20200
P
1
20100
R  E
2
2070
D   I   C
3
2050
T   I   O   N
4
2040
S   F   O   R   J
5
2030
O  U  R  N  A  L
6
2020
I  S  M  2  0  2  0
7

Sports media enters the Bronny era

“It isn’t just about Bronny and the billions on the line in the battle between streaming platforms. High school basketball is designed for — and consumed by — the younger audience coveted by incumbent media companies and brands.”

Earlier this month, ESPN televised a high school basketball game between the alma mater of LeBron James and the current school of LeBron James Jr., otherwise known as “Bronny.” The game — and the hysteria around it, including the massive potential social media relevance for anyone shooting it into feeds everywhere — earned coverage from The New York Times, The Washington Post, ESPN itself, and a horde of credentialed media members.

Just a high school freshman, Bronny is already a one-name wonder in sports — on the same sports-celebrity trajectory as Serena, Tiger and, yes, LeBron.

Bronny also represents one of the biggest growth areas of sports media heading into 2020: high school basketball.

Bronny is his own beat:

  • He has 3.9 million followers on Instagram (not quite as many as his father’s 53.9 million, but a number that would make most NBA players — and media industry folks — envious). He has 300,000 followers on TikTok for now, but give it time.
  • ESPN’s live coverage of Bronny’s Sierra Canyon team is just the start; the network has more than a dozen of Bronny’s games on the schedule this year, everywhere from basic cable to its new ESPN+ over-the-top service.
  • And Bronny is the north star of an entire Gen Z-focused sports-media ecosystem of social platform dominance — by brands like Overtime (which in 2019 secured a $23 million Series B round from big-name VCs like Andreesen Horowitz and big-name NBA stars like Kevin Durant); B/R Hoops (owned by Warner Media’s Bleacher Report); Mars Reel (investors: LeBron, Drake, AT&T); LeBron’s own Uninterrupted; and a grassroots basketball “expanded universe” of unlimited smaller players whose legion of low-cost videographers assemble like paparazzi on the baseline of any high school basketball game featuring a buzzy player, everything captured and distributed on IG, Twitter, YouTube and Twitch.

What makes Bronny such an appealing investment for a media organization — beyond the attention he commands — is that as a freshman, he theoretically has more than 100 games remaining in his high school career, between his school team, his spring/summer appearances on Nike’s high-profile EYBL circuit, and other big events where he is sure to be the star. (Notably, most of the 2019 EYBL season was streamed on Twitch, accessible to all.)

It’s easy to imagine a world where sports media networks are shelling out tens of millions in rights fees to showcase Bronny’s games. In fact, I’d argue that it would make both editorial and business sense — for ESPN, DAZN (the most prominent sports media “direct-to-consumer” platform, which made huge strides in 2019), Amazon (either Prime Video or Twitch), WarnerMedia’s upcoming HBO Max, NBC’s Peacock OTT service, Verizon’s Yahoo Sports or even LeBron’s Uninterrupted — to tap into high school hoops star power and social relevance in a media landscape where NBA and college rights are both stratospheric and locked in for years with incumbent distributors.

(There’s a fascinating and important sidebar about what Bronny and other high school players should get from these content businesses built on their name, image, and social currency — particularly given that Bronny plays at a school in California, the epicenter of the burgeoning name/image/likeness compensation debate, taking place now at the college level. But we can save that topic for Nieman Lab Predictions for Journalism 2021.)

It isn’t just about Bronny and the billions on the line in the battle between streaming platforms. High school basketball is designed for — and consumed by — the younger audience coveted by incumbent media companies and brands. High school basketball (and other high school sports) offer opportunities at the regional and local level for media organizations to engage with a new audience, test social-native coverage plans, and even dabble in live games (or, at the very least, more in-depth high school coverage) as part of their own subscription packages. Every region has players to showcase and social currency to experiment with. There are tons of high school players that your audience — particularly your younger audience — wants to engage with, including a couple of superstars on the girls’ side like Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd. (And, coming soon, Kobe Bryant’s daughter Gigi who already draws breathless coverage of her own.)

If professional media operators don’t take advantage of the opportunity, high schools will take a cue from college and pro teams — and all those pro-am videographers on their baselines Friday nights — and create their own direct-to-consumer offerings, while well-funded youth-media startups stake wider claims on attention and relevance. It doesn’t need to be oppositional; there’s a huge range of opportunities for media orgs of every size and ambition. I recently volunteered some time to help a civic group organizing high school student journalists in the Chicago exurbs to cover the local teams — boys and girls, varsity and JV — in more depth, which both serves the community and bolsters the students’ journalism experience.

Heading into 2020, the DNA of intensive high school basketball coverage on Instagram, YouTube, and other non-traditional platforms is classic “shoe leather” observation, combined with modest cost requirements, new distribution platforms, and a seemingly limitless appetite from fans. 2020 won’t just be the year of Bronny — it’ll be the year when media organizations across the spectrum should invest further in the opportunity to experiment across the high school space.

Dan Shanoff is longtime sports-media content strategy and development executive.

Earlier this month, ESPN televised a high school basketball game between the alma mater of LeBron James and the current school of LeBron James Jr., otherwise known as “Bronny.” The game — and the hysteria around it, including the massive potential social media relevance for anyone shooting it into feeds everywhere — earned coverage from The New York Times, The Washington Post, ESPN itself, and a horde of credentialed media members.

Just a high school freshman, Bronny is already a one-name wonder in sports — on the same sports-celebrity trajectory as Serena, Tiger and, yes, LeBron.

Bronny also represents one of the biggest growth areas of sports media heading into 2020: high school basketball.

Bronny is his own beat:

  • He has 3.9 million followers on Instagram (not quite as many as his father’s 53.9 million, but a number that would make most NBA players — and media industry folks — envious). He has 300,000 followers on TikTok for now, but give it time.
  • ESPN’s live coverage of Bronny’s Sierra Canyon team is just the start; the network has more than a dozen of Bronny’s games on the schedule this year, everywhere from basic cable to its new ESPN+ over-the-top service.
  • And Bronny is the north star of an entire Gen Z-focused sports-media ecosystem of social platform dominance — by brands like Overtime (which in 2019 secured a $23 million Series B round from big-name VCs like Andreesen Horowitz and big-name NBA stars like Kevin Durant); B/R Hoops (owned by Warner Media’s Bleacher Report); Mars Reel (investors: LeBron, Drake, AT&T); LeBron’s own Uninterrupted; and a grassroots basketball “expanded universe” of unlimited smaller players whose legion of low-cost videographers assemble like paparazzi on the baseline of any high school basketball game featuring a buzzy player, everything captured and distributed on IG, Twitter, YouTube and Twitch.

What makes Bronny such an appealing investment for a media organization — beyond the attention he commands — is that as a freshman, he theoretically has more than 100 games remaining in his high school career, between his school team, his spring/summer appearances on Nike’s high-profile EYBL circuit, and other big events where he is sure to be the star. (Notably, most of the 2019 EYBL season was streamed on Twitch, accessible to all.)

It’s easy to imagine a world where sports media networks are shelling out tens of millions in rights fees to showcase Bronny’s games. In fact, I’d argue that it would make both editorial and business sense — for ESPN, DAZN (the most prominent sports media “direct-to-consumer” platform, which made huge strides in 2019), Amazon (either Prime Video or Twitch), WarnerMedia’s upcoming HBO Max, NBC’s Peacock OTT service, Verizon’s Yahoo Sports or even LeBron’s Uninterrupted — to tap into high school hoops star power and social relevance in a media landscape where NBA and college rights are both stratospheric and locked in for years with incumbent distributors.

(There’s a fascinating and important sidebar about what Bronny and other high school players should get from these content businesses built on their name, image, and social currency — particularly given that Bronny plays at a school in California, the epicenter of the burgeoning name/image/likeness compensation debate, taking place now at the college level. But we can save that topic for Nieman Lab Predictions for Journalism 2021.)

It isn’t just about Bronny and the billions on the line in the battle between streaming platforms. High school basketball is designed for — and consumed by — the younger audience coveted by incumbent media companies and brands. High school basketball (and other high school sports) offer opportunities at the regional and local level for media organizations to engage with a new audience, test social-native coverage plans, and even dabble in live games (or, at the very least, more in-depth high school coverage) as part of their own subscription packages. Every region has players to showcase and social currency to experiment with. There are tons of high school players that your audience — particularly your younger audience — wants to engage with, including a couple of superstars on the girls’ side like Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd. (And, coming soon, Kobe Bryant’s daughter Gigi who already draws breathless coverage of her own.)

If professional media operators don’t take advantage of the opportunity, high schools will take a cue from college and pro teams — and all those pro-am videographers on their baselines Friday nights — and create their own direct-to-consumer offerings, while well-funded youth-media startups stake wider claims on attention and relevance. It doesn’t need to be oppositional; there’s a huge range of opportunities for media orgs of every size and ambition. I recently volunteered some time to help a civic group organizing high school student journalists in the Chicago exurbs to cover the local teams — boys and girls, varsity and JV — in more depth, which both serves the community and bolsters the students’ journalism experience.

Heading into 2020, the DNA of intensive high school basketball coverage on Instagram, YouTube, and other non-traditional platforms is classic “shoe leather” observation, combined with modest cost requirements, new distribution platforms, and a seemingly limitless appetite from fans. 2020 won’t just be the year of Bronny — it’ll be the year when media organizations across the spectrum should invest further in the opportunity to experiment across the high school space.

Dan Shanoff is longtime sports-media content strategy and development executive.

Matt DeRienzo   Local broadcasters begin to fill the gaps left by newspapers

S. Mitra Kalita   The race to 2021

Gordon Crovitz   Fighting misinformation requires journalism, not secret algorithms

Marie Gilot   This is fine

Bill Adair   A Nobel Prize, a Brad Pitt film, and a Taylor Swift song

Whitney Phillips   A time to question core beliefs

Victor Pickard   We reclaim a public good

Cindy Royal   Prepare media students for skills, not job titles

Irving Washington   Leadership isn’t something you learn on the job

M. Scott Havens   First-party data becomes media’s most important currency

Francesco Zaffarano   TikTok without generational prejudice

Simon Galperin   Journalism becomes more democratic

Steve Henn   The dawning audio web

Jeremy Gilbert and Jarrod Dicker   A call for collaboration between storytelling and tech

Monique Judge   The year to organize, unionize, and fight

Elizabeth Hansen and Jesse Holcomb   Local news initiatives run into a capital shortage

Felix Salmon   Spotify launches a news channel

Jennifer Brandel   A love letter from the year 2073

Nushin Rashidian   Are platforms a bridge or a lifeline?

Joshua P. Darr   All that campaign cash will make the media’s problems worse

Mira Lowe   The year of student-powered journalism

Jeremy Olshan   All journalism should be service journalism

Zizi Papacharissi   A president leads, the press follows, reality fades

Kevin D. Grant   The free press stands against authoritarians’ attacks on truth

Tonya Mosley   The neutrality vs. objectivity game ends

Peter Bale   Lies get further normalized

Mike Caulfield   Native verification tools for the blue checkmark crowd

Seth C. Lewis   20 questions for 2020

Sara K. Baranowski   A big year for little newspapers

Monica Drake   A renewed focus on misinformation

Catalina Albeanu   Rebuilding journalism, together

Linda Solomon Wood   Everyone in your organization, moving toward a common goal

Carl Bialik   Journalists will try running the whole shop

J. Siguru Wahutu   Western journalists, learn from your African peers

Alexandra Borchardt   Get out of the office and talk to people

Logan Molyneux and Shannon McGregor   Think twice before turning to Twitter

Madelyn Sanfilippo and Yafit Lev-Aretz   News coverage gets geo-fragmented

Candis Callison   Taking a cue from Indigenous journalists on climate change

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen   The business we want, not the business we had

Emily Withrow   The year we kill the news article

Meg Marco   Everything happens somewhere

Jakob Moll   A slow-moving tech backlash among young people

Craig Newmark   Formalizing newsrooms’ battle against disinformation

Cory Haik   We’re already consuming the future of news — now we have to produce it

Juleyka Lantigua   A changing industry amps up podcasters’ ambitions

Jim Brady   We’ll complain about other people living in bubbles while ignoring our own

Ståle Grut   OSINT journalism goes mainstream

Nikki Usher   All systems down

Christa Scharfenberg   It’s time to make journalism a field that supports and respects women

Tamar Charney   From broadcast to bespoke

Josh Schwartz   Publishers move beyond the metered paywall

Sue Robinson   Campaign coverage as test bed for engagement experiments

Geneva Overholser   Death to bothsidesism

Dannagal G. Young   Let’s disrupt the logic that’s driving Americans apart

Sonali Prasad   Climate change storytelling gets multidimensional

Rachel Davis Mersey   The business of local TV news will enter its downward slide

Kerri Hoffman   Opening closed systems

Helen Havlak   Platforms shine a light on original reporting

Mario García   Think small (screen)

Masuma Ahuja   Slower, quieter, more measured and thoughtful

Sarah Schmalbach   Journalist, quantify thyself

Moreno Cruz Osório   In Brazil, collaboration in a time of state attacks

Julia B. Chan   We 👏 take 👏 breaks 👏

Jake Shapiro   Podcasting gets listener relationship management

Alana Levinson   Brand-backed media gets another look

Nico Gendron   Make better products if you want to reach Gen Z

Rachel Glickhouse   Journalists get left behind in the industry’s decline

Stefanie Murray   Charitable giving goes collaborative

Colleen Shalby   Journalists become media literacy teachers

Brian Moritz   The end of “stick to sports”

Nathalie Malinarich   Betting on loyalty

Jonas Kaiser   Russian bots are just today’s slacktivists

Hossein Derakhshan   AI can’t conjure up an Errol Morris

Logan Jaffe   You don’t need fancy tools to listen

Adam Thomas   The silver bullet

Beena Raghavendran   The year of the local engagement reporter

Richard Tofel   A constraint of the reader-revenue model emerges

Laura E. Davis   Know the context your journalism is operating within

Jeff Kofman   Speed through technology

Joe Amditis   Collaborative journalism takes its rightful place at the table

Rick Berke   Incoming fire from both left and right

Doris Truong   The year of radical salary transparency

Michael W. Wagner   Increasingly fractured, but little bit deliberative

Heather Bryant   Some kinds of journalism aren’t worth saving

Alfred Hermida and Mary Lynn Young   The promise of nonprofit journalism

Cristina Kim   Public media stops trying to serve “everybody”

Elizabeth Dunbar   Frank talk, and then action

Tom Glaisyer   Journalism can emerge newly vibrant and powerful

Talia Stroud   The work of reconnecting starts November 4

John Keefe   Journalism gets hacked

Carrie Brown-Smith   Engaged journalism: It’s finally happening

Errin Haines   Race and gender aren’t a 2020 story — they’re the story

Kourtney Bitterly   Transparency isn’t just a desire, it’s an expectation

Lucas Graves   A smarter conversation about how (and why) fact-checking matters

An Xiao Mina   The Forum we wanted, the forum we got

Dan Shanoff   Sports media enters the Bronny era

Fiona Spruill   The climate crisis gets the coverage it deserves

Sarah Alvarez   I’m ready for post-news

Jasmine McNealy   A call for context

Bill Grueskin   Our ethics codes get an overhaul

Kathleen Searles   Pay more attention to attention

Joanne McNeil   A return to blogs (finally? sort of?)

Ben Werdmuller   Use the tools of journalism to save it

Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper   Power to the people (on your audience team)

Margarita Noriega   The platforms try to figure out what to do with single-subject newsrooms

Joni Deutsch   Podcasting unsilences the silent

Knight Foundation   Five generations of journalists, learning from each other

Alice Antheaume   Trade “politics” for “power”

Sarah Marshall   The year to learn about news moments

Don Day   Respect the non-paying audience

Brenda P. Salinas   Treating MP3 files like text

Eric Nuzum   Podcasting finally creates another mega-hit show

A.J. Bauer   A fork in the road for conservative media

Pablo Boczkowski   The day after November 4

John Garrett   It’s the best time in a century to start a local news organization

Sarah Stonbely   More people start caring about news inequality

Imaeyen Ibanga   Let’s take it slow

Raney Aronson-Rath   News deserts will proliferate — but so will new solutions

Meredith Artley   Stronger solidarity among news organizations

Heidi Tworek   The year of positive pushback

Matthew Pressman   News consumers divide into haves and have-nots

Millie Tran   Wicked

Nicholas Jackson   What’s left of local gets comfortable with reader support

Mariana Moura Santos   The future of journalism is collaborative

Barbara Gray   Join local libraries on the frontlines of civic engagement

Kristen Muller   The year we operationalize community engagement

Lauren Duca   The rise of the journalistic influencer

Ernie Smith   The death of the industry fad

Rachel Schallom   The value of push alerts goes beyond open rates

Anthony Nadler   Clash of Clans: Election Edition

Greg Emerson   News apps fall further behind

Annie Rudd   The expanded ambiguity of the news photograph

Tanya Cordrey   Saying no to more good ideas