Adam White on Building The Politico of Sports

Adam White, Founder & CEO of Front Office Sports, is as unlikely a media operator as there ever was. FOS started as a college project that Adam hoped he would be able to leverage into a job. When that failed, he figured he might as well see where this could take him. So far, that strategy is working.In this show, we discussed a variety of important topics, but a few things jumped out.On building for a prosumer audienceThe business of sports as a core topic is a multi-billion dollar business, but there are so many adjacent industries that intersect with sports. This intersection is where Adam believes his company is able to excel the most. Additionally, there are so many job functions outside of core sports that his audience comes from because of a general interest in sports.This opens up an opportunity for Front Office Sports to generate revenue from more than just endemic and non-endemic b2b advertisers; specifically, he's talking about brand advertisers. In one deal, Anheuser-Busch sponsored one of their awards shows, which would likely never have been heard of from a b2b publication.The Politico of sportsOne of the reasons Adam believes this is the right approach is because he believes he can build the Politico of sports. If you look at Politico's business, it has 100 million people visiting its website, but only about 30,000 are paying subscribers. The secret is that each of those subscribers is incredibly high priced.The same hopes to be true for FOS. Presently, it hopes to serve this broader audience that works around sports. But at some point in the future, it might identify a new product opportunity that could benefit from a high priced subscription. However, as Adam said, if that's just slapping a paywall in front of their content, he'll be disappointed.Young startups need to constantly fight for a dollarWe discussed a great story about how FOS launched a podcast that had a crypto advertiser. It had a football player who was a fan of bitcoin that was supposed to be the host. At the last minute, the player backed out of the project, so Adam had to take over because it was a high ticket sponsorship that the company couldn't afford to lose.Looking at the Anheuser-Busch deal, Adam talked through the execution for the Rising 25 sponsorship that included creating their own soccer team with original kits. The flywheel of media is such that any dollar you bring in ensures that you can reinvest it back into producing better content for your audience, so they’ve had to consistently be creative with their opportunities.While Covid-19 has certainly had an impact on the business (sports did shut down after all), the business is still expected to grow revenue by 100%. And depending on how Q3 and Q4 goes, it should be profitable.

Om Podcasten

A Media Operator is a community for entrepreneurs and operators in the digital media space. This podcast is a natural extension of the newsletter (www.amediaoperator.com) and community that has already been built. Each week, I will interview entrepreneurs and operators that are building these media companies. Over the course of approximately an hour, we'll discuss their businesses, their success and failures, and, ultimately, what they learned about building media companies. This podcast will provide actionable insights for current and prospective media operators. That means we're not only talking strategies in media, but also the tactics. We'll be diving into business models, audience development, subscription, commerce, advertising, audio, video—you name it, we'll be discussing it. A Media Operator is also very much about niche media. That doesn't mean small. To me, niche media means depth. We should celebrate these stories and there are plenty of them. On this podcast, you'll finally hear them. Wherever you listen to podcasts, hit that subscribe button so you know when I release an episode. As the show starts, considering rating it and leaving a comment so I know how I'm doing. I view A Media Operator as a tool for you; if I'm failing, I want to know. Thanks for tuning in today and I'll be talking with you soon.