sports are also on a constant quest for new and casual fans to notice them and sample their product with an open mind, in hopes they’ll seek to learn and follow more (For example, sports like lacrosse, cricket, rugby, and volleyball, among many others).

The optimal set of conditions is existing fans welcoming newbies with open arms, serving as their sherpa and helping them learn the ropes. As McIndoe has seen all too often in his career, however, hockey fans are quick to call out novices and, well, shunning or shaming them. Is the ‘I liked this band when they were playing small clubs’ audience alienating new fans?

“The gatekeepers can go get bent,” said an exasperated McIndoe. “I hate that stuff. I hate that stuff where it’s ‘Can you name five players?’ Shut up, man. Hockey fans are ridiculous for that because the two things the hockey fans love doing most are complaining that there aren’t enough hockey fans. ‘How come everybody doesn’t see this sport the way I do?’ And then the second anybody new shows up just absolutely kicking them in the ass and turning them around and sending them home because they don’t know or how dare you ask a question. How dare you get a player’s name wrong?”

McIndoe recounted a time when his former boss at Grantland Bill Simmons, a powerhouse in the sports industry for years and still today, wrote about hockey but messed up a player’s name. The fans were relentless, possibly chilling Simmons from delving more into NHL content.

McIndoe did note that such overly protective ownership is not necessarily just a hockey thing; social media and the internet foments such tribalism.

“That’s not a hockey fan thing or even a sports fan thing, that’s an internet thing,” he said. “I know there are other industries that have much bigger problems with the gatekeeping stuff, but my message to hockey fans is Man, pick a lane. If you want hockey to be a little niche small thing that only you’re cool enough to know about, okay. You want to be the cool indie band, that’s fine.

“But then don’t complain and at the same time you’re going to complain not enough people are hockey fans like we are. We’re all like ‘We’ve got the cool indie band; we’re like Hey, this isn’t this the biggest band in the world and then they put out an album that goes to number one and we go ‘Oh, man, they’ve changed.’ No, they haven’t it’s exactly the same.”

The NHL may be the answer to which league’s fans have the highest avidity rate. That concentrated cohort has helped McIndoe and others like him succeed, he concedes, but it’s all those diehard fans that may be stopping the NHL from moving more mainstream.

We want to move fans up the passion spectrum; more superfans of your team, league, or sport is a great outcome. But there’s a balance (just like with McIndoe in his articles) — serve the superfans, for sure, but also develop the easy avenues and entrypoints for fly-by and casual fans. You want a big cohort of diehards who consume every nook and cranny of the sport, but you also want a sizable segment that knows next to nothing.

This was such a good interview with Sean McIndoe and I wanted to also include his insightful take on the increased presence of tribalism among media outlets. Such polarizing cliquishness is obvious in the world of politics, but that same us vs. them mentality is starting to penetrate sports, too, as this statement from McIndoe implies.

“You have this relatively new thing where people used to almost identify themselves by what team they cheered for, that’s as old as sports. But now it’s like a lot of people identify themselves based on what media they consume, which is deeply weird to me. Like I’m a [Spittin’ Chiclets] guy. I’m like Alright. Cool. You know, I get all my stuff from Outkick. Awesome, never talk to me, please, I don’t know, I guess. But you know some of that is the more personal style of writing and certainly podcasts it feels like a much more social thing and you start to identify with people. And it’s all good; like it’s more opportunities…I really mean that when I said Hey, if you like Outkick, please never talk to me. I feel that way. But also I’m not saying shut the site down. I’m not saying you don’t ever get to like the stuff that you like. Go like the stuff that you like, don’t ever talk to me about it because it’s stupid, but go ahead and like your stupid stuff. You’re allowed to. I like some stupid stuff too. Let’s get the audience out there.

“I don’t love the thing where it kind of turns into If you like my site that means you have to hate these guys or if you listen to my podcast we’re enemies with these guys — like, what are we doing? But at the same time some marketing guy would be like, No, That’s how you build loyalty. That’s how you do this and that. I guess that makes sense. It’s not really my angle on things.”

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH SEAN MCINDOE AKA DOWN GOES BROWN

READ THE SNIPPETS

READ SEAN’S WORK AT THE ATHLETIC

General Sports Business, Sports Media

Monetizing the Ecosystem of Content and Relationships that Sports Podcasters Produce — and the Power of Parasocial Relationships

Creator, influencer, personality — no matter what you call these individuals amassing more audiences than the decades-old billion-dollar behemoths of yesteryear, you can’t deny that they run the world now.

The barriers to entry that kept the old gatekeepers in power are long gone and new empires are being erected every day by these creators with big dreams, tireless work ethics, and an impressive ability to build and engage audiences.

The old power players have started to realize that, and they’re scrambling to bring them into their fold. You see ESPN bringing in Omar Raja and Pat McAfee, for example. Your engagement rate and follower count are equally, if not more, important than your demo reels or writing samples. Kevin Jones, who started out on a traditional media career path quickly noticed the paradigm rapidly shifting from a brand halo serving individuals to, well, the other way around.

“It matters much more about who the personalities are representing your brand,” said Jones, Founder and CEO of Blue Wire, a podcast network built around sports personalities and athletes. “Are they engaging? Are they good at digital? You can’t just have a podcast, you’ve got to be getting likes and retweets on X. You have people building their own media empires right now.

“I think we’re in this personality-driven era right now for sports podcasters…People are picking their favorite personalities. People are picking their favorite topics…and instead of following the beat reporter, they’re following their favorite [personalities] because they’re delivering the fan perspective.”

These influential individuals realize the power and agency they have now, too. Just as more athletes are starting to eschew endorsements in favor of building their own products and brands, so, too, are sports personalities and athletes figuring out ways to build something they can own. That’s part of the thesis for why Jones started Blue Wire back in 2019.

He explained: “Now the cream rises to the top. Who’s interesting, entertaining, and really good at digital? They’re going to have the biggest audiences…And now you have Cam Newton, now you have Jake Paul and Logan Paul building their own. Logan Paul doesn’t appear on any other podcasts, he just does his own. A lot of people are like, ‘Why am I going on all these shows? Let me just have my own platform here, and make money on it.’ I think that’s the future.”

These individuals have already amassed massive audiences. But how do you interpret ‘massive audiences?’ For many, the first thought is their hordes of followers on social media, be it Twitter or TikTok or YouTube or Instagram. What do all those platforms have in common for the creators building their livelihoods on them? The power lies in the owners of that audience, the corporate overlords of the platforms. Now consider what currency the creators have, what they would still have if ‘x’ platform shuts down tomorrow. This risk is why professionals are coming to understand the value of email lists, phone number-based communities, and podcast feeds.

“The podcast is what the creator digital creator should be gravitating towards,” said Jones, whose Blue Wire boasts over 13 million downloads per month. “We let our creators own their IP. They cannot own their Twitter audience. They cannot own their YouTube audiences… The podcast is something that you do own. It’s an RSS feed. There are phones actually subscribed to your content. They get delivered the content. And again, that’s an open ecosystem, a podcast. We [still] encourage creators to definitely build up on the platforms…”

This is not an either/or thing — each side makes the other stronger. The social platforms are ‘free’ marketing and audience development tools and the podcast destination a key conversion endpoint to bring a casual onlooker into a platform that’s largely owned and operated. The best creators reach audiences across platforms, the flywheel always turning. Even if you’ve never watched or listened to a podcast, yes you have. You have no doubt been exposed to a podcast and podcasters through the ubiquitous social feeds where countless clips are consumed.

“You can have favorite podcasters that you don’t even listen to the full thing regularly, but you’re following what they’re doing, you know some of their hot takes when they go viral,” noted Jones. “So I think it’s this whole ecosystem that people are paying attention to. Yes, everyone has their favorite couple of shows that they tune into regularly, but I think more and more people have ten, 20, 100 shows that they’re paying attention to because the podcaster is interesting…

“[The podcaster’s] job is not just the podcast, but also to build an audience day to day.”

This is the aha. Sure, in the ‘early days’ of podcasting, a podcast was generally an audio show on demand, accessible through Apple iTunes. Today, a podcast is the activation of a podcaster — consistent content consumed in many forms across many platforms — an ‘ecosystem,’ as Jones called it. The longform hero piece is still often the keystone of it all, it’s where relationships deepen the most and followers become fans. Because while social media algorithms can be fickle — even a creator’s most ardent subscribers and followers are not guaranteed to see their content in the feed, loyal subscribers of the main podcast are a special breed. They’re not just spending seconds watching a Shorts clip, they’re spending a significant portion of their daily media consumption time with the podcaster. And that matters. Because that’s an audience that didn’t serendipitously stumble onto a clip, they’re an intentional audience.

“Ultimately you have to be interested in that topic though to [convert from clips to podcast]. And that’s why the podcast CPMs are higher than a website CPM or a YouTube CPM,” said Jones. “What advertisers buy podcasting for are $25 or even bigger for the celebrities per 1000.

“That’s the hardest thing to get is someone’s attention for 20, 30, 40, 50 minutes here. So that’s where we really believe in the platform. You know, people are spending as much time with our podcasters as they are maybe their favorite Netflix or their favorite streaming platforms per week…”

The focused, intentional podcast-listening/watching audience is a compelling pitch for advertisers. But the true offering is more versatile. Just as a ‘podcast’ isn’t only the full show, the inventory for monetization encompasses the full ecosystem the podcaster’s content and personality fuels. Jones elaborated on the diverse ways to position a podcast to potential advertisers, an extensive menu with diverse content formats, platforms, and unduplicated audiences.

“I think there’s high value when you do convert someone and the advertisers are paying for the higher value there,” he said, “but we’re more and more including clips on our advertising packages too, that the advertisers are understanding, hey, this is a full enchilada. This is a full ecosystem. I can be reaching even more people on clips who aren’t listening to the podcast yet.

“I think we’ve done a good job utilizing that in sales. I think the industry is catching up to how the podcast is — like I said, the podcasts are on all the content they’re putting out. So we’re focusing more on a sales perspective than actually helping build a centralized audience. We’re helping our creators and monetizing these clips is our focus.”

As the greater podcast industry matures, the business models surrounding podcasts and podcasters are also becoming more diverse. The Acquired podcast, for example, pioneered selling single sponsors for an entire season. We’ve all heard the performance marketing-based models with their discount codes and vanity URLs. There is a panoply of options and this is where I just handed the mic to Jones who lives in this world every day with Blue Wire and let him school me on the revenue models of podcasts in 2024:

“Sponsorships are the number one thing that we’re after, and luckily we’re in sports because there’s huge sponsorship budgets for a lot of really big brands. You see the three-point contest, you see the Home Run Derby sponsorships, like we’re trying to turn podcasts into those kind of properties where you’re going to sponsor Cam Newton’s podcast for three, six, nine months, maybe even the full year…

“Second is just pure play impressions, people. A delivery service brand is still trying to be cool. They’re still trying to create brand awareness. They’ve still got to compete with the big dogs. And, you know, they’re willing to spend and sponsor a show and just have reach and make it more simple. There doesn’t have to be all these custom elements. Like, we love that too…

“Then the third is just straight-up audio, too, and also the clips and the social media. Live events, we’ve done some parties with Miller Lite and some other brands, too; like, let’s do a live podcast, let’s get some listeners together. That’s another element. We go for brand awareness, that’s the brands we love working with. We also work with performance agencies too, who are, Hey, if you perform well, we’re going to keep buying a shit-ton of this stuff, if you don’t perform well, it’s over. But that’s part of the mix…

“There’s programmatic too…so programmatic is kind of at the end of the waterfall if you think about our revenue as a stream. But that’s still a seven-figure business for us per year, just remnant inventory that’s left over. Spotify is best at on the ad sales just kind of filling in the gaps for everyone, kind of how YouTube does, just this automated player. We can just play those prerecorded commercials on the Blue Wire [network]. It’s a lower CPM for us, that’s why we’re not focused on it, so we make less money on that. But it helps us fill out more of our inventory, so we’re not taking a zero on a commercial spot.”

Between all the clips, all the minutes of consumption and time spent, the recurring engagement of loyal fans — the podcast ecosystem offers a lot. But even within those models, the CPM can’t tell the full story. If you’ve spent a half hour or an hour listening to or watching a personality, it can feel like you know them. That it wouldn’t be unusual at all to go up and engage in small talk with them should you run into them on the street. We still cannot truly measure that feeling of familiarity, let alone how it should reflect in the value of a sponsorship or advertising relationship with a creator.

That’s the most powerful part of an audience connection and why folks like Jones are so bullish on the future of the space. In an era of endless choices, fans choose to spend time with and consume their favorite creator’s content again and again. Step back and consider what a significant feat that is, coupled with the sheer volume of time spent and it’s quickly evident why these individual podcasters are as valuable as any old-school brand.

“That [parasoscial] relationship is what I really believe in is the biggest thing about this industry,” said Jones. “It goes beyond just consuming content. There is some kind of connection that’s developed when you’re consuming someone for hours. When you’re putting someone into your brain like this with the headphones; you know the trends are that people 35 and under are watching more YouTube at night than cable television and streaming is up there, too. We used to not be able to choose what we’re going to watch at night, 15 years ago, it was what it was. There was no streaming, it was just cable basically. Now people choose their own content.”

Jones continued, the belief and earnestness coming across.

“This is a true revolution. We don’t even understand it, but I think ten, 15 years from now, content is going to continue to look different. The President of the United States one day may have a podcast like FDR got on the radio.

“It’s just a way to connect with people at such a better level.”

LISTEN TO MY FULL INTERVIEW WITH KEVIN JONES OF BLUE WIRE

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General Sports Business, Sports Technology

The Technology Bets that are Transforming the Sports Industry Today

What are the common experiences to which everyone — like, every single person — can relate? The ultimate connective tissue between you and any random stranger you may encounter.

There’s the local weather, food you like to eat, and, in some form or fashion — sports. Maybe you played a sport growing up, you or your friends or family are a fan of a team, your son or daughter plays a sport or their friends do, you keep an eye on the former classmate who qualified for a national team, your coworker tells you about their fantasy team or bets — the total addressable market for sports can really be, well, just about every human on the planet.

And in the past couple of decades the scale and opportunity for the business of sports reached a new echelon, a new era where startups and entrepreneurs attracted the attention of investors who had previously not thought of sports as a ticket to the massive returns venture capital seeks. There’s never been a better time to have big, innovative ideas in the greater sports industry.

Wayne Kimmel, Managing Partner of sports-focused venture capital firm SeventySix Capital, is one of the leaders helping to foster this dynamic period in the sports industry. Listen to Kimmel speak and you can feel the energy he has for ambitious ideas and individuals. It’s why Kimmel and SeventySix have supported, and continue to fund, businesses that want to do big things in the ever-changing and ever-growing field of sports.

“We started thinking about [bringing venture capital to sports] and we’re like, ‘Wow,’” said Kimmel. “Every person in the world falls into one of these buckets. You may hate sports and you may be the biggest orchestra fan in the world and you never watch a game or anything, but then when your granddaughter’s out there on that gymnastics mat, you’re focused, right? You’re like, ‘Oh my God. Or you’re your grandson is playing baseball or your son’s the star on a basketball team or something like that — all of a sudden that is your life and that’s where you’re going to spend a lot of money.

“So we see all that [and] we’re like, Well, this is a world that we want to be in and we started looking around, like, who are the investors? Who’s backing the entrepreneurs who are using technology, using data, using analytics to make it better? There’s not a lot of us, and there still aren’t a lot of us out there investing across this right now. But it’s such a big opportunity and the dollars around and in this multi-trillion dollar sports media entertainment industry is big and getting bigger every single day.”

Kimmel recognized the opportunity certainly got bigger on a day in 2018 that will remain immortalized in US sports — the day the ‘PASPA’ law was struck down, opening the pathway for states around the country to legalize sports betting. In my interview with him, Kimmel recounted how he took action right away, knowing the time was ripe for companies to capitalize on this new opportunity to engage and activare sports fans, as well as buttress the burgeoning sports wagering industry. SeventySix supported the growth of the Vegas Stats and Information Network (VSiN), which had the grandiose vision to become the CNBC of sports betting (they largely have). Kimmel also came into contact with Matt Holt, who saw a need in sports betting that someone would have to cover and had the ambition that Kimmel so embraces. I’ll let him tell the story.

“We wanted to get behind entrepreneurs who want to do the big thing in the present right now, we constantly still want to look at entrepreneurs, we still want to get behind entrepreneurs who are pushing things forward and doing the next thing…,” said Kimmel, who founded SeventySix Capital in 1999. “One day,(VSiN founder and CEO) Brian Musburger introduced me to Matt Holt, who’s the CEO of IC360 now. [IC360] is the company that makes sure that everything’s on the up and up across the whole sports betting industry today.

“Matt was a host at VSiN at the time and doing some other things, and he comes off [the air] and says to me,’ I’m going to start this company. It’s going to be an integrity business to make sure that everything’s on the up and up across sports betting — every single operator, every single regulator, every single team, every single league, every single conference is going to be my client. And I’m like, ‘Matt, I’ve heard entrepreneurs talk like this before, but you don’t need everybody. You can just get a small percentage of them and we’ll be pretty successful.’ He goes, ‘No, we’re getting everybody.’ Well, you know what? He’s done it.”

Not only do issues like competitive and statistical integrity scale across the entire sports ecosystem, but the performance side of sports can also penetrate every level — from the multi-millionaire GOAT to the rec league warrior to the peewees and preteens. So it makes sense that Kimmel and SeventySix Capital also have eyes on tech that can help the athletes themselves. There is a democratization in technology now, where nearly everybody has internet access and a connected mobile device, and that universal access increasingly applies to the latest and greatest tech in sports performance. Because businesses recognize there is demand and amateur athletes are increasingly willing and wanting to get this tech for themselves or their kids. Kimmel elaborated on this trend, where Little Leaguers can feel like their MLB heroes when it comes to optimizing performance.

“What’s cool about all this is that not only is this something that can happen with the professional players in major league dugouts, we’re able to now bring this down to anywhere USA, any field for any kid who’s playing baseball, softball or whatever sport it is,” said Kimmel. “They’re getting the opportunity to be able to have the same kind of tech, and that will only mean that these games will get better. It will enable the kids themselves to be better players, have more confidence, have more fun…It could change a kid’s life by just enabling them to do that.

“Are they going to go to the major leagues? Probably not. But you know what? They may be a fan for life. And that’s a big deal for MLB and some of these other major leagues who are really looking to build fans for life.”

It’s hard not to be energized speaking with Kimmel, envisioning (and bringing to fruition) the grandest vision of ideas and businesses in the greater sports space. It’s a testament to the ambition that accompanies venture capital and the near-universal nature of sports and gaming and the engagement around it all. There’s another SeventySix company Kimmel discussed that embodies those ideals, and which sort of pivoted their way to a product that every consumer brand can utilize — Lucra Sports. You may know Lucra as the technology now powering the peer-to-peer gaming for Dave & Buster’s. Kimmel explained that that direction is limitless, and Lucra is just getting started.

“Now we’re going to expand that even further…,” he said. “[Lucra] went out as really a pretty special peer-to-peer sports gaming business, but now is the technology platform for major brands and what they’re doing from a gaming perspective and enabling these major brands to unlock the gaming and competitive piece of their business is just brilliant…Hopefully, very soon, you’ll be hearing about some other massive brands that are starting to bring this whole gaming mechanic into their experience.”

The capitalization and innovation in sports is just getting started, too. If the rate of pitches and opportunities that Kimmel and SeventySix Capital encounter is any indication, the next decades of the sports industry will be as dynamic and awe-some as these past couple. There are more talented entrepreneurs with more ambitious ideas than ever — and, now, the investors and support to bring them to life.

“We see a ton of entrepreneurs. I mean it’s upwards of 170 new opportunities that come in the door every single month, from all over the world,” Kimmel told me. “It’s amazing to think about all the entrepreneurs, all the innovation that are trying to figure out what’s the next thing across sports, media, entertainment, and we’re thrilled to take a look at all this stuff, try to figure out how we can be part of it and do more.

“We want to do more and more. We’re constantly trying to get behind more of these incredible entrepreneurs who are trying to make it all happen. That’s what it’s all about.”

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH WAYNE KIMMEL

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Content Strategy, General Sports Business, Social Media ROI

How Barstool Sports is Innovating the Media Business, Leveraging their IP into New, ‘Obvious’ Revenue Streams

It’s no secret that the media industry has been in a state of flux. That’s pretty much been the case since we were all firing up those America Online CDs back in the ’90s (man, I’m old).

But flux doesn’t mean the sky is falling. It’s just that in an age of endless content and aggressive aggregation, it’s the ‘brands’ — and that includes individuals — that have a leg up as the old paradigms of interruptive advertising, of borrowed attention, are not necessarily the primary revenue stream for media companies.

When you list media businesses that are innovating new models and monetizing audiences and communities in diverse ways, Barstool Sports is among those, not just surviving but thriving in this new world. Barstool isn’t just a media company — they’re into licensing, live events, partnerships, and products. There is still advertising, but that’s just a piece of the pie, and it’s that diversity of revenue that characterizes the next era of content and media.

“I got to spend a lot of time learning and a lot of time executing on various strategic products that helped Barstool Sports scale from a content and social perspective, from a merch perspective, from a licensing perspective, and from a live events perspective,” said Barstool Sports Director of Licensing and Business Development Brian Fitzsimmons in a recent interview with me, “to the point where, over time, our top of funnel had grown so vast that people started to get into the Barstool Sports ecosystem by a lot of different unrelated things.”

Fitzsimmons could rattle off myriad Barstool franchises and creators through which fans touch the business — from the longtime popular ‘Pardon My Take’ sports podcast to the more pop culture-focused and uber-popular ‘Chicks in the Office,’ amid several other entry points. “We started building around [Barstool’s creators and thinking of them as their own individual companies; thinking of Barstool Sports as their own IP house in a way,” said Fitzsimmons, who joined Barstool Sports in 2018.

Just like your favorite athlete eschewing an endorsement deal that would feature a fitness brand in their workout content on Instagram, creators understand their own brand can carry more weight than those that have filled consumer’s carts for decades. It starts to seem downright logical to create brands and activations that come out of creators’ natural content and conversations. So the athlete may activate around their recovery content and the creators at Barstool may do the same amidst their conversations of food they’re ordering for the game (Pardon My Cheesesteak), the sports bar debates and viewing parties they stream (Barstool bars), the drink concoctions they discuss on the podcast (Pink Whitney), the golf outings and professional golf chatter (Barstool Golf Time app) — and so many other examples. Fitzsimmons elaborated, saying the secret is just doing stuff that makes sense.

“I think that when we’re looking to see where there’s opportunity, we simply use our common sense…,” said Fitzsimmons, who started in journalism and content earlier in his career. “For instance, one of my favorite partnerships that we currently have is with our Barstool bars. So we have bars in Scottsdale, Chicago, Philadelphia and Nashville. And when you think about it, [Barstool Sports’s] DNA is how we relate to people who love watching sports and we talk about sports in a way that you would with your friend at a bar. Us being able to have a physical presence that reflects our brand, it just makes so much sense.

“And it doesn’t even have to be from a sports perspective, I think any licensing deal where the end user sees it and says, ‘Man, that makes so much sense and that is so brilliant’ — that’s how you know you have the home run.”

Fitzsimmons knows what a powerful flywheel the Barstool Sports machine supports. Success compounds as more content gets produced and creators continue to create and more seemingly obvious opportunities present themselves. Then it’s up to Fitzsimmons and his team to go to work, recognizing opportunities and executing.

“I help our commerce team identify new opportunities in the licensing and business development realms and try to figure out how we can build and layer on to the great things that we have started here,” Fitzsimmons explained to me. “Like, what is the thing that we can tack on to and scale for Pardon My Take? For that, we created the Pardon My Cheesesteak virtual dining brand. We created the Stella Blue Coffee DTC (direct-to-consumer) coffee brand under Big Cat (Dan Katz). We created the bars. For Fore Play, what is the thing that would speak to the Fore Play golf audience and it would be genuine to the talent involved, and it would make sense for everyone? We forged a partnership with Supreme Golf and created a tee time booking app called the Barstool Golf Time app.

“So it’s things like that that I look after to try to figure out how can we grow our business, how can we keep our commerce business healthy, and how can we help the big brands that help steer the ship for us — how can we help them continue to grow?”

The neverending content machine of Barstool Sports means Fitzsimmons and his team just need to keep a watchful eye because things just ‘happen.’ There’s still advertising within the Barstool Sports system, to be sure — that revenue stream is still a part of the mix for any media company. But when the Barstool commerce team can see a creator organically producing one of those ‘that makes so much sense’ opportunities within their everyday conversation and content — that’s when they’re ready to activate. That’s the magic of this new media model, this new era.

“There’s always a catalyst. And we are incredibly reactionary,” said Fitzsimmons, who also noted they’re “maniacal” about data in identifying opportunities, too. “I would like to think that our licensing business was more strategic and less opportunistic, but it’s just the way that we operate and the brilliance of this company is how we react. And to your point, a lot of it comes from very organic sparks. Like you mentioned, Big Cat posting these coffee memes just because he thinks it’s funny to make fun of old people that just put coffee memes on their Facebook every morning. It transpired from there, you hit the nail on the head. And same thing with Ryan Whitney discussing the pink lemonade and all that.

“It was like the light bulb went off and it was like, man, we have something here, right?”

Fitzsimmons and Barstool know they’re part of that new paradigm. One in which content isn’t just a means to monetize attention with ads, but an opportunity to create IP, develop powerful relationships, and utilize all the time spent with these creators and their content to do something more. The thesis for The Chernin Group, one of the early major backers of Barstool Sports, was around media companies building and becoming commercial brands. Barstool is a living example of such a thesis and they’re continuing to evolve and develop it further, starting out with apparel, as Fitzsimmons recalls, and expanding into so many of the products, events, and partnerships, only a fraction of which were mentioned in this article.

“This goes far beyond licensing,” he said. “The template of We’re going to change the game around how media companies can make money [Barstool founder Dave Portnoy] had was so brilliant so many years ago to be able to pair merch with content in a way that has never been done before…

“We still carry that formula with us today. It’s like when a big moment breaks out, Barstool is going to end up having a shirt that goes along with it. And whenever you go into read someone’s blog you’re going to have a link to a merch product that correlates with that person’s point of view. There’s something special about the marriage between content and merch that Barstool has had for the longest time, and we’ve been able to obviously keep up with that.”

Looking ahead, the connections fans have with the faces of Barstool (as opposed to relatively faceless content producers in other media) along with the ‘obvious’ activations the Barstool business team executes that serve the fans bode well for the future of Barstool. The media industry will continue to evolve, and not all the upstarts, let alone the legacy companies, will survive. But the brands that find ways to align their output with fan expectations, wants, and needs will prevail and last. They’ll continue to stand out from the sea of content because their fans feel respected and because those fans care — when there’s no shortage of places to go for an article or a ‘take’, there’s a select few that fans actively choose to go to before, during, and after the big game. And that’s a powerful moat to have.

Said Fitzsimmons: “It’s something special when you have an audience that connects with the content creators and the personalities in the way that ours do. I think that it’s a testament to how Barstool, over the years, has done such a great job of keeping the user first, keeping the audience first, and I think that’s why you see people over the years continue to stick with us and continue to grow with us.”

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH BRIAN FITZSIMMONS

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Fan Development, General Marketing, General Sports Business

Turning Casual Into Lifelong Fans: The Opportunity and Challenge for F1

The rise of Formula 1 in the US has been remarkable. And the sport’s path to primetime — their media rights deal went from $5 million per year in the US to nearly $100 million when the next deal was signed — is an illustration of how sports can develop fandom.

It’s perhaps a bit reductionist to say ‘Drive to Survive’ in summing up the league’s explosion in popularity in the States. The Netflix docuseries had a significant effect, to be sure, but it’s what happened before and after that created fans of the sport, not just fans of the show.

A milestone that preceded Drive to Survive was Liberty Media’s acquisition of F1, completed officially in early 2017, which took a sport with an air of luxury and a fanbase mostly in their 50s and older and instilled a culture and sense of urgency to reach a younger and more diverse demographic. Drive to Survive may have felt like a culmination of that increased openness and focus on content, but it was the confluence of factors that arose alongside the Netflix show that put the growth into full throttle.

“What really kickstarted a lot of this content creation and testing out new formats was around 2020 when we had free time essentially to do whatever we wanted to do, and we had time to think,” said Nirupam Singh, who has spent years working with motorsports and today helps motorsports teams and business with sponsorship development. “That gave a lot of content creators and new people who wanted to binge that show the perfect opportunity to speak about a new topic that they had no clue about, but they were interested in, and they went and created new content around it on TikTok, Instagram, all these platforms.”

The pandemic and Netflix for days, the rapid rise of TikTok, the onslaught of creators in every interest area in the world — the elements were all there for fans to discover and then dive deeper into whatever caught their fancy. And for many that meant consuming more F1 content and more creators serving that demand. The teams inside Formula 1 also seized the opportunity, emulating some of the best practices of American sports leagues that had been crushing the social and content game for years.

“Now that F1 saw what the NBA and the NFL are doing, a lot of that stuff was then copied over and translated to what we can do in motorsports,” said Singh, who also works with tech companies on their marketing and email campaigns. “So the teams will look at it, the social media admins will look at it and they’re going to try and replicate something similar.”

The F1 teams are doing their thing, too — the content is hitting and the fan engagement is growing — they’re in that upper part of the hockey stick growth. And the American way is kicking in in more ways than just content, it’s also coming in the form of monetization. It’s all flying high now, but F1 also faces a challenge that all sports leagues face, maximizing the revenue today without sacrificing the fans and opportunities of tomorrow.

“Now everyone is seeing this amazing sport, and the sport has a lot of reach and level of success that every single sponsor and everyone involved wants to capitalize on. But that’s the problem,” said Singh. “They want to capitalize on it, not maintain it. So as soon as they got the fan now all bets are off and [it’s like] ‘Okay, we made as much money from you as possible, [now] ‘Bye’.

“That’s what I want to really avoid; how can we maintain and keep these fans over a longer period of time, because you don’t just become a fan by watching one thing, you become a fan over time, seeing it multiple times, and then you start finding like-minded people…

“There needs to be better strategies and better systems in place to nurture these fans over a longer period of time. These fans, if you talk about demographics, are much younger now. The age of the fan base has shifted from being 50+ to much lower, 18-35, so these fans are going to grow up with this sport over a longer period of time. So how can we maintain that so that as these fans grow up, they can pass down this passion of theirs to their kids and to their peers?”

There’s a lot to unpack there in the impassioned plea from Singh, who can recall days growing up when being a motorsports fan put him squarely in the minority. And if fandom isn’t cultivated, it can disappear as quickly as it came. Pull out the key factors Singh alluded to — repeat exposure and reliability, finding like-minded fans — community building, and passing that fandom from parents to kids and from old to young — generational fandom. Some of that the sports leagues and teams can affect directly, but things like community building, creators and personalities leading such community, parents plopping their kid in front of a grand prix, water cooler conversations — that’s in the hands of others and all the leagues and teams can and should do is set them up for success.

The new sports fan is different, too. While those of us who came of age in the ’90s or earlier mostly came to sports from, well, the sport, there are so many more avenues to elicit interest and fandom now. Many sports leagues have embraced all these tangential interests that emanate from the platform they have — fashion, gaming, music, and even just the drama and intrigue that surrounds the sports and athletes themselves. There are more fan segments than ever and such diversity of affinities and interests can be both a blessing and a curse.

“Because the fan base is now so large, there are so many different levels of interest and personalities and people that find certain things interesting and certain things they don’t find interesting,” said Singh. “So it’s a unique challenge, that’s for sure. And I’m sure the NBA and the NFL have the same issues and they’re all tackling the main issue there — how do we keep these fans and attract more fans down the road?”

There are more types of fans and pathways to fandom than ever before, and that’s great. It’s also a challenge for sports organizations to try and wrap their head around all these unique fan segments, communities, and sub-communities — there is no single or linear fan journey. There is no single story to tell or content to create and it can be intimidating to concede that we don’t have all the answers and don’t understand the factors behind every fan’s affinity. The sports that thrive moving forward will be those that foster open frameworks, that provide a platform for an ecosystem to develop and thrive. The factors that coalesce to drive fandom will continue to evolve in the future, but what keeps fans engaged — the community, the connections, the conversations — will stand the test of time.

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH NIRUPAM SINGH

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