Inside Overtime: How CEO Dan Porter Built a Billion-Dollar Sports Brand for the Next Generation

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To thrive thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape, brands must move at an ever increasing pace. I'm Matt Britton, founder and CEO of susee. Join me and key industry leaders as we dive deep into the shifting consumer trends within their industry, why it matters now, and how you can keep up. Welcome to the Speed of Culture. Up today on the Speed of Culture, we're thrilled to welcome here in New York, Dan Porter, the CEO of Overtime. From watching disruptive leagues to empowering athletes and redefining fan engagement, Dan's journey is nothing short of extraordinary. I'm a huge sports fan. I can't wait to dive in today. Dan, so great to see you.

Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. So for those in the audience that don't know what overtime Is would you mind just giving us kind of a quick primer of the business?

Yeah. Overtime is a next generation sports brand. Kind of specifically started to target Gen Z sports fans. When I started, the easiest thing for me to say was that someone's going to create the next ESPN and I think it's going to be us. I had run the digital talent division at Endeavor and represented a lot of the biggest YouTubers and the average age of sports fan in this country is 40, 50, 60 years old. And young people consume in a really different way. And we went out to capture them ultimately and their attention. And so today if you look at the business, it's 110 million followers across all of our different accounts. It's got kind of 90% brand recognition among young people. Our visual language, our captions, the way that we talk and publish on social is really just geared to that specific audience. And then in general we cover some professional sports, but we really focus on kind of 17, 18, 19 year old athletes who we think are going to be the next generation stars and talk about and cover them almost every as if they're creators and influencers. So there was a whole generation of people who found us because we were the first people to talk about Zion Williamson and LaMelo Ball and Trevor Lawrence and a number of athletes like that. And if you look at the business today, after building a really big community and media platform, we decided to be kind of vertically integrated. We also own and operate several sports leagues. So we own and operate Overtime Elite, which is a basketball league of eight teams with some of the best 17 to 20 year old players in the world. Live games, everything. You could think almost like a young person's NBA. Four of our players have been top 10 draft picks in the NBA.

Thompson brothers.

I know, Yup, yeah, Thompson brothers. Last year we had the number two and eight pick in the NBA draft.

Who didn't go to college. Correct, Correct.

One of them went to Kentucky. One of them did. So when we started before Nil, we were like, come to us and you'll go to the NBA. Everyone got upset about that because they felt we were taking the best players out of college sports. And somehow all of a sudden Nil came and you were able to pay players. And I think we were a big influencer on that. And so now our players might go to the NBA, but they might also this year we have two guys going to Kansas, going elsewhere. And part of that is because even if they could go to the NBA because they can get paid a significant money via NIL they're taking that opportunity to play and train for another year and earn money, which they should. And that was a huge part empowerment of what we did. I think a lot of people are surprised that I would say we're the second biggest basketball league in the world. We have more followers than any other league, including college, and more engagements on digital. And part of that is because there's a massive generation of young people who want to see young people and like that's who they care about and that's who motivate them. Part of that is because our top of the funnel is 100 million follower type of account. I could say in a similar way, if the audience is having trouble digesting that, could you imagine if Mr. Beast tomorrow started his own basketball league?

How many people look what he's done.

When it was launched.

The burger place.

Yeah, right. So I think it's the same type of thing there. And I think it's also sometimes the storytelling and access you get with younger athletes is really different. We can make videos, do podcasts, do a lot of other things and their agent from a big agency isn't in the way or in the middle the same way somebody who's in their third year in the NBA who's talking about kind of get doing all that. So for us we've ended up being in a very vertically integrated position where you have this media company. We're also a rights holder through our own rights and then we also partner. So we're an NFL partner and we work closely with NBC around the Olympics. But at the end of the day, the very simple thing is we just wanted to reach everybody we could in Gen Z. And sports as a form of culture was the way we decided to do that.

Right. You stayed true to what the calling of the business was.

Yeah.

Sounds like it kind of just took you. I'm sure when you started overtime you didn't foresee yourself running a sports league.

One no, no ide idea actually I didn't even know what the product was. I would just were like let's figure out how to get 17 year old sports fans to love us because they're not engaged anywhere else. And so we tried a ton of different stuff. We failed. David Stern, the former NBA commissioner, was one of our first investors. And ultimately not only did we not see that. I think one of the biggest things I learned is how much you can reach the next generation through the intersection of sports and culture. A lot of people don't know, but we're actually the overtime kicks our Sneakers account is the biggest sneakers account on TikTok. And I think ultimately it's this mindset that is driven by a couple of maxims. I think number one is that sports is culture, so is music, so is fashion. And if you think about sports just as dunks and touchdowns, you miss that aspect. But if you think about sports broadly as an aspect of culture, you understand that. I'd say number two is like, I think our mantra was sports media is about talking to the audience. Overtime is about listening to the audience. So our kind of street team probably has been to over a thousand gyms. We were at like 10 different gyms in the last three days where somebody in an overtime hoodie pulled up, made content and millions of people saw it. And we have a full time team that responds to millions of comments and messages. There's no scale, there's no AI. There's nothing that is like secret sauce about it other than nobody else is scalable.

It's a definition of being consumer centric.

Right. So I think if we think about those things, and I think the third thing, as we said, it's kind of like if you know exactly who your audience is, you have permission to talk to them in a certain way. If you are an espn, for example, which is a great company, they just reach a lot of different people. They can't go in with whatever the most recent slang or lingo or meme is and talk to the audience because a bunch of people in their 40s and 50s will be like, I completely don't understand what this is about for us. We have that permission. And the example I like to say is when we were at the Olympics, Noah Lyles won and our guy was right there and he asked him, what anime arp are you on right now? And he had an answer. Hunter X Hunter was his answer. And I think like 90% of sports fans would be like, what is that and what is anime and why are you guys talking about that? And I think our audience is like, oh, this is what we expect from overtime. We have the permission both from him as an athlet, like Bob Costas isn't going to ask him that question. And also for the viewers. So it's like that's the kind of what sits on top of everything.

Yeah, because athletes in general used to just be this linear kind of engagement. You like when I was growing up, you would see that thing on tv, you wouldn't see them even be able to walk into the stadium and what they were wearing, like let alone social media. And Sharing everything. The religion idea.

You had their baseball card.

Right.

That was about it.

That's exactly right. And it's completely changed. So, incredible story. And, like, you basically have given me so much to unpack for this podcast that, like, all the questions I had in advance aren't even as relevant now because there are just some key themes I've identified I'd love to unpack with you. The first and foremost, the one thing you said was that the way that sports is consumed is different now. And recently there was a lot of news about the NBA's ratings being down. But at the same time, the NBA stars as individuals are making more money than ever before, are more globally famous than ever before. So that's like a dichotomy.

Yeah.

And I would have to imagine at the root of that is the ways in which young people like to consume sports content. Like, they're into the song and not the album sort of thing, or into the highlights. Like, so tell me about why you think it's changed and ultimately, how does Gen Z and now Gen Alpha want to interact with sports content?

Yeah, for sure. I think that you're right. Like, did you get that album? Well, I have every album that ever existed. I have Spotify.

Right.

Like, I actually. I'm old. I like albums. I'm like, oh, there's a new release. I'm like, it's a single. I don't listen to singles. I listen to albums. You think about the generational changes. I will say, my dad wore a suit to work.

Yeah.

I didn't wear a suit. And my kids don't dress like me. We don't listen to the same music.

For those listening, he's wearing a cool green hood.

Yeah. We don't do any of those things that are similar. And you look at the way generational change impacts fast casual eating, like, all of these things. And yet sports, because probably sports is closer to religion than a lot of those. I could watch Monday Night Football, and it kind of looks like when I was a kid watching Howard Cosell, Monday Night Football. And I don't say that as a criticism. It's really hard to adapt your product as generations change. I think our advantage is our product is built from the ground up for that. I think one of the things there's a couple, like, if I were to point to trends in terms of how to reach that audience, I think 100% of young people get all their sports knowledge from social media.

Yeah.

They don't read articles, they don't read the newspaper. They don't even sports center used to.

Be the way it's not really anymore.

And there's a couple of things about that. One is they prefer visual media that's integrated with their other media as opposed to going and pulling out the sports section and reading a long article. I think number two, they want to be able to comment and share and engage, do all that and engage. And I think number three, sometimes they don't care as much who the winner or the loser is. They care about all the other kind of attributes or style points, if you will. And I think as you go deeper, like for example, I played fantasy football and I'm in two leagues, one with old people and one with a bunch of 22 year olds and I look at who they share in our group chat to make picks and they're actually these like TikTok creators who don't work for any outlet or anything else like that. But those guys know how to go, they know how to use live, they know how to get in there and they speak to them, I think in that type of voice. And I think more than ever, young people look to kind of either brands that they feel like they helped create as opposed to legacy brands or creators as a way to parse through information. I might look to GQ for a fashion tip. Somebody else might follow somebody on TikTok who says this is what's poppin and this is what you should wear. And those are just really different behavior sets.

Yeah. And to your point, on leagues like looking the same, I mean at the NBA is the NBA Cup. They're trying to shake it up. The NFL changed their kickoff roles. Major League Baseball now has a timer. Like they're trying to basically make it more palatable for younger people.

Yeah. Listen, I think Adam Silver is really, really smart and the NBA is really good at a lot of those things. NFL also really talented. Their ability to work with creators at scale and so forth. I just think it's hard because you have to please a lot of people at the same time.

Yeah.

And I think it's interesting because everybody's like in sports media obsessed with inside the NBA. What's going to happen? The NBA is not going to be on Turner. What about that show? If you look at kind of the Amazons and the NBC who now have NBA rights, all of the chatter is like who's going to host their show for them. I got to tell you, nobody watches those shows. Like the amount of people who watch those shows is less than an average YouTuber gets every day. Yeah. Yet there's an obsession of much Tom.

Brady got paid to be. Right.

There's an obsession over who's gonna watch those shows. And I'm like, those shows are fine, but nobody watches them. They don't make people tune in. And I think it takes a while. Like, I think a Mr. Beast will say everyone is excited when a hundred million people watch the Super bowl, but 250 million people watch one of my videos. It takes a long time for people to understand, like, that is actually as big, if not bigger. They're like, oh, he's a YouTuber. It's not the same. But I'm like, if an audience member is watching him for 25 minutes or watching the Super bowl for 25 minutes, what really is the difference there? It's just 25 minutes of attention, 100%.

One big driver of. I think the changing nature of engagement with sports is gambling. Yeah. And it's everywhere. You can't miss it. Some people think it's an epidemic. The league, surprisingly, are now way more behind it than I once thought they ever would be. You know, I use fanduel from times I make it spun, but I do it in moderation. Some people aren't able to do that. What is your take on the impact of gambling on sports?

I think that if you have skin in the game, clearly you are more likely to.

Just like fantasy.

Yeah, just like fantasy. So I think there's positives there. I think that, listen, it's a free country. If you're 21, you can smoke, drink, gamble on sports and do anything you want. I think for us, I haven't put a ton of time and energy into that because I'd rather celebrate other aspects about short sports. I think that in general, look, people like to bet on the election too. Like, there's a lot of that. Like Europe has said about America for a long time. You guys are weirdly moralistic about this stuff. Right. But I think you're going to have both. You're going to have edge behavior where athletes make terrible mistakes and young people get into a terrible amount of debt. And that's true with alcohol and it's true with fast food, and it's true with a lot of figs. Yeah. But I think in general, I think it's interactive participation and I think it's great for sports overall. One thing I want to go back to is, please. We are an NFL partner and we have a really amazing partnership with them. And what we do is we kind of create content around tent pole events with them that don't have to do with the highlight, such as, so we'll go to the super bowl and we'll create 254 pieces of content where we find the athletes. We might ask them funny questions like.

And I'm hardy, you might go to.

Like, yeah, we're on Radio Row or something. We could grab Tyreek Hill and say, are you actually faster than a cheetah? Or anything else like that. And the NFL has been really just incredibly positive and supportive about understanding that that's our lane.

They get it. Yeah.

And like you guys and they facilitate that. And I've been in meetings with NFL executives where we've shown the content and they say, you know what, we love working with you. But what I love about that content is the athletes are all smiling, they're laughing, they think the question is funny. They love to express themselves. And there's a realm of sports which I understand, which is fire the coach. This guy's overpaid. Bench him. As Eagles fans, I think we consume a lot of that media, that's for sure. But there's also a part where you really do sometimes need an intermediary to help people show the best of these athletes and why you care about them. And, and I think that's really our puzzle piece there. And in the case of the NFL and also in the case of the Olympics, they've really understood that and been able to put that in position. Nobody's coming to overtime to ask what the over under is or to say what should this trade be? But there's a whole other aspect of understanding athletes as people. And listen, that's what the Olympics is about. If you don't fall in love with the athlete, it makes it a lot harder.

Yeah, those stories are what draw people in. They care about their stories or bad.

So I almost say like the other trend that you see in sports is the drive to survive trend. Right. Where everybody wants a non scripted series alongside so you can get. And Sprint was a good example of that and so forth. There are a lot of those now I think for us, because we are so dominant on kind of YouTube and short form media, it's almost on us to create the Drive to survive series. But as an everyday short form content rather than just create a long form script. And they're just like.

So you talk about understanding athletes in the way that like unpacks their lifestyle, but in order for you to launch a league, you guys have to understand how good athletes are. So I understand that you created the big media platform and then Kind of unpack what you said. It seems like you want to create even more content. The best way to create exclusive athlete content is actually seeing them play. Yeah. But in order to do that, you had to identify who was good. So what was that process like? Because that is like a completely tangential business line.

Yeah.

And I'm just fascinated with how you're able to get that going.

I would say that if you had my job and you were like a lifelong sports fan, this would be the app. Absolute dream job.

Yeah.

You're like, wait, I have to draft 80 athletes and create teams and like actually do this?

I don't know if I'd be very good at it.

Yeah. I mean, listen, first of all, I clearly, I don't do it. Like, we have very talented people. We have a grassroots network. We have guys who were scouts and recruiters at college level, at the NBA level and so forth. I think there's two main things. Number one is like our sports leagues play for the Internet. They are not city designated teams. They are not school designated.

Where are the games?

The games are mostly in Atlanta at an arena that we built ourselves as almost like a soundstage. So it's a 1200 person arena, but I don't really make money selling tickets or parking or beer or any of those other ways. It's almost like a sound stage where the audience is there as if we were doing a show and the audience was there and we broadcast every game from there.

So in a way, I don't know.

In fact.

So you're getting somebody who's a future NBA player. Yeah. Instead of going to go play at Duke or Kansas or Kentucky and playing in these crazy Cameron Orienta, they're going to a sound stage because for them, they know that their ability to basically produce content of them playing is really what's going to matter.

Well, I think it's both. I think first of all, a lot of them now do go to Duke and elsewhere. They'll come to us in 11th or 12th grade. Or as a small digression, a lot of college basketball players take an extra year now because almost no freshman play because of the transfer portal. Like the average age in the final four is 23 years old. So there are a lot of people who used to play as freshmen who now take an additional time. So they all participate and play in our league. To them, they're just playing in a high competitive basketball league. It looks like an arena to them. There's fans that cheer, they do the wave, there's cheerleaders there's all that. But for us, our audience is everyone. So the teams are called the Cold Hearts and the City Reapers. They don't have a city before them. The arena is designed all around the cameras and everything else like that. And a lot of different teams play in the same arena so that we can broadcast everywhere in the world. We have people from over 100 countries watch the game. Some of the. Yeah, some of the games are on prime video that we have a rights deal with, but some of them you can watch live on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and tens of thousands of people will watch there and consume. So in a business way, like, if you go to Kentucky, you're a Kentucky fan. If you don't go to Kentucky, unless you're watching March Madness, it's highly unlikely you're going to be motivated to watch Kentucky. You're going to watch your own college. Same. If you're from a certain city, you're mostly likely to like that team. I think for us, we just strip away in that. And so it's really about simplification. Here's eight teams. You could be from anywhere in the world and you can like them. There's only eight of them. They mostly play on Fridays and Saturdays. And that's it. Here's the five stars.

It's all about change how they play, though, because, like, if you're playing for Duke, you have somewhat pride. Or if you're playing for the Celtics. But if you're playing for a team that you're just throwing a name on, are they more trying to play for their own stats than the team because the team winning means less?

That's actually a really insightful question. I'd say yes and no. First of all, they're still trying to play because they want to get a college offer.

Right.

And they want to go to the next level. And they also understand, like, when John Calipari was recruiting Rob Dillingham and played for us, I had a call with him and he said, dan, I need team players. I want guys who are team players. So if Coach Cal comes and there's a guy playing for himself, that's actually going to hurt him.

Yeah, that's true.

To do that 100%. I think we're the most successful when the guys are friends with each other. We have two players from Pittsburgh who recruited each other who play on a team, but sometimes you choose guys who only care about themselves. And I think that that can be true in other sports. I think we're vastly out of the kind of Derek Jeter. I played for the same team my whole life era. Anyway, that's like, yeah, you have to create a fan base and an allegiance to something that didn't exist in the world three to four years ago. And that's like an endlessly fascinating business and psychological challenge.

Yeah. So kind of the play the story of the athlete through. So they create content, they become Internet famous, they're in your league, they become a professional athlete. What we start to see through people like Kevin Durant with Rich Kleiman, who's a mutual investor of ours, or LeBron with Mav Carter and so many other athletes, they're becoming their own media channel. Right. As Jay Z said, they're not a businessman, they're a businessman. Right. And that's interesting because the question becomes ultimately like, who's in control? And is that a good thing? And do you see that continuing in terms of athletes creating their own business ventures? And how does that tie in with your business model?

Yeah, listen, in the abstract, athlete empowerment is great. Sure. Courses, of course, they get paid, but like, to play and to compete and. And I will say for ours, too, like, their goal is to get really good at basketball and make the NBA. And the other thing is, it's very difficult to make a player popular if they're not also a good athlete.

Right.

You could be the Most funny, best YouTuber and I could put you on the floor and it won't matter if somebody crosses you over and vice versa.

You need a personality like Tim Duncan is famous for being. Great player, not great personality. Yeah, he did great as a basketball player, but he's never that easy.

Exactly. Somebody like an Iverson or someone else like that, you just can't take your.

Eyes off Anthea Edward.

Yes, yes, exactly. He is a great example. Great player. Also dynamic personality. But if he weren't dunking over KD and everything else like that, it would be hard to get people excited, of course. But I would say ultimately, also, listen, it's very hard to have a long career. The average career in sports is three or four years through social media. You own your own distribution. And you've got guys like Pat McAfee, who was a kicker, who's created a media empire. You've got guys like Blake Griffin, who loves movies.

He made White Blake on the podcast. Yeah.

Like, you've got all those things. And I just think at the end of the day, an athlete used to be about winning a championship for your team in your city, which they still are, but they have attention. And we live in a world where Whether you're a YouTuber, an athlete or a musician, your ability to or an entrepreneur or CEO. Yeah, your ability to make a living from that attention is really different than just a stay in your lane. It doesn't mean everyone's good at it. There's lots of athlete brands and companies that have no traction. But I think for the best it's an opportunity and all of those things, whether you sing a song, you play a sport, it's just the way that somebody finds you and falls in love with you and then wants to be part of your journey.

We'll be right back with the Speed of Culture after a few words from our sponsors.

Finding the right audience shouldn't feel like doom scrolling with Experian. It doesn't. Experian syndicated audiences help you reach holiday shoppers, car buyers and more across over 200 top platforms with over 2,400 pre built audiences, there's no more doomscrolling. It's audience targeting you can trust. Made simple. Learn more@experian.com Adweek that's exper Ian.com Adweek.

When you think of skyrocketing brands like Aloe Allbirds or Skims, it's easy to credit their success to great products, sleek branding and brilliant marketing. But here's the overlooked secret. The real magic lies in the engine behind the scenes, the business powering their business. For millions of brands, that engine is Shopify, making selling seamless for them and shopping effortless for us. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Alo Yoga uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.comretail all lowercase go to shopify.comretail to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.comretail.

So as we discussed before, the pod, the speed of Culture community is one of brand builders and advertisers and digital marketers. And the great thing about sports is it's kind of the bastion of live television and the super bowl is obviously the number one way to garner eyeballs moving forward. So there's no big brand that doesn't have sports on its docket of priorities for heading into 2025. In your experience, given that you kind of come at it from a different angle, what are some of the best strategies you see in terms of brands effectively integrating themselves into sports to drive their business?

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, listen, sport, like even a movie, if your friend already saw it, they're going to tell you what happens at the end.

Yeah.

Or you just never. Exactly never know, and I think on the brand side, I think nobody gets fired for doing a sports deal. Like it seems to make sense. I think for us, for example, we have a partnership with Gatorade that is a great partnership, by the way. Like, our athletes consume a lot of that because they want to be hydrated. We played a football event in Florida where it was so hot, I think we went through 27 cases of Gatorade. But Gatorade also cares about having a relationship with who that next generation of athlete is. So part of that is like we have a whole bar there. They're introducing and building relationships. Same for Adidas. Like, Adidas is a massive partner for us and they understand that when our audience sees the next generation athlete who they look up to, and they also feel that they have something in common with wearing Adidas on the court that's hugely valuable. But they also want to have a reason to have a relationship with those athletes now so that they're not lining up with every other sneaker brand when that athlete be great big. So I think that those are huge. I think that understanding that sometimes. So like we've had brands, especially in the auto category, sponsor our kind of training courts. And so, you know, you're a big logo on the training court there. And maybe you're an auto brand that is trying to resonate with the younger generation that seems older. And then all of a sudden we're making content there every day. It's not about the live game. Anthony Edwards lives in Atlanta. He comes up, does a couple runs, does something that goes viral. And in every single one of those, there's the name of the brand, like in the background, being engaged. And I'd say also actually like Bevel. Bevel is a really good example. If you don't know what Beville is, it's a predominantly black oriented kind of hair care.

Skin care by the PNG is going to.

Yeah, they bought it. They sponsor our barbershop. We have a lot of players come through, they want to get a haircut, but all of the content then gets created there. And so number one, you've got a clear, almost like stage in partnership with your brand partner to create a lot of content around your product. Yeah. As opposed to just like the play of the game or anything else like that. And number two, you're tapping into a lot of these athletes who are making decisions about what brands are going to align with for the rest of their life. And so when you look at the athlete and you look at our audience, some of the Superpowers, like young people like to buy young people type products. But some is, I haven't decided who my bank is for the rest of my life, what car, what my credit card is, all of those. And so being able to inflect those, I think there's a lot of traditional brand advertising in sports. You know, the play of the game. Does it make the Clydesdale horses. They want to make me buy that or not. But I think you start to see more innovative stuff. And I think the brands that also really understand how to work both with the live men as well as the athlete and the creator, are going to have an advantage going forward. I'll give you an example. Like, I do love it. The AWS Next Generation Stats. I love that when it's on Amazon on Thursday night for football is really smart.

Yeah.

It's like, oh, you're not just a brand sponsor. You're telling me the value that your brand has. It's like when our players dunk wearing Adidas and drink Gatorade, they're actually living in his utility.

Grand utilities. Exactly 100%. I love that. And people who love Data love Amazon, that. They love sports. They love the sports at data 100. So you build a fascinating business and as a sports fan, frankly, like a dream business in terms of all the touch points. So congrats to you on that. Where do you see overtime heading in 2025 or some of the opportunities you have your eye on that continue to drive growth?

Yeah. So we have men's basketball, women's basketball, we're in boxing, and we have a helmetless football league in the spring that's played by flag football. It's not flag football. It's like they call it seven on seven. It's like, well, I think in next year's college football playoffs, I believe if the same teams that made it this year make it next year, eight of the 12 quarterbacks that play in that will have played in our league.

Wow.

And the Tennessee quarterback currently will have its play in our league. No, the.

Oh, University of Tennessee. Yeah, yeah, I got you.

And so again, it's like what you tap into is I want to see the next superstar and I want to see them now. And now I want to go on a journey with them. So I don't think there's a world in which we're going to launch 50 million different leagues because it's just you run out of viability in terms of audience. I think what you see from us in 2025 is, number one is we continue to figure out how to grow audience for our leagues, you know, get hundreds of thousands of people to watch them. We have three different creators that are kind of owners of the basketball team. I put owners in quotes if you're listening. Air quotes. So we're linking really popular YouTubers with a team that actually has potential NBA players on it. So I think that's cool. That's big for us. We are looking at potentially doing something in flag football with women because it's an Olympic sport. And we have like an insanely cool thing in chess of all places, called the Prodigy cup, where we're working with.

It during the pandemic. Yes, yeah.

And if you look at why it's always related to kind of Queen's Gambit prodigies, 57 year old. So we have a really cool product there that I think is going to shock the world. But in general, whether it's chess or a high school basketball or helmetless football, we've kind of gone into these spaces where it's a mainstream sport, but it's kind of undervalued. Think about high school basketball. There's almost. You think about my high school. Yeah. I went to watch a Berkeley Carroll basketball game. Who cares? Or outside of the parents or you think about this guy's a five star recruit, he's committed to this. It's like it's really designed for grownups. We came in and we created something that was very niche, that only kind of hardcore or moms and dads cared about and completely created something that 10 million people care about. And so I think when I look at those sports opportunities, I'm looking at things that people are like. It's like when I go to talk to people about chess, they're like, why would anyone watch that? And I was like, sweet. I'm glad you think that because that means you're overlooking it. And that's where our value is able to come in. I think second, we want to continue to work with creators and find ways to create interesting opportunities at the intersection of like the creator, economy and sports. And I will say the third is we, believe it or not, have a massive, massive apparel business. Tens of millions of dollars that we sell.

Direct consumer or through Amazon.

No, direct to consumer. That aspect where you're able to generate revenue because somebody loves your brand so much.

Is it all overtime brand or is the brand of your team.

This is all overtime brand. And now it is the brand of our teams. We have three teams that have done over a million dollars in team apparel and I think, like, in a way, I could go in a meeting and someone could say, oh, how are you different from House of Highlights and Bleach Report and Sports Center? And I will say, when I walk my dog in Park Slope, I will see two or three kids wearing an overtime hoodie. I don't see anyone wearing a Bleacher Report hoodie. It doesn't mean that they're not a great company. It's just the brand is really different. The integration and the way that they live it is really different. And I think that's by design. I work in sports. I spent five years running a gaming company. I worked for Richard Branson for three years. I worked in a talent division of Endeavor. I was a public school teacher in Brooklyn. To me, I just take all of those experiences, which are completely from other worlds, and. And apply them to sports. I'm not a sports guy. That's not a criticism of sports guys. They know way more than I do. It just means, like, as we said in the very beginning, if you think about it as a form of culture, you just approach it from a very different lens.

So you've worked at so many places, you've had so much experience.

Yeah, they all fired me.

Exactly. But, like, what gave you the conviction later in your career to become an entrepreneur and start something?

That's a good question. I would say. I've been a professor at NYU for like, eight years, and so I see a lot of young people. I think about my experience to answer kind of like, why entrepreneurship? I think whatever you graduate from college, you don't really know what you're good at yet because you've been in school and then you get out in the world. And I always kind of say to young people, like, figure out what you're good at. Like, you don't have to be good at everything. And I think for me, for whatever reason, who knows, DNA or interests, the thing that I was pretty good at and I'm bad at a lot of things, was almost like positioning, understanding where there were gaps in the market and understanding. It's not like I have an idea for a product. It's like I see where there is something missing, and I reverse engineer that. And I think that that is sometimes not the best skill set that aligns with a company that already knows what it does and is just looking for more of that. And I guess the third is I'm just too stupid to be afraid.

Yeah, you could tell because, like, you go into leagues and you go into apparel, what's going through My mind is like, how do they know what apparel to create, what's good and where do you source it? I mean, it's a completely different skill set that's needed.

Yeah. You just like, I don't know. Like, my students always say to me, like, what does it take to be an entrepreneur? And so forth. And I look at them and I just say, like, listen, you kind of have to be a fucking killer.

Yeah.

Like, and if that's not you, like, sounds cool. Like, I'm not saying you have to.

Be Logan Roy said as a succession.

Yeah. But like, you kind of have to want it and you have to really have an insane amount of either naivete or optimism. And you just have to believe you're going to figure it out. I was master, the first live event ticketing company that I sold, Ticketmaster. I don't know anything about ticketing. I ran a games company and I made a game that was downloaded a quarter of a billion times. And I'll really play games. I'm just like, my parents were college professors. If they. They didn't teach me anything about business, but they definitely taught me how to learn.

Yeah.

And I just think also as a young person, could you imagine if we had YouTube when we were growing?

Oh, my God. Or social media in general. I was a nightclub and I handed out physical flyers. That's not right.

The stuff I could have learned, like, I'm a piano player. I used to be a professional musician. I learned all my piano stuff from YouTube. Now the amount of things that I sat in my bedroom as a kid playing the piano or guitar, where I'm like, I wish I knew somebody who could teach me this song and is so different. I think you can learn about business from podcasts, like what you do from YouTube videos. So there's an endless opportunity. So in a way, I think it's never been easier. There's been more access to be an entrepreneur, to figure out what you're good at and to execute on that.

Yeah. I mean, and a lot. So many of the tools that you in the past would need to have raised so much capital for now, a lot of the ways the technology is no longer a gating factor. Everyone can access the incredible large language, models, tools, et cetera. It's just about having idea. And to your point, perseverance, willpower, vision, all those things.

Like, listen, when we started overtime, I had started and sold two companies. I sold my last company for $200 million. I'm like, I'm damn hoarder. Everybody's Going to give me money for this idea. They love me. Isn't that the whole point of doing this? And a hundred people said no to me. And it's like I could have just given up after a hundred no's and yet I didn't until I found the person who said yes. David Cernan and a couple of other people.

And now 6% of active NBA players have missed a no.

Yeah. So it's just hard to have that perseverance. You have to be probably as dumb and thick headed as I am.

So last question I have for you in terms of building a business is obviously you can't do all this on your own or with your partner. And I imagine when you go into building a league or building a, you're finding people that have done it before. What has been a successful practice for you in terms of identifying and growing great talent at your company?

Yeah, that's a really good question. Because listen, if you set out to build a sports company and you're just like, we're gonna do things differently. And then you go hire a bunch of people who worked at Sports Summer.

True.

All you're gonna Garrison knowledge, right?

Yeah.

All you're gonna get is a version of what they've done elsewhere.

Yeah.

Now if you hire someone who's never worked at a sports company, you're gonna make so many mistakes that they're gonna basically score on their own hoop the whole time. Yeah. And so there's two things. There's a weird kind of small lane of people who kind of hit the edge or the corner at where they were, who you just like, yes, you worked at Bleacher Reporter, wherever else. But I get that you're looking at the future and you want to do things differently. You have to try to find those people and you have to try to hire those people. You have to try to fire them when they don't work out. You have to try to give them the keys when they do work out. But I think as, as a CEO or as a department leader, your job is to really proselytize. So even if they come in and they're like, I know a lot about, I'm a basketball coach. I think about coaches. Like there are a lot of basketball coaches we could have hired. And they all come in and they're like, well, my job is to win the championship. I'm like, but we're also a media entity. And they just like, some of them don't understand that. But the others are like, sit down. They're like, listen, Dan, I understand, like, like we make money through media and you're doing this. How does that work? And so you try to find those people and then you just basically try to have your mantras. Like I said early on, it's like sports media is about talking to you, we're about listening to you. And you just have to say those things a hundred times and you have to show them and you have to take the time to do that. And not to make this filled with Mr. Beast references, but I spent three days with him. He was one of the most disruptive thinkers I've ever met. And he has this idea where like, he's like, listen, I'm an out of the box thinker. Mr. Beast, how do you scale that? He's like, I take five people and I make them live with me for a year until they literally can finish my sentences and then I send them out in the world and I make each of them take five people and live with them. And that's how we scale it. I can't really do that because I don't live in North Carolina. I'm not running a two bet pyre, but I think as much with my words and meetings that you can find that and get those people to understand. So if I get one of those three basketball coaches to understand it, I have a way better chance of getting the other two.

Yeah, I love that. I love the just analogy of you can't replicate the Mr. Beast model. But it also proves the value of like remote work versus in person is a hundred percent. If you're remote, they're just not going to be able to look over your shoulder or whatever.

They're never going to be able to understand. I kind of say to sports people, I was like, listen, you could win every game and if nobody watches, who cares, right?

Absolutely. So to wrap up here, I mean, when you look back on your career and all the kind of experience you had leading up to where you are today, what are some of the decisions you think you made right along the way to put yourself in the position you are today, where you're working on a great business which you're passionate about, like you couldn't have gotten there if you didn't make some good decisions. If you had to summarize a couple of the good ones you made, I.

Would say I think I opportunistically said yes to a lot of stuff that I probably should have thought through more. But it was just like, hey, this young guy started this game company. They're interested in maybe you being the CEO, I'm like, that sounds cool. Like, I wasn't like, show me how you stack up in the market and race and that. I'd say, number two, weirdly, listen, I want to make money, but I never let comp or any of those other things be the thing like Chase and he make the decisions. And I think thirdly, I understood ultimately, like probably like you, I'm a mass consumer of culture, right? I love music, I love sports, I want to see what every NBA player is wearing. I like sneakers. And to me, I understood that I wanted to work in kind of consumer facing businesses. And I said no to jobs on the B2B side where I said no to a job on ad Tech where eight months later they sold the company for $680 million. And I still to this day I'm like, what do I really know about AbTech? Like, nothing. Like it wasn't for me. And so I think that I made decisions where I was aligned with my curiosity and where to me, the greatest superpower that you can have as an entrepreneur is to make something in the world and then walk down the street and see somebody playing your game or wearing your hoodie and they have no idea who the fuck you are. And you're like, I fucking made that. And you love that. And to me, that's so endlessly cool. Like that will never stop being amazing to me.

I love that. It's very well said. So to wrap up here, Dan, it's been such a great chat. It's interesting because I talk to a lot of CMOs, big brands, etc. But it's really refreshing to talk to an entrepreneur that's so passionate and it's just, it inspires me to do more. So thank you for that. But is there a quote or mantra that you love to kind of guide your professional journey by that comes to mind?

I think there's a couple things that, that I think about. One is like, you gotta play your own game. Like, if I get into boxing and all I do is chase the same famous heavyweights as everyone else and try to outbid for them. I'm playing someone else's game. Like when you play your own game and you find your lane, not only are you focused and successful, you put everyone else in a box because they can't play your game. They can only play their game. So like when we started, I would say we're never making a post that ESPN would make. No hate on espn. Like, they're awesome. It's just like, we need to have a lane, and we're never competing with a $25 billion company. So you've really gotta, I think, understand how to play your own game in that sense and what your advantages are. And I think on the personal side, I think it's like you more regret the things that you didn't do than the things that you did do. And so in that sense, it's like, yeah, like, in a year, I might tell you all this league or this thing we tried, you're like, what happened to that? I was like, yeah, that blew up. It really didn't work. But it's like, at least we tried it. We learned something from it. And I think that you can be stuck in kind of a paralysis over analysis. And I would say for your young listeners, it's like, my students come up to me and they're like, oh, Professor Porter, like, I'm not a business major, so dot, dot, dot. And I was like, I'm American history major. Do you think that I know what the fuck? Anybody who works for me what their GPA and their major was?

Doesn't matter their fucking major.

You care what you do in life. You care what your ideas are. So go to college and just fucking open your mind, Like. And in a way, being a business major could potentially be the worst things, because they're just telling you how it should work. And every great thing in innovation is made by somebody who couldn't figure out how it should work. Non detects. Exactly.

Yeah.

And so I think that there's a huge element to that. So those tend to be my mantras. I'm not sure I'm going to get a tattoo of any of them, because I'm not a tattoo, but. But roughly, that's where it is.

Well, I mean, I love play your game, and I hope everyone listening plays their game in 2025, because like they say, be yourself, everyone else is taken. Yeah. And that's kind of what it comes down to. Yeah. So thank you so much, Dan. It's been so great, especially in person here in New York, having this conversation. On behalf of Susan Agwee Keem, thanks again to the great Dan Porter, the CEO of Overtime, for joining us today.

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