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Not like many media moguls, Nish Patel — founding father of sports activities media firm ClutchPoints — stays a fan first.
That keenness has formed each step of his profession. His path into sports activities media wasn’t pushed by fame or fortune, however by a easy need to cease annoying his buddies. A lifelong Lakers fan, Patel would flood his Fb feed with play-by-play updates about Kobe Bryant — from spotlight reels to taking pictures percentages.
“Finally, a few of my buddies who weren’t sports activities followers had been like, ‘It’s best to most likely simply make a web page for this — most of us don’t care about that stuff,’” Patel tells Entrepreneur.
Little did they know that web page would evolve into one of many greatest gamers in fashionable sports activities media.
As Bryant’s profession neared its finish, Patel began questioning who would carry the torch for the following era. His reply got here within the type of then-Bulls rookie Derrick Rose. Impressed, he launched an “admittedly corny” fan web page titled D-Rose is D-Man. It rapidly took off, racking up lots of of hundreds of views inside months.
However the basketball gods giveth and taketh away. When Rose tore his ACL in 2012, it was a heartbreaking second for NBA followers — and a turning level for Patel.
“I keep in mind pondering, rattling, I spent a lot time constructing this fan base, however I ought to’ve been pondering greater image,” he says.
In February 2012, Patel launched NBA Memes, a parody account sharing humorous pictures and information from across the league.
“My inspiration got here from this UCLA memes web page the place college students posted inside jokes about campus life,” Patel remembers. “It was hilarious — however tremendous area of interest. And I assumed, nobody’s doing this for basketball.”
NBA memes was an on the spot success, reaching 1,000,000 followers in simply six months.
“We had this complete neighborhood of individuals submitting memes and creating content material for us,” Patel says. “We’d credit score them, and so they’d go loopy — sharing it with their family and friends, saying, ‘I received featured!’ That was actually the early model of the creator neighborhood that’s so enormous now.”
After the Derrick Rose expertise, Patel discovered to not put all his eggs in a single basket. He began eager about his on-line presence “like a inventory portfolio.” As a substitute of specializing in one participant or crew, he started constructing fan pages for each franchise, no matter league or sport.
“My imaginative and prescient was easy,” Patel says. “As a Lakers fan in a giant market, when Kobe was out with accidents, nobody was speaking in regards to the crew on SportsCenter. I assumed, if that’s the case right here, think about followers in smaller markets like Charlotte or Memphis. I needed to create content material that each fan truly cared about.”
Reasonably than pushing polished narratives, ClutchPoints adopted the lead of its viewers, regularly sharing fan opinions and feedback.
“It goes again to our origin story with NBA Memes,” Patel says. “Folks would ship us content material, and we’d inform them, ‘You’re a part of ClutchPoints — you’re a part of the Clutch fam. Let’s get your content material on the market. We see everybody who talks to us as our model of Stephen A Smith or Max Kellerman.”
As ClutchPoints grew, Patel discovered himself overwhelmed managing it alone.
“I’d get up at 1 a.m., 3 a.m., 5 a.m. and seven a.m. simply to put up — there wasn’t even a scheduling possibility again then,” he remembers. “It was simply an excessive amount of.”
Patel’s first rent, a highschool pal from UCLA, helped reply to the flood of fan messages.
“We needed individuals to know we cared — that we noticed their submissions and appreciated what they shared,” Patel says. “It was all the time about creating one thing for followers, by followers.”
The thought labored. Sports activities figures like Maverick Carter started reaching out, noticing that ClutchPoints was producing large engagement.
“He actually messaged us via Fb,” Patel remembers. “He was like I’ve entry to expertise, I’ve entry to manufacturing, I’ve entry to manufacturers prepared to spend, however I don’t have the impressions that you simply guys have for the team-specific method.”
In 2015, Patel joined Startup UCLA, an on-campus incubator, the place he discovered the way to construct a extra skilled firm.
“Firstly, one among my workers was simply accepting funds on PayPal till we hit a restrict and realized we wanted to determine one thing else out,” Patel remembers.
Via UCLA’s startup community, Patel related with buyers and entrepreneurs throughout enterprise and tech — two areas he sees as elementary when constructing an organization. After finishing this system, the newly named ClutchPoints raised its first funding spherical in 2017 — and the remainder is historical past.
When Patel launched NBA Memes, he was nonetheless a pre-med scholar learning for midterms. However his lack of media expertise turned out to be his greatest benefit.
“After I was elevating funding, individuals would ask, ‘Oh, you’re constructing one other Bleacher Report?’ or ‘One other SB Nation?’” Patel remembers. “However I didn’t wish to be company. I needed to create one thing that felt like followers speaking to their buddies — as a result of that’s the way it began.”
That fan-first mentality has fueled ClutchPoints’ evolution into one of many largest impartial sports activities media networks immediately. Patel now oversees greater than 300 social pages throughout X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Fb, with a mixed viewers of over 38 million throughout each main sport and crew.
The corporate is increasing its fan base throughout a variety of sports activities verticals past the key skilled leagues, together with ladies’s sports activities, HBCUs, school soccer and school basketball.
The corporate has generated greater than 5 billion lifetime video views, positioned NBA reporters in over 20 arenas and WNBA reporters in additional than half the league’s venues, and landed sponsored content material offers with manufacturers like State Farm and McDonald’s.
“Our objective was by no means to be a media firm that felt above the followers,” Patel says. “We needed to be proper there with them.”
Not like many media moguls, Nish Patel — founding father of sports activities media firm ClutchPoints — stays a fan first.
That keenness has formed each step of his profession. His path into sports activities media wasn’t pushed by fame or fortune, however by a easy need to cease annoying his buddies. A lifelong Lakers fan, Patel would flood his Fb feed with play-by-play updates about Kobe Bryant — from spotlight reels to taking pictures percentages.
“Finally, a few of my buddies who weren’t sports activities followers had been like, ‘It’s best to most likely simply make a web page for this — most of us don’t care about that stuff,’” Patel tells Entrepreneur.
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