Building House of Highlights into a sports media powerhouse

[The
genesis of the project came from] a guy named Omar Raja in his college
dorm room. The idea was: “I’m not seeing the highlights that I want on
the platforms where I’m spending time.” Seems like kind of table stakes
now that you see the proliferation of highlights basically everywhere
you look on social media. But back then it really was a novel idea.

And
the Bleacher Report leadership at the time [. . .] led the acquisition
of bringing in this Instagram account into the sports world and saying,
“this account is doing something interesting—it’s speaking with young
people, it’s overperforming in ways that seem to not map to what typical
sports companies are doing.”

[It was ultimately a credit to
Bleacher Report] who let House of Highlights incubate as a startup
within the larger company, allowing it space to grow and preserve its
unique voice.

From
there, the idea was: let’s figure out if we can make this into a
multi-platform media company that can stand on its own and be
incremental to what Bleacher Report was already doing. So how do we make
this differentiated and give fans a reason to want to follow both
accounts? 

How do you make sure House of Highlights keeps its own voice and identity?

A
lot of it maps down to a steadfast commitment to voice and clarity of
who we are and who we’re not. A lot of it is due to the organizational
structure where House of Highlights is able to maintain operational and
strategy independence. We have our own go-to-market strategy, we have
our own assets and content strategy and logos and identities and even
fonts.

But
it does take a day-in and day-out focus to balance the two, because we
do eat from the same pool of sports rights and sometimes resources.

You
moved from Instagram highlights to hour-long programming. What were the
conversations like around developing long-form content?

When
we first started to make original content, it was almost out of
necessity creator-led. We were a small scrappy team, and in many
instances we couldn’t afford to pay huge athletes. There were creators
that were starting to blow up on Instagram and YouTube, but were nowhere
near the scale we’re talking about today. We were able to form big
partnerships with creators that are now household names [like] Supreme
Dreams, and Mark Phillips. All of it tied back to sports, youth culture,
and putting an entertaining lens on what it is to be a sports fan or to
experience sports with your friends in a group chat.

The
most value that we’ve gotten from building habitual long-form
viewership is making sure that an hour or two-hour-long video has a
clear path to short form [because] we have massive amounts of short-form
expertise and scale, and people are expecting that from us. 

How has House of Highlights’ approach to creator deals evolved?

[When
looking at the creator’s growth chart, we want to be] where they’re
starting to take off, but before they get to the point where they’re a
household name and they’re the cream of the crop, not to say we don’t
still want to work with them at that point, but typically that’s when
they’re getting overpaid by some of the legacy companies. 

[We]
built a lot of the formats that have been replicated by many of the big
leagues and some of the big media companies. [Creators] know they’re
not just showing up for an appearance fee or to check a box. We’re
trying to build special content together and special franchises and IP
that can scale. 

House of Highlights, as we’ve discussed,
is publishing across multiple platforms. How do you approach content
programming across those platforms that all reward different types of
content and cadence?

[On YouTube], you’re going to see
full game recaps for folks that maybe aren’t in the cable bundle and
aren’t watching two- to three-hour games—they typically come to House of
Highlights YouTube for a 10- to 15-minute recap of that game.

On TikTok,
because of how the For You Page operates, you can publish more, and
those videos will find their homes without taking up all of someone’s
feed. On Instagram, if someone follows House of Highlights and we’re
publishing a hundred times a day, it will feel like that in your feed.

Under-34
sports fans are watching less and less live cable sports events—[so
how] can we build an appointment viewing experience for that fandom?
From an advertising perspective, obviously that is super valuable, and
it’s increasingly hard to reach that audience at scale.

What’s next for House of Highlights?

We’ve
got three events left in our Creator League season. We’ve got a
basketball knockout five on five, and then a championship series.
That’ll carry us through the end of November. Based on the numbers that
we’re seeing, we’re excited about what the championship could look
like. 

And then honestly, the growth of our Fans versus Haters
series and where that overarching brand can go in terms of debate style
content for a younger audience. 

[At the end of the day, a lot of
it] comes down to our focus on YouTube and how we’re making House of
Highlights a broadcast channel.