This week, I was joined by one of my favorite media entrepreneurs, Adam White. Adam has built Front Office Sports from a college project to the $10 million in revenue mark, with backing from Jeff Zucker's Redbird IMI.

Some of the topics we covered:

• Why investing in creative strategy is critical to break through with big brands.
• The “faces and franchises” approach.
• The limits of built-if-sold projects.
• The decision to put off subscriptions.

between the FOS handle on Twitter and the frontofficeports.

com domain.

We probably ended up spending like 20 grand, best 20 grand we've ever spent.

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 up level and, and start to sign major brands, like that's the expectation.

because that brand has to be like, I trust these guys, like these, if these materials look this good in the pitch, I can expect that the execution is going to look that good.

brand totally matters, and absolutely, but you have to get to start, right?

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.

Then don't play in that game then.

Right.

Welcome to the rebooted show.

I am Brian Marcy.

I'm very happy to be having this conversation with Adam White, the CEO of front office sports for a few reasons.

One, Adam was the first guest on, on this podcast, like a couple of years ago.

So, he kicked

it off 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, so you had no idea because you could have, you could have gone into so many different industries and killed it.

So I'm glad that you're in this industry because we need more, we need more people like you who, are, are building great properties and doing it the right way.

I mean, I, I think the fact that I had no idea and it was completely blind flying in part of the reason why this has worked out.

Yeah.

You just kind of let it rip.

but yeah, no, excited to

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, 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 in his telling, even moving to Silicon Valley.

He just thought of it as like, wow, you know, someday I want to build like one of these companies, but he didn't think he was, he didn't

think 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 the 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 interviewed people and I asked them, you know, one, how they made it in sports and stuff like that.

And this is when the platform was an entirely different type of platform.

And, and it was essentially four years of market research.

Like I was in school, 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 40 years, this is exactly what everyone has told me that is going to work.

And let's just do this.

Yeah.

And I think that's so important for anyone like is like building, you know, one of these media businesses wants to have a front office sports, like a few years, you got to get close to the metal, you know, you got to be, you got to be in it and like doing it and whether that, you know, talking to customers, you know, literally you were creating this thing.

And I think sometimes people want to skip that step.

Yeah.

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, you're not doing the interviews now.

but it's super important cause it gives you like a feel for the business that 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 going to be at 30, 000 feet.

It doesn't make sense.

there has to be like some as some 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 the media is a do the work type of industry, in my opinion.

Like it's not going to 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?

If you're not creating content every day, if you're not doing these things every day, like there is no product, right?

It's not like you can just ship an update and or ship a tech company or product and sell it, You know, it's, it's has its pros and cons, obviously, but I think like it really is something that if people want to 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.

I would always say to like our team, my last job, you know, the, the good news and the bad news is we get to do this all over again tomorrow.

We get to recreate the product.

And if we did a bad job today, we got another shot at it tomorrow.

so,

I've always told people in this 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, and how you've changed and it's, there'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.

Yeah.

So I want to get to today, but just like to go back.

I mean, it, you say the, the brand has been around sort of 10 years.

Right.

Cause

that's, that was back when, when you're at the U right.

and, but you consider the company when I helped you get your, your first investor,

yes, exactly, 100%.

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's done pretty well for himself, so you should be calling him up and saying, Hey, where's, where's, where's my side of

I don't know.

I want, I want to tell, well, I mean, we do this regularly, but I, you know, I want to, I want to get paid on both sides.

let's be real.

You guys both owe me.

And it's fine.

We'll talk about the details later.

but when

you think about what were, you know, let's talk about like, what do you think of, because, 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 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?

Because you have to make decisions every day and it is, It is just like a slog, right?

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, but what do you think were like some important decisions that you made that you're really glad that you.

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 just is, you've seen the horror stories of people who want to invest in media who think it's cool and like it way over their skis or this, that, and the other, and don't really understand it.

We have, I mean, look, the media industry is, you know, better than anyone has been.

Ridiculous the past five years, 10 years, right?

Like I think about it all the time.

And 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 top 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 should, 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 vice versa, legacy publishers and things like that are looking to work with 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 at FOS handle on Twitter.

Before that we were at F R N T.

Oh yeah, I remember

I, yeah,

I was like, you're missing, you're missing a few,

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 they're citing our reporting or their, things like that, it's like, at F O S, 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 FRNTOfficeSport on the handle was because our original e or our com was FRNTOfficeSport because FrontOfficeSports.

com was, someone was cyber squatting on it, but again, it was like a premature ejaculation website.

Like, I don't even know, but

Seriously?

Yeah, seriously.

I'm dead serious.

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 Wisconsin.

Finally, this person, and this was probably like four years ago.

this wasn't even that long ago, maybe even less than that.

we probably ended up between the FOS handle on Twitter and the frontofficeports.

com domain.

We probably ended up spending like 20 grand, best 20 grand we've ever spent.

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 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 concept we'll use in this case, cause we're in sports, Those are seen as safe.

Everyone knows them.

It's safe.

For us, it's not.

Well, and it is once, you know, once we've proved it out a bunch now, 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.

It's we have a creative strategy team.

We have an 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.

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, I trust these guys, like these, if these materials look this good in the pitch, I can expect that the execution is going to look that good.

Yeah, and I think it's funny because you say that, because you have to be super scrappy, because you're saying things that it's like, when you, like brand totally matters, and absolutely, but you have to get to start, right?

And you

have to be okay when things are imperfect, like I'm sure you look back at, you know, things from, I 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, because you have to keep getting better.

And, but you can't get comfortable being.

Being scrappy forever, right?

Because

if you want to like if you want to 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 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.

Then don't play in that game then.

Right.

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, but like, it looked kind of 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 man, I was trying to be like, to you know, I don't know, Brooklyn creative.

but like, it was just like, 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, a hundred percent 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 scaled digital and video right now.

And so

it's like, why would we like only focus on 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 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's like a false path.

You know, you went to, I used to do these like hash house Harriers runs, right.

And then there was this, can you try to follow along a path, but you would always go down false, false paths.

And then you'd have to double, double back.

And that

way everyone ended up at the bar at the same time.

What were some.

I have a couple because I've been, you know, I've, I've kept closed tabs on,

on,

Yeah.

I mean, look like we tried to be like a sports newsletter networking and

yeah, that's the one, that's

the

yeah, that was like, that was like totally It's hard enough to build one

brand, let

explain, I know, that's exact, the

association was it,

Yeah.

Yeah.

The associate, look, we were, we were sucked into the newsletter game and in COVID and thinking like, holy shit, this is going to be forever.

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 run off the sports, but we can have an NBA newsletter.

We got 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's going to 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 impossible.

So many people have asked us like would you ever do for an office real estate?

Would you ever do for an office this and i'm like no Because front office sports just works for what we have in the brand that we've built and we're just going to focus a hundred percent 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 amalgamation of different brands and all of those brands don't really have.

A true POV or a true team that's focused on it.

They're like shared resources across the teams and they're trying to sell all of the inventory, the various things.

It's like in media, it's just really, really difficult, let alone building one brand, but to build multiple brands.

So I think that was like a big issue.

I'm not an issue, just like 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 products, like a pro product.

That was like way, way, way too early.

And like, it was like one person.

And like, that was we had people sign up, which was great.

And we were like, holy cow, this is

yeah, but it can give you like sort of false signals, right?

Because like, I mean, you'll have people, 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, Unfortunately, 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 going to be, this is a home run and stuff.

And then all of a sudden

it's like, Hmm, not so much.

and it's

hard to, it's hard to know until you do it and you have to, yeah, 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, but 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 is all like in B2B, but I've like, you know, been a, analyst, I guess, and a reporter with the B2C worlds.

And they were almost very different.

And I feel like now they're I've never seen it more blurred than now.

Like you see B2C companies want to be more B2B.

And I think B2B companies for a while have, have needed to act Consumer like like putting putting more, focus on brand and on design and, and not just falling back on the effective, but, you know, very tired playbook, that that exists in B to B.

But how do you how do you think of the brand now?

Because I'm having this little sports kick where I had Adam Mendelsohn on last week.

And I'm, I'm doing, I'm doing one next week with the Fit Insider.

how do you think, because this is, you gotta, you got a lot of like.

wind at your back right now.

I

mean, sports and the intersection of sports with business, with culture, with fashion, et cetera, has never been greater.

And, you know, there's just a bunch of attention and money going into this area.

So congrats on choosing not only an interesting area, but a lucrative area.

Cause

usually they're not usually, you know, it's like you, yeah, usually the money is, is in totally on, on interesting

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 Rafat or his business at Skiff, 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?

Like it looks amazing and yeah, all these things,

It's like,

fashion, honestly, like fashion, like 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 Pepsi's of the world.

Professionals is like the Deloitte's of the world.

And endemic is like the 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 it prosumer that felt more like Wall Street Journal that felt more like Bloomberg 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 in 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 And 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 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

I mean, you just have so many companies that are involved in particularly on the marketing side.

I mean, choosing the publishing side 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

all of the money starts with marketers.

I always say it's if anyone is wondering why there are multiple marketer halls of fame, like this is why

it's not because they need it or deserve it because they, they control a lot of it.

Ad spending.

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 percent of our of our advertising

It's funny because when you started going more into consumer and this is it's, it's where you come from and stuff.

Cause I don't, it was like, I was like, Hmm, you should stick to like B2B and you were right.

So

yeah, I mean it's just again there's still some elements that we do but like I always tell people i'm like You I think about the wall street journal all the time.

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 time I saw they have 4 million paid subs.

yeah.

have 4 million paid subs.

And then the wall street journal has events.

Has a house that can has all these other things, right?

That's your 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 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, it just, it just depends on the vertical, right?

I think it really, really depends on the vertical, like construction and waste and some of the things that Sean is doing.

it's probably impossible to make those things more feel more consumer like sports.

It's just naturally more consumer.

Right.

So if we can kind of put this like business lens on this, then it like makes itself 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.

I thought it was like really smart that you bet on like social 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 we're able to do video that I was like very jealous of when I was a digit.

I was like, how I was like message, you know, like, how do you, how are you

doing like this?

Let's, we can't do video at all, but in reality.

You know, video didn't make any sense, to us

because of the business was mostly enterprise software companies are trying to sell to marketers and publishers and, you

know, video is less important.

I just think that's like the other thing too, is like knowing what you are.

Right.

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, there's gonna be other people who scoop up that revenue and Yeah, okay, whatever.

But that's not us

you still, you still, you still do a webinar.

I

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

yeah.

Of course.

yeah, yeah,

you'll, do a

yeah, Totally.

I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying we haven't aged completely out, but

Adam's like hold on a sec.

Call me.

I'll do a, we'll do a webinar.

all $2 make me hollow.

All right.

Dollars make me hollow.

So whatever you wanna do, we'll do it.

but yeah, no, I think like that's, that's the whole idea is like just understanding, like again.

Industry dive is a great example of they knew what they were good at and they did it and they repeated it and they sold for a major opportunity and 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.

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.

Yeah.

engine and you need to build a lead gen engine if you're going to 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, they, they, They made an interesting bet and you sort of did something similar, which I didn't understand also because I was at a company that Henry Blodgett called like an events company with a website.

And that's because events were, you know, up to 85 percent 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.

Totally.

and so how are you thinking?

Cause I mean, you guys have.

you, you took on a new investor, Jeff Sucker, Redbird, and then also IMI.

Yeah.

So it's Redbird IMI is the, is 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 much bigger business.

Is that fair?

Yeah.

I mean, look like the business for a first time, we'll do eight figures in revenue this year, which is great.

which I think is.

Again, like the idea is we've

proved out the

10 million, 10 million in one set and one set is going to be

Now,

hopefully more than that.

Oh, really?

Hopefully over that.

Hopefully over that.

Hopefully

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.

So I'm catching up.

Yeah, you're catching up.

You're right there.

only like nine, I mean, we've been doing this for two years.

I got an eight year head start on you

Oh yeah.

I'm going to I'm going to actually put that up on like on a chart just

you go,

it.

Felt right.

yeah, I mean, look, I think it's all about how do we, we've proven out, in my opinion, 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 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 into that.

How do we continue to scale the audience?

But I think the big thing is proving out the commercial thesis and like with doing that, like that's part of the reason that 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 are not going to be really felt for this year, but for next year, we've never had the ability to sell 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?

Like we would have never been able to service that.

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 going to pretty much know where I'm going to end up.

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 bigger business?

Like how we've talked about, You know, realistically, I always talk about, you know, FOS and 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 mean like quiet about that.

Like I've said it multiple times, like I think if we can build like the Wall Street Journal of sports, like specifically with FOS, that's great.

With Redbird now, how do we build like the 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 That makes sense that we can create this ecosystem

around and we've identified a bunch of things.

all right.

So let's talk about that.

I wasn't going to 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 did a podcast with Sean in Washington and we talked about, you know, how, Most people say they're going to 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 going to 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 going to go narrow and deep.

You know, I think Skiff to some degree, maybe Rafit 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, 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're so, they're broad niche, you know, business is very broad,

Yeah.

they're basically capitalism is very broad, but you know, they're going to, they're picking off various areas, whether it's like energy and going very deep within that with things like pricing services

and whatnot.

Do you see that as like a pathway in that you're going to be looking to add kind of non media?

Services because I mean, look, a lot of media is the front end to, to better

businesses.

maybe we could do your barbershops with that, but I don't know.

that's a different podcast.

Yeah.

Yeah.

but you know, do you, do you see that as, as a pathway or do you want to

stay, pure media?

I think it's, I think it's a mix, right?

and I think that's the other thing too, is that they have pure media outside of the journal, right?

They have market watch, 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.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But they have all these other things that are driving the business.

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 that's obviously, it's it's great, and that's that again.

I think for us, the way I think about it is, is there data businesses?

Are there other platforms that, you know, aren't like we're trying to get in 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 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 coming from the core group of people, so,

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, and look, you can't do everything, and if you

did, do try to do everything like it's a total freaking mess.

I mean, look, I think again, like this comes to the fact when I was a nobody, right?

Like we're, we're 10 years as a brand, like this year, right?

10 years in the 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 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, 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 you're selling enterprise subs 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

Well, we 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

Correct.

Yes.

Early on for sure.

100%.

I won't

tell me how you think of, and how do you differentiate in, as I said, sports 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 because there was tons of athletes there.

and there's such a good, intertwining between sports and media and, and culture.

And so everyone's getting into this, right?

Like, I mean, you know, CNBC just has their thing, obviously, on a more B2B side, I guess.

You know, Penske started Sportico a few years ago.

SPJ 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 these are

like, so how, where do you, because I think you don't want to get caught in the middle, right?

So how do you avoid getting caught in the middle?

Basically.

Well, so I always tell people we're niche and focus, not scale, right?

So our focus is the business of sports.

100 percent 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 and sports 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, 000 to 500, 000 deals that you, I mean, you're not going to 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 percent 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 going to be hard for them to like really make 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 want to do and it works for them.

But for us, this is a hundred percent 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 like, they have like brands that like variety, like variety is really focused on one thing, but variety has a very big audience, right.

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 like that's where I think you like, you know we saw it with the messenger and you saw some of these other ones where it's like they tried to just do everything and You're gonna have 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 their things, right?

Like those are gonna be the big big scaled enterprise media companies and All of the things in the middle are going to have to figure stuff out.

And then there's going to be like the other side of the barbell, which is going to 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?

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 in media today, I feel like if you're in that middle, which we've talked about, it's really difficult for us to stay out of the middle, it means we have to 100 percent 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.

So tell me about this faces and franchises.

I like the, I like the name of this.

We've talked about it

privately before, but lay out 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 this is nothing new, right?

if you think about ESPN, ESPN is an amalgamation of faces and franchises.

You have ESPN, the parent brand, 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 French college game day, right?

These are all franchises that ESPN have built inside of the main parent brands that they sell to advertisers brand X, Y, Z.

You want football?

Here's Monday night football.

Here's college or here's college game day.

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?

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 Foreign Office Sports, right?

that's how you get to that next level of growth, right?

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 and they, you know, were able to build a business around that.

But then they went in the totally opposite direction.

If you

totally a hundred percent, right?

I mean, that business is entirely different now

I don't know anyone like I, I'm like, obviously everyone who listens, pockets knows I'm like a Philadelphia sports addict.

And I used to know every single person from the athletic who covered.

And then, you know, it became, Oh, well, they're going to cover the Eagles, but they're also going to cover the fly.

And it's just it's totally different.

And I get it.

The numbers probably didn't work.

correct.

A hundred percent.

so how, how does that, how are you applying that?

So, I mean, you did a, an event around, Mike McCarthy, right?

And, but that's like sort of like, it's a franchise, but also a face,

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 and on down the list, right?

we just had never, we hadn't gotten to that point.

And so now, like, TunedIn 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 started thinking about this at the end of last year, we, you know, started to, really do it at the beginning of this year, then we obviously had the events in the newsletter.

But, we went from having media coverage on the site, which is great, driving tons of traffic, awesome, all the stuff, to now we have the same media coverage on the site, but we have a newsletter 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 want to be around sports media tuned in is our like sports media thing And so the idea being is how do we take more of these things and build more franchises?

It's still for office sports tuned in and like semaphore is another great example They've done a good job of this like they have semaphore flagship semaphore politics semaphore golf They just have franchises inside of the main parent brand 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, no.

For office sports is multi platform.

Like we have all of these things.

And so part of the reasoning being that we want to do more franchises is so they understand that wait, no, for 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 eight to ten minute thing.

We did it for eight episodes, and we sold the ninth one to Gatorade.

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 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 up 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 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 just it's a lot harder Where if we now are going we're going from built if sold to built to sell So fos explains we built that as like organic content that we're investing in that we will eventually sell brands to align with

Look, it built it 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

like five years ago,

like, and it wouldn't have made sense, but it comes a

point where, you know, You know, if you're going out to a brand and saying, we, you, you got to 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 and that's, I think a rational sort of response from,

I mean, I think 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, views and the performance was already there organically, so they're like, okay, this 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 interesting to hear.

did the earth like open up?

yeah, yeah.

I gotta, I

gotta

interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You got to listen to it.

It was pretty good, but he

I just, by the way, I just listened to a Jason.

Semaphore Media?

I sent Ben Smith a text after this.

Jason Calacanis, my former boss, went on to the, Semaphore, their, media podcast.

What is it?

Signals?

And, it was, it was a really, it was really uncomfortable because I

got it.

got it.

I'll have to check it out.

But he wasn't on the all in one.

It was, Shemoth.

And then I can't remember the other guy's name.

but it was interesting because Dave was like, we had just focused so much on creating content that we didn't even focus on the advertiser stuff.

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 or 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 transition that we're going on through right now is looking at 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 percent 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're the ones building the product and we're just aligning the brands with the stuff that they're already doing.

and so it's just, it just makes it an entirely better ecosystem, it makes it better for advertisers, it's much more turnkey, more transactional in some ways, shape, or form, so there's not so many approvals and like

And you own it more.

You have more

leverage in it.

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?

this can get a little

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 or on the other side you have the chance to align with the storytelling.

right, Adam, this has been a masterclass.

I hope so.

It has been seriously.

This is 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

it'll still be hard, but

Always hard.

It's never not hard.

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.

There's a lot of people who've 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

Yeah.

Well, that's the moat, how hard it is.

There's a moat.

That's it.

Awesome.

Adam, thank you so much.