Turner is reaffirming its commitment to Bleacher Report by investing $100 million dollars in the brand over the next three years to help build out the digital sports property. The plan is to hire up to 20 platform content creators, and feature a 35-person social content team that’s focused on creating original material tied to live sporting events for distribution on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Vine and Snapchat.
The company is focusing on expanding its reach across all platforms and believes that original content creation must become a bigger priority. The strategy shift is due to people seeing content in a blur on their social feeds and disconnecting from the publisher’s own site.
Bleacher Report President Rory Brown hopes to create what he calls a “writer’s room mentality,” stocked with people who are experts at producing original content for specific social platforms. The company’s aggressive stance toward social distribution has already been a huge hit on Facebook and is seeing rapid growth on Instagram and Vine.
Although original content may be expensive to create, and other publishers have concerns about putting their material exclusively on others’ platforms without clear paths to monetization, Brown is taking a “if you build it, they will come” approach. The interest among advertisers to be associated with live sports moments is very strong, and opportunities to align clients with the company’s original content aren’t far off.
Credit to Digiday who originally provided this information
Jason Barrett is the President and Founder of Barrett Media since the company was created in September 2015. Prior to its arrival, JB served as a sports radio programmer, launching brands such as 95.7 The Game in San Francisco, and 101 ESPN in St. Louis. He also spent time programming SportsTalk 950 in Philadelphia, 590 The Fan KFNS in St. Louis, and ESPN 1340/1390 in Poughkeepsie, NY. Jason also worked on-air and behind the scenes in local radio at 101.5 WPDH, WTBQ 1110AM, and WPYX 106.5. He also spent two years on the national stage, producing radio shows for ESPN Radio in Bristol, CT. Among them included the Dan Patrick Show, and GameNight.
You can find JB on Twitter @SportsRadioPD. He’s also reachable by email at Jason@BarrettMedia.com.
