[upbeat music] Between the FOS handle on Twitter and the frontofficesports.com domain, we probably ended up spending, like, 20 grand. Best 20 grand we've ever spent. Yeah.
Because it just signals to the market that the brand is serious, that you take things like that. So I think that's been really important.
One of the other things too is we've heavily invested, at least recently, in the creative strategy team, and so now we have incredible materials. We have a team when we're going to a sales call.
We have an integrated marketing person. It's a bit of a cost that you have to burden, but if you want to uplevel and, and start to sign major brands, like, that's the expectation. Yeah.
Because that brand has to be like- Yeah... "Oh, I trust these guys. Like, these, if these materials look this good in the pitch, I can expect that the ex- execution is gonna look that good."
Brand totally matters, and absolutely, but you have to get the start, right? Yeah. And you have to be okay when things are imperfect, but you can't get comfortable being scrappy forever, right?
There's expectations there, and you can't fall back on, "Oh, well, we're just this little scrappy..." No. Don't play in the game then, right? Yeah.
[upbeat music] Welcome to the Rebooted show. I am Brian Morrissey. I'm very happy to be having this conversation with Adam White, the CEO of Front Office Sports, uh, for a few reasons.
One, Adam was the first guest on, on this podcast, like, a couple years ago, so he kicked it off. Crazy. And two, Adam is... You are really one of my favorite media entrepreneurs.
I think it's because, like, you got into it, like, in college [laughs] so you had no idea, 'cause you could've, you could've gone into so many different industries and killed it, so I'm glad that you're in this industry 'cause we need more, we need more pr- people like you who are, are building great properties and doing it the right way.
So that's, uh- Yeah, I mean, I, I think the fact that I had no idea and was completely blind flying in [laughs] is part of the reason why- Absolutely... this worked out. You know? Absolutely.
You just kind of, we let it rip. But yeah, no, excited to, excited to have the chat. I mean, look, I listened to the... I don't know if you've listened to the Mark Zuckerberg interview on Acquired. I'm not saying you...
Uh, no pressure, you know, that you're building Facebook or Meta, but, you know, he was talking about beginning it as a project.
At least i- in his telling, even moving to Silicon Valley, he just thought of it as like, "Wow, you know, someday I wanna build, like, one of these companies."
But he didn't think [laughs] he was bu- he, he didn't think- Yeah... he was building that at the time, and I think a lot of, you know, great companies start as projects, and yours was, was kind of...
It was a college project at the end of the day, right? Yeah, totally. It was totally a college project.
And I think honestly it was great because of the fact that we iterated on it, and I think I've told this story before. We iterated on it for so long, and we were able to do whatever we wanted within reason, right?
And so by the time we got to the point where we were actually raising capital, we knew what people wanted, right?
Like, for four years I, I, I interviewed people and I asked them, you know, one, how they made it in sports and stuff like that, and this is when the pra- platform was an entirely different type of platform and, and it was essentially four years of market research.
Like, I was in school. Yeah.
I was working in a restaurant, and I was doing market research, and then, you know, I turned around and I said, "Look," you know, when I spoke to our first investors, like, "Hey, by the way, I think I know this is going to work because for the last four years this is exactly what everyone has told me is going to work, and let's just do this."
Yeah. And I think that's so important for anyone, like, who's, like, building, you know, one of these media businesses and wants to have a Front Office Sports, like, [laughs] in a few years.
You gotta get close to the metal, you know? You gotta be, you gotta be in it and, like, doing it. And whether that i- you know, talking to customers.
You know, literally you were creating this thing, and I think sometimes people wanna skip that step and go into the strategy and, like, moving boxes around, like, on a PowerPoint or whatever, and that's fine.
That'll come, like, later. I'm, uh... You're not doing the interviews now.
But it's super important 'cause it gives you, like, a feel for the business you just don't get if, if you're, you know, at 30,000 feet I don't think. Totally. I mean, I...
And honestly, even still today, I mean, we're 10 years into the brand, five years as a business 'cause we didn't get funding until the end of '18, so our first full-time year was '19.
But even today, like, I think it's... Personally, I think it's a bit of a misnomer when people are like, "Oh, I'm just gonna be at 30,000 feet." I, it doesn't make sense.
There has to be, like, some, uh, some, uh, elements of the business in which I'm not at 30,000 feet. Yeah, editorially we have an EIC and a full editorial team.
Like, I'm checking in with our EIC, but they're running that business.
But other parts of the commercial side of the business when we're thinking about, like, some of the things that you and I have been talking about, and franchises and working with our finance team, and we're in the weed, like, doing the work, right?
And I think that's the whole thing is it's just like you have to be, especially in media. Like, it's... Media is a do the work type of industry in my opinion. Yeah.
Like, it's not gonna be a place where you can get away from the work or hide from the work because specifically in media the work is every day, right?
[laughs] If you're not creating content every day, if you're not doing these things every day, like, you... There is no product, right? It's not like you can just ship an update and- Yeah...
or ship a tech company or product and, and sell it, which, you know, it's, it has its pros and cons obviously.
But I think, like, it really is something that if people wanna get into they have to realize, like, it's a do the work type of industry, and that's just, like, the nature of the beast. Yeah.
I would always say to, like, our team at my last job, "You know, the, the good news and the bad news is we get to do this all over again [laughs] tomorrow. We get to recreate-" Yeah...
"the product, and if we did a bad job today we got another shot at it tomorrow." [laughs] So- I know. I've always told people, and it's, like, somewhat crass, but building a media business is like working out naked.
Everyone can see your imperfections. Everyone can see when you mess up.
Everyone can see that stuff, but as you progress they also see all the progress you make and they're like, "Holy cow, it's amazing to see, like, what you've done and how you've gotten stronger or whatever, how you've changed," and it's nothing you can hide which, again, for better or worse, like, it's, it's just you can't.
And, you know, people see it. People call you out on it. You adjust, you grow. But yeah, it's, it's really... You know, there's no industry quite like it.Yeah.
So I wanna get to today, but just like to go back, I mean, it, it-- you say the, the brand has been around sort of 10 years, right? 'Cause that's- Yeah... that was back when, when you were at the U, right? Yeah.
And but you consider the company when I helped you get your, your first investor. Yes. Yes, exactly. 100%. Uh, yeah.
[laughs] The story of that is Adam, Adam listened to a podcast that I did with Jason Stein, and he DM'd him, and they ended up investing. Yeah.
And, you know, he, he do- he's done pretty well for himself, so you should be calling him up and pr- saying, "Hey- Absolutely... where's, where's, where's my side of this?" [laughs] I don't know.
I want, I wanna ta- well, I mean, we, we do this regularly, but I, you know, I wanna, I wanna get paid on both sides. Let's be real. Yeah. You guys both know me. Total. I mean... And it's fine.
We'll talk about the details later. Uh.
But when you think about what we're, you know, let- let's talk about like what do you think of-- 'cause, you know, look, a lot of people, there's a lot of people building, you know, media businesses now.
Like, a lot of the newsletter people. I, I think there's a lot of tourism in that, and I think there's too much arbitrage, et cetera.
But look, there's a lot of people out there who see opportunities, and I think we need to have that in this, in this space.
So when you think about, you know, starting, like, the business five years ago to now, what were, like, two or three really critical decisions that you made?
'Cause y- you have to make decisions every day, and it is, it is just like a slog, right? Yeah. You're just, like, trying to get incrementally better each day, each week, each month.
But there are, like, important decisions. There's only a few of them. What do you think were, like, some important decisions you made that you're really glad that you made? I think one of them was who our investors were.
I mean, quite frankly, like, this isn't to blow smoke or anything like that, but, like, having really good investors really matters in media.
I, I just is-- you've seen the horror stories of people who wanna invest in media, who think it's cool, and, like, get way over their skis or this, that, and the other, and don't really understand it.
We have-- I mean, look, the media industry, as you know better than anyone, has been ridiculous the past five years, 10 years, right? Like, I think about it all the time.
I'm like, man, when we got investment at the end of '18, like, our first full-time year was '19, so we had one kind of normal year and then COVID, then inflate.
I mean, look, there's never a normal year, but we've not had a normal year in the past five years, and we've had great investors who've been with us for the long to- haul and have supported us and have been there to, you know, you know, provide counsel.
So I think that's, like, a huge part about why we've been successful. So that's one.
Two, like, some of the smaller things, like, I think the brand really does matter in a lot of ways, and what your brand is and what it sh- I mean, look, like, of course, there's this whole creator and brands kind of, like, coming to a head now, I think, what we're seeing.
But also, I feel like there's a lot of creators who are going back to brands because of what legacy brands provide them and, like, things like that, and, and vice versa.
The legacy publishers and things like that are looking to work with accounts and franchises and things like that, that they can, you know, help monetize or help grow in different ways that they don't have.
But I think brand really does matter.
I mean, even, like, super small things that we did where I had to chase someone down, stalker, ex-boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever you are status, to, like, get the @FOS handle on Twitter.
Before that, we were @FRNT- Oh, yeah, I remember that... Office Sport. I- yeah. [laughs] I was like, "You're miss- F-R-N-T... you're missing a few vowels."
[laughs] Yeah, we're missing letters because it didn't really work.
And, like, it was fine, but when I think about now, it's like when people, you know, when Bleacher Report is tagging us when we're-- they're citing our reporting or they're, things like that, it's, like, @FOS, and it just, it works, and it feels so much better, and it looks so much better and all of these things.
And I did the same thing with the frontofficesports.com domain.
Originally, the reason why it was FRNT Office Sport on the handle was because our original e- or our dot-com was FRNT Office Sport because frontofficesports.com was someone was cyber squatting on it, but again- Right...
it was, like, a premature ejaculation website. Like, w- I don't even know, but ridiculous. Are, seriously? Yeah, seriously. I'm, I'm dead serious. Whoa. [laughs] Yeah.
And so then it was like frntofficesport.com, and then it was frontofficesports.org, and then we changed it a few times.
And this was all kind of a, you know, at that time it was just, you know, we didn't have the resources or anything like that. But I think we ended up between the dot-com.
I eventually finally got to this person in, in Wisconsin finally. This person-- and this was probably like four years ago. This wasn't even that long ago. Yeah. Maybe even less than that.
We probably ended up between the FOS handle on Twitter and the frontofficesports.com domain. We probably ended up spending, like, 20 grand. Best 20 grand we've ever spent. Yeah.
Because it just signals to the market that the brand is serious, that you take things like that. So I think that's been really important.
And then the other thing too, and again, like, there's so many more, but, like, one of the other things too is we've heavily invested, at least recently, in the creative strategy team, and that has been just so critical because, like, our whole thing is, like, specifically when you're a new publisher, and the way we're talking to brands and now our, you know, brand business is pretty large and we're dealing with Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 brands, like, they have to trust you from start to finish, right?
Like, if they're going to give you money, if they're going to put a test on you, like, their agency, those people, like, it is a risk for them to spend with you over, like, an ESPN or whatever it is that's, you know, the comps that we'll use in this case 'cause we're in sports.
Yeah. Those are seen as safe. Everyone knows them. Mm-hmm. It's safe. For us, it's not.
Well, it, and it is once, you know, once we've, we've proved it out a c- a, a, a bunch now, but so, like, we're fine, but, like, still first time buyers with us. And so now we have incredible materials.
We have a team when we're going to a sales call. If we have a creative strategy team, we have integrated marketing person.
It's a bit of a cost that you have to burden, but if you want to up level and, and start to sign major brands, like, that's the expectation. Yeah.
And so for us now, it's like our whole thing is even if it's not a million dollar proposal, the materials, the service, and everything that we talk about has to feel like a million bucks because that brand has to be like- Yeah...
"Oh, I trust these guys. Like, these, if these materials look this good in the pitch, I can expect that the ex- execution is gonna look that good."Yeah.
And I think it, it's funny 'cause you say that because you have to be super scrappy. 'Cause you're saying things that it's like when you...
You know, like brand totally matters and absolutely, but you have to get to start, right? Yeah. And you have to be okay when things are imperfect.
Like, I'm sure you look back at, you know, things from, from five years ago, much less, you know, seven years ago, and it's like, oh my God, it's like night and day different, right? I mean, that- Totally...
because you have to keep getting better and... But you can't get comfortable being, being scrappy forever, right? No. Because if you wanna like, if you wanna level up or whatever, you know, you're gonna have to...
You're competing with people who have far more resources than you, and usually if you're trying to break through to like larger, more established companies, right?
And you're n- you're trying to get out of that transactional treadmill, there's expectations there. And you can't fall back on, "Oh, well, we're just this little scrappy." No. Don't play in that game then, right? Yeah.
Yeah. Exactly. And so that's what we, and that's what we figured out. I mean, yeah, of course. Like at one point our logo, I thought it was so cool at the time.
It like, it looked kinda like a thumbprint, and it was like a stacked FOS that like had a bunch of this meaning and I'm like, I look back at that and I...
Man, I was trying to be like too, you know, I don't know, Brooklyn creative. [laughs] But like, it was just like, it didn't make sense, right?
And so it's, it's all of these things that you just have to consistently iterate and change. And I think the other thing too is that you have to consistently iterate and change the business, right?
Like newsletters 100% is where we started the business.
Look, like newsletters are a great foundational part of our business today, but most of our advertising revenue is coming from turnkey scale digital and video right now. Yeah.
So- And so it's like why would we like only focus on- Right... newsletters still?
And I think that's one of the things in media specifically, unfortunately with some of these much larger companies, it's just a lot harder for them to get out of the things that aren't making them money and get into the things that probably would.
Whereas for us it's like, okay, well, we can pivot to this or we can do this, or we can reallocate resources pretty quickly to here because the team, I mean, it's now 60-ish full-time people.
But like we have the ability to still move pretty quickly and adjust based on where things are, are going because we don't have an institutional way of working and tons of, you know, things that if we were to change would be like ripped out.
Yeah. So what's like, what, what's like a false path y- you know, you went down? I used to do these like Hash House Harriers runs, right? And there was this...
You're trying to follow along a path, but you would always go down fa- false paths, and then you would have to double, double back. And that way- Yeah... everyone ended up at the bar at the same time. What were some...
I have a couple 'cause I've been, you know... I've, I've kept close tabs on, on- Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, like we tried to be like a sports newsletter network. Nah. Yeah. That's the one.
Like that was like a- That's the one I had. [laughs] Yeah. That was like, that was like totally... It's hard enough to build one brand- So wait, explain that... let alone- Explain. I know.
C- that's exact- the association- Yeah... was it? And then- Yeah. Yeah, the associa- look, we were, we were sucked into the newsletter game in, in COVID and thinking like, "Holy shit, this is gonna be forever." Yeah.
Like, we can go out and launch a bunch of sports newsletters that would cover off not only the business of sports, like which was Front Office Sports, but we could have an NBA newsletter, we could have a sports betting newsletter.
I'm telling you, man, it's honestly crazy that we survived all of that stuff because it was like we at one point we were putting out five, six newsletters a day.
Many of them were disparate in terms of, you know, audience size and things like that. We were trying to run six different distinct social accounts. Again, it was just a... We, we just got caught up in the sauce.
We, we did. We were like, "Okay, if newsletters is what it's gonna be, like let's do it."
And we quickly realized, like one, again, it's hard enough to build one brand, and when you're known for that, it's almost impos- so many people have asked us, like, "Would you ever do front office real estate?
Would you ever do front office this?" And I'm like, "No," because Front Office Sports just works for what we have and the brand that we've built, and we're just gonna focus 100% on that now.
Is there other things we can do adjacent to that? Maybe. But we've learned our lesson in the sense that, that...
And I think this is where you're starting to see too a lot of the issues with some of these rolled up media companies that are an amalgamation of different brands. Yeah.
And all of those brands don't really have a true POV or a true team that's focused on it. There's like shared resources across the teams, and they're trying to sell all of the inventory to various things.
It's like in media, it's just really, really difficult, let, let alone building one brand, but to build multiple brands. So I think that was like a big issue. Or not an issue, just like a, a bet that we got wrong.
What else? I mean, like the bets have changed, right, over, over time. We tried to launch an insights product, like a pro product, that was like way, way, way too early and like was like one person.
And like that was- Yeah. We had people sign up, which was great, and we like were like, "Holy cow, this is awesome." Yeah. But it can give you like sort of false signals, right? Oh, totally.
'Cause like, I mean, you'll have people... You'll... I always think like brands have... There's a certain number of people for every brand like that they'll sign up for pretty much almost whatever you put in.
They're just true believers, right? And like- Totally... unfortunately [laughs] they are a small percentage of most brands', you know, audience or, you know, cohort.
And so, you know, sometimes you can get the thing, it's like, wow, this thing's gonna be... This is a home run and stuff, and then all of a sudden it's like- Yeah... hmm, [laughs] not so much. And it's hard to- Yeah...
it's hard to know until you do it, and you have to, you have to be willing to do stuff that doesn't work at the end of the day, right? Yeah. Again, test and learn, right?
We were iterative, and luckily we did it in a cheap enough way that like it, it didn't really impact the business. Like it was like a test and we learned and we said, "Okay, this is not right for us right now."
And so that was, that was good. Yeah. Those are a couple of like the bigger ones. So how do you think of...
'Cause this is something, you know, we've discussed a lot over the years about, you know, my, my background's all like in B2B, but I've like, you know, been a analyst I guess and a reporter with the B2C worlds. Yeah.
And they were almost very different, and I feel like now they're... I've never seen it more blurred bef- than now.
Like you see B2C companies wanna be more B2B, and I think B2B companies for a while have, have needed to act more consumer-like, like putting, putting more a focus on brand and, and on design and, and not just falling back on the effective but, you know, very tired playbook that, that exists in B2B.
But how do you, how do you think of the brand now? Because, you know, this is... I, I'm having this little sports kick where I had A- Adam Mendelson on last week, and I'm, I'm doing- Yeah...
I'm doing one next week with the Fit Insider guy. How do you think... Because this is... You got a, you get a lot of like-Wind at your back right now. Yeah.
I mean, sports and the intersection of sports with business, with culture, with fashion, et cetera- Yep... has never been greater. And, you know, there's just a bunch of attention and, and money going into this area.
So congrats on choosing, you know, not only an interesting area, but a, a lucrative area. Yeah. 'Cause usually they're not.
Usually it's, you know, it's like Shawn Griff will tell you, [laughs] you know, usually the money is, is in totally un- uninteresting areas. And he's, and he's right, and that's what we figured out, right?
Like, we really... I mean, this is what we learned in the first three years post-investment. Like, we quickly realized, and this is again, this is nothing against the sports industry or anything like that.
Sports industry influence massive. Business, small, right? It's really, really small. You have 30 teams, right? In, you know, someone like Refaat or his business at Skift, right?
There's 30 hotels just on the square block in New York, right? So like, when you think about the difference in influence versus like actual like business impact. Right. Right? Like it looks amazing and yeah. Yeah.
All these things, but like- It's like fashion, honestly. Like fashion, like they... The luxury brands don't spend that much. Yeah. And so what we quickly realized is the endemic.
We had the business broken out into consumer, professional, and endemic, right? From an advertising standpoint, consumer is like the Pepsis of the world. Professionals is like the DeVoats of the world.
And endemic is like people who are selling directly to teams and leagues. The endemic business, again, this is no offense to them, it's just the truth, is very, very small.
So for us to have any success with a scaled advertising business, we had to build a publication that was what we call a prosumer that felt more like Wall Street Journal, that felt more like Bloomberg. Mm-hmm.
That felt more like Financial Times. Because when you think about it, people don't think about the Wall Street Journal as a B2B publication for finance. It's just an enterprise business news publication.
Same thing with Bloomberg, right? Like, it's just... And like they have luxury brands, they have consumer brands, they have professional brands, right?
They're just trying to reach an elevated audience, and so that's the pitch now. But it took us a bit to learn.
And I, I think, you know, if we were in another, let's call it more business-focused vertical, sure, maybe it would make more sense.
You know, even in advertising and, and stuff like that, there's way more brands out there that are probably spending seven figures from a marketing standpoint in these B2B publications from an advertising standpoint where- Yeah.
I mean, you just have so many companies that are involved in, particularly on the marketing side.
I mean, choosing the publishing side is [laughs] is a little different, but you know, particularly on the marketing side, think about all the technologies that they need to operate their businesses, you know?
And- Totally... all of the money starts with marketers. I always say it's... If anyone is wondering why there are multiple marketer halls of fame, [laughs] like this is why. Yeah. Yeah.
It's not because they need it or deserve it. Yeah. Because they, they control a lot of ad spending.
And we just got to the point too where the audience, specifically on social and digital, was getting so big that for us to like really monetize it, we had to be talking at scale to major advertisers who have budget to support that stuff.
And so like, again, now the whole business is really professional and consumer. And I would say this year probably our consumer advertising business will make up 80%- Wow... of our, of our advertising business.
It's funny 'cause when you started going more into consumer, and this is... It's, it's where you come from and stuff.
'Cause I, I it was like, I was like, "Mm, you should stick to like B2B," and you were right, so [laughs]. Yeah. I mean, it, it just... Again, there's still some elements that we do.
But like I always tell people, I'm like, I think about the Wall Street Journal all the time. Right. And it's like, it's like an upside down triangle, right? You have mass scale at the.com digital social level, right?
In which they're, you know, selling advertising against that. Then they have a subscription. You know, I don't know what their monthly uniques are, but let's just call it 50 million monthly uniques.
I think at last I saw they have 4 million paid subs, right? Yeah. So you have 4 million paid subs, and then the Wall Street Journal has events, has a house at Can, has all these other things, right?
That's sort of for even less of the paid subscribers, and it's even more professional. And it has like a B2B twinge to it, but it's coming from what is more of an enterprise and consumer publication.
And so that's what we think about is, you know, we had an event the other day in New York. We had 300 people there, but that's great.
And then we were able to get all the content there and, and since then we've had, I don't know, I think probably a million and a half views on that content alone coming out of that event, and that's great.
But I just think there is an opportunity to have professional elements to, let's call it more consumer brands or more consumer-facing brands, and still be successful. And that I, I...
It just, it just depends on the vertical, right? Yeah. I think it really, really depends on the vertical. Like construction and waste and some of the things- Right...
that Shawn is doing, it, it's probably impossible to make those things more, feel more consumer. Right. Like sports, it's just naturally more consumer. Yeah. Right?
So if we can kind of put this like business lens on this, then it like makes itself- Right... really accretive. I mean, that's it. The, the, the lens I think is, is key.
And I think that like sort of leads to where you make your bets. And I, I thought it was like really smart that you bet on like social and, and you were doing video at what was to me like a high quality.
I mean, you guys are like, you're very small and were able to do video that I was like very jealous of when [laughs] I was at Digiday. I was like how [laughs]... I was like message you now.
I'm like, "How do you, how are you doing like this?" Yeah. Like, we can't do video at all. Yeah. But in, in reality, you know, video didn't make any sense to us because- Yeah...
of the business was mostly enterprise software companies that were trying to sell to marketers and publishers and, you know- Right... video was less important.
I, I just think that's like the other thing too is like knowing what you are, right? Yeah. I think so many of these publishers and things like that in media now are just trying to grasp at whatever is the next thing.
If that's not you, like just don't, don't worry about that, right? For, for us, you know, again, like we've kind of-Aged out of a lot of, like, the, the more B2B stuff, right? And that's fine.
Like, there's gonna be other people who scoop up that revenue, and yeah, okay, whatever, but that's not us anymore- You still, you still- And for us to- You still do a webinar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did a webinar.
You of course, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'll do a webinar. Yeah, totally. I'm not, I'm not- [laughs] I'm not saying we haven't aged completely out, but like- Adam's like, "Hold on a sec. Call me.
I'll do a web- We'll do a webinar." Yeah. I'll do a web- Hey, dollars make me holler, all right? Dollars make me holler. So whatever you wanna do, we'll do it. But yeah, no, I think, like, that's, that's the whole idea.
It's, like, just understanding. Like, again, Industry Dive is a great example. They knew what they were good at, and they did it and they repeated it, and they sold for a major opportunity- Yeah... a major outcome.
Sean didn't try and make those businesses consumer because I'm assuming probably there isn't a real consumer lens to that. Yeah. Cool. And it's just, it's, it's a very different business.
It's, you know, there's, there's, there's marketing services that are, is a heavy element. I mean, you're talking about creative services.
They, I, you know, I'm sure Sean will probably disagree with me, but, I mean, it's marketing services.
They're, they're a lead generation engine, and you need to build a lead gen engine if you're gonna do B2B in a real way. The budgets are not there for brand and thought leadership.
You'll have an extraordinarily small business if, if you just operate on that level. You have to match up a buy and a sell side in, in that kind of business. It's just, it's, it's required.
And, you know, I think they- Totally... they made an interesting bet.
And you sort of did something similar, which I didn't understand also at the time because I was at a company that Henry Blodget called, like, an events company with a website, and that's because events were, you know, up to 85% of, of the business.
And that's not because there's some passion for events. Maybe there was. But, like, it was mostly because that's where the budgets were, right? Totally. And so how are you thinking? 'Cause, I mean, you guys have...
You, you took on a new investor, Jeff Zucker, Redbird- Yep... and then also IMI. Yeah. So it's Redbird IMI is the- Okay. That's both... the joint venture. So it's, it's one, one investment, but it's Redbird IMI. Yeah.
And, you know, taking on, I mean, you'd taken on the initial round, but to me this was like, okay, you're looking to build a, a much bigger business. Is that fair? [laughs] Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, look, like, the business for the first time will do eight figures in revenue this year, which is great, which I think is, again, like, the idea is we've turned down some audience- All right.
So 10 million, $10 million and one cen- and, and one cent is gonna be [laughs]... Yes. No, it should be over more than that. Hopefully 10 million. Ho- hopefully, hopefully over that. Okay, okay. Hopefully over that.
Ho- hopefully over that. Usually when people say eight figures, it's, you know. No, no, no, no, no. It should be hopefully over that. I'll do seven figures. But, like- So I'm catching up. Well, let me see.
Yeah, you're catching up. [laughs] You're right there. Only, like, nine... I mean, we've been doing this for two years. You're... There you go. I got a year head start on you. So there you go. Oh, yeah.
I'm gonna put, I'm gonna actually put that up on, like, on a chart and just so you know. There you go. There you go. Just, just track it. Feel right. [laughs] Yeah. I mean, look, I think it's all about how do we...
We've proven out, in my opinion, a, a lot of it being the audience thesis. I mean, the audience thesis I don't think was ever not there. We knew the engagement was strong.
We knew we were growing all across all platforms. We knew if we took the business of sports, which again is sexy content, like, it's sports, it's business. This is the stuff that everyone likes for the most part, right?
Like, you're not really seeing a bunch of people who don't like this stuff. So when you put it in and package it on the platforms, we've seen growth, right? Like, we're the number one sports publisher on LinkedIn.
We are, you know, very rapidly growing on YouTube. We just started probably a month ago, and we're probably about to cross 10,000 subs on that platform, and we have multiple videos with hundreds of thousands of views.
And so it's like now it's all about proving out the commercial thesis. We've proved out the audience thesis.
We know that's there, and we know there's some things that we need to tweak and continue to adjust and how do we continue to scale the audience.
But I think the big thing is proving out the commercial t- thesis, and, like, with doing that, like, that's part of the reason the IMI stuff really made a ton of sense is that it really is giving us the ability to, for the first time, invest ahead of...
For example, we just hired five or six salespeople with the impact that they're not gonna be really felt for this year, but for next year. We've never had the ability to sell- Yeah...
three, six plus months ahead of time. One, because we've been building the business throughout. Two, we just haven't gotten ahead of the sales cycle and there's been COVID and all these other things.
But for the first time, I mean, like, we're already fielding, it's September, we're already fielding inbound RFPs, and that was in August, for, like, the NFL draft in April of next year.
18 months ago, 12 months ago, right- Yeah... like, we would've never been able to service that. Yeah.
Now we can service that, and now we're going to be able to say, "Hey," pretty well understanding by the end of December, I can look into Q1 and I'm gonna pretty much know where I'm gonna end up. Right.
And we've never had that before. And so I think that's been part of it. And, and, yeah, the idea is how do we build a, a bigger business? Like, how...
We've talked about, you know, realistically, I always talk about, you know, FOS is how do we make it like the WSJ of sports?
I haven't been, like, you know, I haven't been, like, you know, candid or I haven't been, like, quiet about that.
Like I've said it multiple times, like, I think if we can build, like, Wall Street Journal of sports, like specifically with FOS, that's great. With Redbird now, how do we build, like, Dow Jones of sports, right?
That's a different beast where it's like, okay, Front Office Sports can still be, like, a core part of this, but is there other things in the ecosystem around this that makes sense that we can create this ecosystem around?
So that's- And we've identified a bunch of things. All right. So let's talk about that. I wasn't gonna go there, but let's talk about it, because, like, you mentioned, like, not wanting to go horizontal, right?
'Cause there's...
To go back to the Sean example, you know, I, I did a podcast with Sean in, in Washington I think, like, a year or so ago, and we talked about, you know, how most people say they're gonna build multiple publications, and they never get to the multiple publications.
So they started with four, or three or four, and I think one maybe didn't work or whatever, but he, his, his belief was, you know... And so he was always gonna go horizontal.
You know, have a model, have a playbook, and then you just sort of stamp it out across a bunch of different industries. You tweak it a little bit.
But then there's the, the different model, which is we're gonna go narrow and deep. You know, I think Skiff to some degree, maybe Rafat will, will disagree with me, I think they're doing this.
I mean, they're adding a bunch of different, like, services within the same, like, sector. And- Yeah... because once you have a client relationship, there's, there's a lot more you can do.
And I think with-With Dow Jones, I think it's a really interesting example you use because, you know, they are so-- they're broad niche, you know. Business is very broad. Like- Yeah, yeah, yeah...
they're basically capitalism is very broad. Yeah.
But, you know, they're gonna-- they're picking off various areas, whether it's like energy and going very deep within that with things like pricing services and, and whatnot. Correct.
Do you see that as like a, a pathway in that you're gonna be looking to add kind of non-media services? 'Cause I mean, look, a lot of media is the front end to, to better businesses. Yep.
Maybe we could do your barber shops with that, but I don't know. [laughs] That's a different podcast. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, do you, do you see that as, as a pathway, or do you wanna stay- Yeah... pure media?
I think it's, I think it's a mix, right? And, and I think that's the other thing too, is that they have pure media outside of the journal, right?
They have MarketWatch, they have Barron's, you know, they have these other ones, right? They have, I think there's like Financial News or something like that.
Like, they have other media, but they have all these other things that are driving the b- it's the same thing as like Bloomberg, right? Bloomberg has the media business, but they have the terminal business, right?
That's separate of that, and it's obviously it's, it's great. And that's a, that again, I think for us, the way I think about it is like, is there data businesses?
Are there other platforms that, you know, aren't like we're trying to get and doing what we did last time, where we tried to do like a bunch of consumer sports brands.
It's like, no, are there other brands that make sense in this business of sports ecosystem that are maybe not at scale or are some of these things that have relationships with audience and advert- and not advertisers, but direct reader revenue, right?
So like I think about it right now, it's really interesting. Like, people at teams, leagues, agencies, things like that, one, we don't have a subscription, so there's nothing to pay for there.
The only way that I'm getting direct reader revenue or audience revenue is from events, awards, and these are all things that we've launched within the last 12 months.
So is there other things in which these teams, leagues, things like that are paying for, whether it's tech, whether it's data, whatever it may be, that we can then potentially bring into the mix, where all of a sudden we now have direct audience revenue- Yeah...
coming from the core group of people. So I think, yeah. So why haven't, why haven't, why haven't you done subscriptions in-- I mean, you guys have played around with it, and it's been like- Yeah...
and look, you can't do everything, and if you did- Yeah... do try to do everything, like it's a total freaking mess. I mean- I mean, look, I think again, like this comes to the fact, one, I was a nobody, right?
Like we're, we're 10 years as a brand like this year, right?
10 years as a brand, really five years as a business, and really only like for the past two years have we really seen a lot of the acceleration and the heat around the brand. We had to build that, that base.
We had to build that thing.
And we, and we started last year with a registration wall, and that's been good to see, and we have probably, I haven't seen the latest numbers, but I would say anywhere between 40 to 50,000 people who have registered on the site, maybe more than that.
And so again, I just never felt like we were at a point where we, we didn't have, you know, a true editorial leader. We have that person now. So is it something that we can do? I think eventually, right?
I think it's just a, uh, it's another opportunity to have something to sell to that group specifically on a, you know, more of a enterprise level, too, right? Like a, you're selling enterprise subs to, to people.
We just haven't gotten there yet, and the business has been supported well enough from an ad side of things, and honestly, it's been a huge competitive advantage. Yeah. 'Cause we've been fully free.
Well, I mean, you started basically... I mean, you're kind of like a free alternative to SBJ. I mean, when you were more B2B, I guess it would be. Correct. But like- Yes. Early on, for sure, 100%. No doubt.
So tell me how you think of and how do you differentiate. And as I said, sports, uh, is, you know, you were in Cannes, you saw it. I mean, like Stagwell had a massive sport beach.
There was like every-- You would turn around and then some, you know, super athletic, very tall person would be walking by you 'cause there was tons of athletes there.
And there's such a good intertwining between, with sports and media and, and culture. And so everyone's getting into this, right?
Like, I mean, you know, and CNBC just has their thing, obviously, on a more B2B side, I guess. You know, Penske started Sportico a few years ago. Yeah. SBJ is still there. I don't know.
How do you end up thinking about when you're, when you're pitching, obviously, you're talking about going up against ESPN, so the, these are massive. Like, so how- Yeah...
where do you-- Because I think you don't wanna get caught in the middle, right? So- No... how do you avoid getting caught in the middle basically is- Well, so I always tell people we're niche and focus, not scale, right?
So our focus is the business of sports. 100% of what we do is the business of sports, so we're niche in that focus. But that focus has a big audience, right? And there's a lot of people who are interested in that.
And so we're not necessarily competing with ESPN. We're not competing, honestly, with any of these major media outlets in sport from an advertising standpoint.
One, just because of the fact that they have TV and linear assets that we just do not have. But the other thing being is that we offer a lot of brands the ability to get into sports at a cost-effective way.
The ability for us to do 250 to $500,000 deals that you, I mean, you're not gonna even sniff any part of ESPN for that amount of money, right?
But brands can come to us, and we can do a lot of cool stuff around sports at that level. And I think that's a really interesting, you know, thing that we've carved out in this space is the ability to do that.
And so yeah, as you mentioned, everyone's getting into this space or trying to. I always say it's our 100% full-time focus.
We have now 60 plus full-time employees, plus other people who are focused on covering the business of sports, telling you about the business of sports, producing content around the business of sports, selling content, activating, things like that.
And so unless someone is going to make that level of commitment to this space, it's just gonna be hard for them to like really make a, a, a penetration into this space.
Of course, there'll be like places that, you know, again, Wall Street Journal has a sports section. Like, The Athletic does this stuff. CNBC does this stuff, right?
But it's not their core part of their business, which is totally fine, and that's, I think, what they wanna do, and it works for them. But for us, this is 100% of what we do all the time.
And so-I think that's what keeps us from falling into this trap because we're still like really, really focused on one thing, but that real focus on one thing just happens to be, you know, really big.
And I mean, you mentioned, you know, Penske, but you know, like they have like brands that like Variety, like Variety is really focused on one thing, but Variety has a very big audience, right? Yeah.
And there's, you know, and they've been able to build a big business there, and same thing in some of these other ones, right?
So I think it's, I think that's how we stay out of this mix because we're not trying to be a broad like publication in terms of what we cover. Mm-hmm.
Like that's where I think you like, you know, we, we saw it with The Messenger or you saw some of these other ones where it's like they tried to just do everything, and you're gonna have...
And, and we've already established this I think in the media industry, it's like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, you know, Axel Springer if you include all of their things, right?
Like those are gonna be the big, big scaled enterprise media companies. Mm-hmm.
All the things in the middle are gonna have to figure stuff out, and then there's gonna be like the other side of the barbell which is gonna be like the really niche, really focused brands that the big brands won't spend the resources to try and compete with in terms of coverage and stuff like that.
They'll do some of those things, right? Like New York Times has a style reporter and an entertainment reporter and a media reporter, but they're not a media publication, right?
And so I think that's the thing is that if, in media today I feel like if you're in that middle which we've talked about, it's really difficult, and for us to stay out of the middle it means we have to 100% be focused on what we're covering at the Business of Sports and not allow us to try and start covering things that don't make sense because I think that's when you start to find yourself into that middle.
Yeah. So tell me about this faces and franchises. I like the, I like the name of this. We've talked about it, uh- Yeah... privately before. But l- lay out- Yeah...
for people what, what that is and, and, and how that fits into your overall strategy. Yeah. I mean, look, I think when we think about the brand, and I, it, this is nothing new, right?
If you think about ESPN, ESPN is an amalgamation of faces and franchises. You have ESPN the parent brand. Right. Amazing, obviously super strong, but ESPN the parent brand is made up of a bunch of franchises.
First Take, Monday Night Football, you know, Saturday Night College Football, like these are all franch- College GameDay, right?
These are all franchises that ESPN have built inside of the main parent brand that they sell to advertisers. Brand XYZ, you want football? Here's Monday Night Football. Here's college or here's College GameDay.
If that's what you want, these are the always on evergreen content franchises that we have that you can buy around. Same thing with faces. They have Stephen A. Smith. They have all these things who make up ESPN, right?
Yeah. And so for so long we were focused because of the fact that we didn't, we, no one knew the brand, right? We were always brand first, brand first, brand first, brand first.
Everything has to be Front Office Sports first. Everything has to be Front Office Sports first because we want people to know what it means.
And so now it's like, okay, how do we find faces that we can add into the mix who have, you know, personalities or whatever it is like that, that can be a creative but also known as part of Front Office Sports, right?
That's how you get to that next level of growth, right? Yeah.
I want people to know people who work here in a way that's different, and I think The Athletic did a good job of this when they, you know, first came out, right? They hired all of these known faces- Yeah...
and they, you know, were able to build a business around that. So- But then they went in a totally opposite direction. Yeah. Totally, 100%, right?
I mean, that business is entirely different now that I don't know anyone, like I, I'm like obviously everyone who, who listens to this podcast knows I'm like a Philadelphia sports addict and- Yeah...
I used to know every single person from The Athletic who covered and, and then, you know, it became, "Oh, well they're gonna cover the Eagles but they're also gonna cover the Flyers" and it's just like- Yeah...
totally different. And I get it. Yeah. The numbers probably didn't work. Correct, 100%. So I think that's the idea. So how, how does that, how are you applying that?
So I mean you did an event around Mike McCarthy, right? Yeah. And, but that's like sort of like it's a franchise but also a face I guess. Yeah, totally. Right? So like the idea is like how do we...
And again, this is not, this is not new in media, right? Like you look at Axios and what they have with like Pro Rata and Dan and Media Trends and Sarah and you just go on- Yeah... and on down the list, right?
We just had never g- We hadn't gotten to that point. And so now like Tuned In is a great example where we were covering media, specifically sports media. Mike has been. He's been working for us for four years.
He's been covering sports media for us for four years. Like he's been doing this, but we never packaged it and positioned it in a way in which like there was a column, there was a newsletter, and there was an event.
And so, you know, by the time we, we, we started thinking about this at the end of last year, we, uh, you know, started to really do it at the beginning of this year, and then we obviously w- had the events and the newsletter.
But we went from having media coverage on the site, which was great, driving tons of traffic, awesome, all this stuff, to now we have the same media coverage on the site but we have a newsletter a- and now a six-figure plus event and a true column and a brand around it that we can say, "Hey, brand XYZ, if you wanna be around sports media, Tuned In is our like sports media thing."
Yeah. And so the idea being is how do we take more of these things and build more franchises. It's still Front Office Sports Tuned In. Yeah. And like Semafor is another great example.
They've done a good job at this, like they have Semafor Flagship, Semafor Politics, Semafor Golf. They just have franchises inside of the p- main parent brand. Yeah.
And I think it's really important for us too because for so long we have had the fact that people only see Front Office Sports as a newsletter because that's what we started.
And so now the idea is how do we get it to the point where no, no, no, Front Office Sports is multi-platform. Like we have all of these things.
And so part of the reasoning being that we wanna do more franchises is so they understand that wait, no, Front Office Sports isn't just the twice daily newsletter and the things that come on the weekend.
Like we have tons of stuff. And so like we have FOS Explains now, which is like another franchise that's being run by one of our multimedia reporters, Daryl, that we've built out on YouTube.
It's a weekly franchise that kind of is like an 8 to 10-minute thing. We did it for eight episodes, and we sold the ninth one to, to Gatorade. Yeah. And it's like well wait a second.
And so again we're in this kind of time period, and a couple things. One we think about this stuff in three prongs. It's owned, licensed, acquired.
So how do we create owned IP?That's stuff that we're building internally.
Is there license opportunities in which we can find creators, accounts, things like that, that may not have the now sales infrastructure that we have that we can take advantage of and be like distribution and sales partners of?
And then eventually do we acquire stuff? And I don't think we're there yet. And then we are transitioning from most of the business to date has been built if sold. Like, we were only building these things- Yeah...
if we were selling it, which is fine, but one, increases your costs. Two, limits the performance because you don't know, right?
And then the other thing is it, it just, it- it's a lot harder, where if we now are going, we're, we're going from built if sold to built to sell. So FOS Explains, we built that as like- Right...
organic content that we're investing in that we will eventually sell brands to align with. Look, it built if sold, I mean, I do that basically.
But like it's a way to de-risk, and it's, it's incredibly smart I think when, you know, particularly when you're early on and you just, you can't afford to, to make the kind of bets. You know this.
Like, you couldn't afford to make that bet- No... like five years ago. Correct. Like, it wouldn't have made sense. Correct. But it comes a point where- Correct...
you know, if you're going out to a brand and saying, "We, you, you gotta believe in this," and they're like, "Wait a second. You're not making it unless you sell it? You don't believe in it. Why should I believe in it?
You don't believe in it." Correct. And that's I think- Correct... a rational sort of response I, uh, from.
A- I mean, I think the, the, the reason why we were able to sell FOS Explains to Gatorade so fast was because the fact that we had five episodes that had, you know, between 50 to 100,000 views, and the performance was already there organically.
So they're like, "Okay, it makes a ton of sense. We can do this," right? It's just like proving it. I actually, I randomly listened to a podcast the other day that Dave Portnoy was on.
I think he was on the All In podcast, and it was actually pretty- Oh my God [laughs]... interesting to hear. Yeah, I know. Did, did, did the earth like open up? [laughs] Yeah. I gotta, I gotta get into that.
It was, it was interesting. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta listen to it. It was pretty good. But he was, he was talking- I just, by the way, I just listened to a Jason Cal- Have, have you heard the Semafor media?
I sent Ben Smith a po- [laughs] a text- No... after this. Jason Calacanis, my former boss, went onto the Semafor, their media podcast. What is it? Uh-huh. Signals. Yeah.
And it was a, it was a really, it was a really uncomfortable interview. I highly recommend everyone, 'cause I love all- Got it... I love all of their podcasts. Got it. I'll, I'll have to check it out.
[laughs] But he w- he wasn't on the All In one. It was Shamoth, and then I can't remember the other guy's name. Okay.
But it was interesting 'cause Dave was like, we had just focused so much on creating content that we didn't even focus on the advertiser stuff.
But, but because we already had the content, once we just brought in sales teams, it was almost easy to sell because the content was already, like, performing.
And look, not everyone has this luxury, and, like, it's an entirely different thing, and there's a lot of things. Like, same thing with us, you know. We're talking about it.
We had to do built if sold because the way that our capital was in the business, like, we just didn't have the ability to take the bets at the time on stuff to build to sell.
And so it just makes it now easier if we can say, hey, we always had the newsletter. That was our always on evergreen content thing. But there's only so much inventory there. There's only so much sales velocity there.
So if we can build these other franchises that are always on, evergreen, and if a brand comes to us and says, "Hey, I want college football," we can be like, "Oh, here are the things we're already doing in college football.
Here's how you can integrate." And it just makes it so much easier.
And so, like, that's the, the, the transition that we're going in through right now is looking in an ideal world, hopefully by the time, you know, we talk again in a year or whatever it is, that I would want probably like a majority of our revenue, let's call it 51.5% of that, but like a majority of the revenue to be like more along the lines of built to sell because the margins are better, the editorial team is excited about it because they are the ones building the product, and we're just aligning the brand with the stuff that they're already doing.
And so it just, it just makes it a, an entirely better ecosystem. It makes it better for advertisers. It's much more turnkey, more transactional in some way, shape, or form, so there's not so many approvals and like...
Mm-hmm. So that's, that's, that's the idea. And you own it more. You, you have more leverage. You own it. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, not that it's adversarial, but at the end of the day, you know, if you're, if you're doing a built, if you're doing it, you know, from scratch, it can all of a sudden move into like a sort of weird in-between where it's, "Is this custom content we're making for you, or is this like something where you are attaching yourself to our content?"
That's gonna get a little [sighs] We tell them it's like it's, you either have the... We tell our brands, "Either you have the chance and the custom content to be the storyteller-" Yeah...
"or on the other side, you have the chance to align with the storytelling." All right. Adam, this has been a masterclass. I hope so. [laughs] It has been, seriously. Oh. This was great.
As you know, I could talk about this all day, so thanks so much. Congrats again for, for all the success because, you know, you've earned it.
You've done the hard work, so you know, it'll still be hard, but [laughs] Always hard. It's never not hard. Yeah. That's media. But I guess, I mean, you can't get into media and expect it to not be hard.
I think that's the issue though, is a lot of people have tried to get into media and it's like, "Oh, it looks so sexy and so fun," and then they realize, "Oh, no. It's sexy and fun on the outside.
On the inside, it's not sexy and fun." Yeah. Well, that's the moat, how hard it is. [laughs] Yeah. There's a moat. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Awesome. Don't- Adam, thank you so much. [outro music]