Overtime's Social Sports Dominance

A story about how Dan Porter built Overtime, a sports media company, by focusing on high school basketball content and leveraging social media and community sourcing.

"They created a media company, but instead of being like ESPN as a TV channel or Bleacher Report as a website, they decided to be an Instagram account focused on basketball culture. They found their foothold covering high school prospects, looking for the next LeBron.

They discovered Zion Williamson, this tank-looking guy in South Carolina. They put up a video of him and it immediately went viral. ESPN wasn't sending reporters to Greenville, South Carolina to cover his high school games against West Bishop Baptist, but we could do that.

The crazy part was how they got the content. Through social media, they found local people - their number one Zion clip submitter was a plumber on weekdays who would go to the games. Their number two clip submitter was a student at Zion's school who had broken his leg and got courtside access because he was in a wheelchair.

When ESPN wanted to license their videos, instead of charging them, Porter told them they could have it for free if they tagged Overtime and kept their watermark. ESPN thought we were idiots, but then they ended up promoting Overtime everywhere because of that deal. That's how Overtime became seen as incredible - it was on ESPN all the time."