Overtime is a digital-media start-up based on Brooklyn that is focusing on emerging high school sports stars. Their aim is to become a huge brand for high school sports that can rival the size and impact of ESPN. They are one step closer to their dream thanks to a round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley VC firm, that has so far raised $9.5 million.
The investment from Andreessen Horowitz was led by Jeff Jordan who is a former basketball player. He also led the firm’s early investments in Pinterest and Airbnb. This company was not the only one to invest in Overtime. Through his firm Durant CO., NBA star Kevin Durant also made the decision to invest. David Stern, a former NBA commissioner, is another new investor. He made his investment, which was led by Greycroft, during the $2.5 million seed round of the startup.
Michael Spirito, a Fox Sports Regional Networks executive, is one of the individual investors in Overtime. Others who have joined him in making investments include Redpoint Ventures’ Geoff Yang, Box Group, Durant Co.’s Rich Kleiman, Afore Capital, Fitz Gate, 645 Ventures, Imagination Capital, and TACK Ventures.
Overtime was founded by Dan Porter and Zack Weiner in 2016. Porter is a serial entrepreneur who is the former head of digital for WME. Now the CEO of Overtime, he developed a games startup called OMGPOP which he then sold for $180 million to Zynga in 2012. Zynga shut down OMGPOP the following year. Zack Weiner is a former chess champion who has now become an entrepreneur.
The pair has founded Overtime so they can produce short-form content for YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram. They will do this in collaboration with their staff and a network of videographers. They are targeting this content at a younger demographic who are no longer watching the same amount of sports on television as their older counterparts.
According to Porter, the younger generation are no longer interested in sitting and watching a three-hour televised sports match. They would prefer to watch the highlights on the Internet later. He says that the older presenters on televised games are out of touch with younger people, for whom celebrities are the stars of Instagram and YouTube.
So far, Overtime’s videos have attracted over one billion viewers. This has caught the attention of the sports world and they have been picked up by Steph Curry, the star of Golden State Warriors, and by ESPN. Overtime has also developed content partnerships with NBC Sports Philadelphia and NBC Universal’s Sports Net New York.
Many of the top high-school sports players have thousands of followers despite receiving no traditional media coverage. This is something that Overtime is utilizing to their advantage as they can use the reach of such players.
The President of Overtime, Zack Weiner, has said they are the first to create a brand that reaches these kids. The market for professional sports is already massively over saturated but these younger players are new and exciting.
Overtime now has 24 full-time employees at their Brooklyn base. Furthermore, they also use the services of a network of over 100 remote videographers. These videographers submit up to 1,000 clips of young sports stars each night that Overtime can then post on social media sites. The focus is on behind-the-scenes clips and short highlights rather than the coverage of full games.
Follow Us
