Sports Media Used To Make Stars, Now It Doesn’t Know How

The internet and streaming platforms haven’t just left a mark on Hollywood-style entertainment; the sports industry has felt the waves: a rushing tide that swept up cable behemoths like ESPN and publications like Sports Illustrated, even newspapers such as The Washington Post no longer carry separate sports sections. In just a few years, the industry that cultivated and created stars turned to the internet to recruit them. This is one of many changes to an ecosystem that dominates an increasing share of Americans’ time and attention each year, judging by NFL viewership numbers alone. Gambling, fantasy leagues, college transfer portals, and media startups have contributed to an evolution in sports and are the topics of discussion for DW’s Weekend Punch interview with Outkick founder, Fox News contributor, and Tennessee die-hard fan Clay Travis.

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Ben Domenech: Obviously, you have just achieved something pretty significant when it comes to the world of sports media with OutKick. You were one of the OG people to recognize the space that existed that wasn’t being filled. How do you think about that sports media landscape now, and what do you think is different when you started OutKick?

Clay Travis: Good question. When we started OutKick, there was much more of a written marketplace for original content. If you remember back in those days, you might go to Deadspin, you might go to Grantland, or Kissing Suzy Kolber. It was the heyday of interesting written content that was being produced on a regular basis. That doesn’t really exist now.

The blogosphere was still a thing. Video hadn’t completely taken over, and everybody didn’t have one-minute social media clips that they were being inundated with on TikTok, Instagram, or even Twitter, where the virality has all gone video. I still think much of the news cycle was dictated by what people wrote rather than what people said. That’s the biggest thing I see as different in the marketplace right now compared to when we started.

BD: When you see the landscape now, what are you surprised by in terms of either the success or the failure of the worldwide leader to adapt to the changing cultural moment and priorities of fans?

CT: It used to be the case that ESPN made stars. And I actually think ESPN is now reflective of the larger marketplace. Other than maybe Fox News and maybe Netflix, I’m not sure anyone makes stars anymore, other than the internet and maybe YouTube, but you don’t have big media companies that deputize you and say, “You are now a star.”

One of my favorite stories back in the day was right before the show “Friends” made its debut. The entire cast went out together in Las Vegas, and one of the show’s creators was there with them and said, “This will be the last time that you guys can go out to dinner for the rest of your lives.” And you are going to be on after “Seinfeld,” you’re going on NBC, it’s a sitcom that everyone is going to see, and you are going to go from normal people to luminescent stars overnight.

That kind of world doesn’t exist. You can see it in the rise of Pat McAfee, where ESPN had to go hire people who were already famous. You can see it in the success that the Barstool guys have had. I still think of myself as a guy who came out of the internet, and you have to compete against everybody when you come out of the internet. You don’t get deputized, and someone doesn’t say, “Oh, this guy’s going to matter because we’re putting him on a show and there are very limited numbers of shows.” In fact, it’s kind of a fun question. Who is the last person in sports media to become famous from television? It used to be that you would find a Stephen A. Smith or a Michael Wilbon or a Tony Kornheiser columnist, people who had had an opportunity to write, did radio, and then you put them on television.

That pathway doesn’t seem to exist for ESPN other than maybe, again, Fox News and Netflix.

BD: We’ve just seen the takeover of Hollywood and the box office by two creators in the horror space who came out of YouTube. Do you think at some point there will be a similar crossover effect from these YouTube personalities to a greater degree than it’s already happened, or are they their own animals and will stay within that lane just because of the nature of what they do?

CT: I think if you can make money, Hollywood and every other media company is going to find ways to make money more than they otherwise would. For example, I’m utterly fascinated that Star Wars, which has been popular since 1977, was dominated by two YouTube guys, even though Star Wars obviously had a 50-year head start on them in terms of recognizing the marketplace. And so I think what it represents is every generation wants to find its new people, and I think YouTube is more experimental, and when you’re more experimental, you can find out what works quicker than a lot of big companies can. If they’re totally wrong, they lose hundreds of millions of dollars. If a YouTuber is totally wrong, they might lose a few hundred thousand dollars. And so the scale of success is massive for them, but the risk that’s put on the table is tiny, and most big companies have the reverse.

BD: Let’s talk about those big companies. They’ve made huge bets on sports rights across the board, rights that are continually getting more expensive. Those costs are being passed on to consumers. You testified about this on Capitol Hill. What is the actual solution that doesn’t require some kind of breakup or major disruption that would be difficult for the marketplace to handle? Or is that something that’s going to have to happen if we’re ever going to get back to a point where people can afford to watch as many games as they want?

CT: What surprised me is the degree to which Republicans and Democrats across the political spectrum were furious with what NFL games cost now. The NFL is very popular and powerful, but there definitely seems to be the sense that fans are being gouged and that anger over affordability and access is also declining. I think this is a bad combination for the NFL.

It’s funny, I have said for some time, and I think it’s probably going to end up being the reality of where we end up, that somebody’s going to try to put together a bundle of streaming services, which just recreates what we had when we had the bundle of cable channels, and it was a great deal. Everybody with one remote control could sit and watch every game. You could jump from one to another. I have argued for a long time that fans really didn’t understand how good we had it back then. If you compare the fan experience watching games to 2012, for instance, back when we started OutKick, I think it was way better.

It was way easier to find your favorite teams. It was way more affordable. The analogy I used in my testimony earlier this week on Capitol Hill was this: I’m sure you remember the first flat-screen television that you bought, which was crazy expensive. It had HD. It revolutionized the sports viewing experience. I was at Costco the other day. You can buy a massive flat-screen television for $700. So we have higher-quality television at a much more affordable price. Meanwhile, you’re paying way, way more for the sporting rights, and you’re getting much less. And again, that’s a bad combination.

BD: In terms of the decision that the NFL has made to go in all these different directions, particularly to require setting up their own coverage, their own teams, and their own announcers. And then of course, you add the overseas product and their hopes for extending the game around the world, which is getting bigger and bigger. Do you think that they’re risking diluting a product, or is the NFL just so big that they can do whatever the hell they want?

CT: They do risk diluting a product in some sense. In September, I’m very excited. I’ve got Thursday football, Friday football, Saturday football, Sunday football, and Monday football. And then after a few weeks, I’m thinking, “Man, I don’t really care that much about Monday Night Football.”

It used to be that when you just had Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, Monday Night Football was really a big deal. Now it’s not to that same extent. That’s a challenge for the NFL going forward in maximizing revenue without oversaturating the marketplace.

BD: The NFL has decided to embrace gambling, I’ve heard the first radio ads for betting on prediction markets this week, and they’re essentially described that way, which surprised me a little bit. Do you think there’s any risk of going too far in that direction of making the game seem more disposable because fans are less devoted to their teams in a way that echoes what happened to the NBA? Or where people just don’t care about their teams anymore, they just care about stars?

CT: It’s what the fantasy football world has created. For instance, my kids want to watch every game, and they have an incentive to do so. I do think the game itself can be threatened when you’re allowing prop bets to become too much of a storyline because players certainly can be corrupted, as we’ve seen, and the overall game itself can risk being bogged down by not whether someone performs at the absolute highest level or even whether a team wins, but whether someone scores a touchdown or makes a reception. And I do think the gamification of the game itself does lead to monetization, but I think you have to remain aware that the game is still the primary story, not how individual players perform.

BD: Senator Ted Cruz has a bipartisan bill that is advancing, which is pretty rare for him. On the question of reform for college sports, they describe it as saving college sports. It does many different things that have generated controversy, not necessarily among the people who you would think would be politically on one side or the other. What is your particular take, and do you think that this would be a step forward or would create so much complexity that it would be very difficult for the different schools, the different institutions, and teams to adapt?

CT: The number one thing they have to have is an antitrust exemption. You can just look at what happened with Brendan Sorsby versus Texas Tech. You can’t have individual federal district court judges making default policy rules for different teams in Texas compared to Florida, California, or Michigan. Everybody has to play by a uniform rule. Right now, every time you try to put a uniform rule in place, a player who is disadvantaged by that rule sues.

It used to be that college athletes like Maurice Clarett sued to get to the NFL faster. Now guys sue to be able to stay in college longer. The second-highest paid basketball league in the world, after the NBA, is college basketball. So all the best European players actually want to play college basketball. Illinois effectively had an Eastern European All-Star squad and nearly won the national championship with it. So you do have to figure out basic rules. How many years can somebody play? How many years can they transfer and give an organization or entity the ability to put those rules in place?

What Ted Cruz presents with the SCORE Act, figuring out how to get something that can pass both the House and the Senate that just has a very basic framework to allow rules to be put in place, is going to be necessary. The absence of any rules themselves at some point is leading to such a chaotic situation that college sports are on a sort of runaway train.

Do you remember “The Polar Express”? There’s a scene in that movie where the train track runs out, and the train hits the ice and starts to spin in every different direction, and you’re like, “What in the world’s going to happen here?” I think we’ve reached the point where the train track has run out, and we’ve got a train on ice, and we really don’t have any idea how to control it or where it’s headed.

BD: When it comes to your recommendations for our European friends who are navigating the country right now during the World Cup, what’s something that those folks who are trying to go viral haven’t checked out yet?

CT: That they saw Buc-ee’s is pretty crazy. Somebody tweeted that Lionel Messi played in College Station before the University of Georgia did. I’m sure you saw that they brought out the War Eagle at Auburn for the Iceland versus Argentina game, if I remember correctly. It’s wild. I think the sheer immensity of America, when it comes to places, just walking into a Publix and looking at how many different types of peanut butter we have. I just think that the European mind doesn’t comprehend how much incredible excess we have. There’s that great stat where the British were actually told how poor they were compared to the poorest American states, and they just really had no understanding or comprehension of that.

BD: What’s the most underrated storyline in sports media today?

CT: The degree to which there aren’t very many successful sports media companies, period. right? There was a time when ESPN employed a lot of people who worked on ESPN.com. Hunter S. Thompson used to write at ESPN.com., Bill Simmons. I started talking with you about the lack of writers. It used to be that writers drove content conversation and discussion in a significant way. There’s almost no one writing interesting opinion pieces now, and I think sports media suffers as a result.

BD: Should we feel happy for Timothée Chalamet, or has he led a life that is so charmed that we are allowed to hate him for being so happy?

CT: It reminds me of how today’s young Boston sports fans have won so many championships, creating an embarrassment of riches, which is such a dichotomy between everyone else. If you grew up from 1950 to 2000, Boston won almost nothing. If you were born after 1990 or 2000, all you’ve seen is Boston win. The guy’s got everything going for him and doesn’t seem to be wearing too many stresses on his shoulders.