Ethan Skolnick knows what the Miami sports fan wants. Even better, he knows the most effective way to get it to them. To have that strong of a belief, takes a whole lot of experience and a vision that nobody else has. Luckily, he has both.
To truly understand why Skolnick feels so strongly about what the Miami sports fan wants, you have to know about both his present and his past.
For 20 years, Skolnick was one of the best sports media talents in South Florida. Whether it was stops at the Miami Herald, Palm Beach Post, Sun Sentinel or even 790 The Ticket where he replaced Dan Le Batard, he’s always seemed to have a direct pulse on what content the sports fans in the city want to consume. Along with that experience, plus the tireless work of many others, Skolnick is brining Miami sports on demand in the form of podcasts, videos, news stories, etc. to the city like it’s never seen before.
The Five Reasons Sports Network has taken Miami by storm.
The Climb
In 2018, Skolnick was out of sports media. After a successful career that saw him have, at one time, the highest rated radio show in South Florida behind Dan Le Batard, he was looking for his next venture. Then, Chris Wittyngham, a former host with Skolnick at 790 The Ticket, came with the idea to start a podcast. The duo started with one to try and get into the swing of things. It was a success. Soon enough, people were all over the idea of hearing the two back together talking sports. Then, things started to expand more once Skolnick took his new product to Twitter.
“I had built up over 75,000 followers at one point,” said Skolnick. “I’m at like 72,000 now, but I always engaged with people, because I thought it was a big part of my job. Basically I just started using my Twitter account again, created a Five Reasons Sports account, then retweeted a bunch of stuff on that page from my personal account to accelerate the growth and build a following.”
It worked. Shortly after, people who had built a social media following with the Dolphins and Heat started to reach out. But out of everyone that reached out, there was one in particular that stood out.
“Alfredo Arteaga, “said Skolnick. “He basically said that he and his two buddies, one of them living in England and one of them living in Tampa Bay, they had all this info about the Dolphins, it was incredible, but Alfredo came to me and said he and his two friends were thinking of starting a podcast and asked how I did it. I said I had a better idea, why don’t we work together?”
With that conversation, Three Yards per Carry was born. It took off instantly. Today, it’s one of the most successful podcasts in the Five Reasons Sports Network and considered as the possibly the best podcast when it comes to the Miami Dolphins.
“Those guys nailed 5 of the 7 draft picks a year ago,” Skolnick said “They’re just on top of everything and I don’t touch them. They have this chemistry that’s totally organic. It just works.”
Soon after, others in the social media space reached out to get a better understanding how Skolnick and his new team were creating an in-demand product. The people asking, quickly became a part of the Five Reasons Sports Network. The growth was happening.
The Secret
Skolnick isn’t shy about his vision of winning Miami in the next two years. That’s not winning in just the podcast space, that’s winning over every single newspaper and sports radio station in the city. He wants to be the destination for every sports fan in Miami. But what’s his plan to get there?
Social media is a massive component with Five Reasons Sports Network. It’s probably even fair to say it’s the livelihood of the brand with how much emphasis is put on it.
“We generate anywhere between 5-10 million impressions a month off our Twitter account,” Skolnick said. “Basically by posting polls throughout the day, retweeting everybody’s episodes and posting other content.”
The Five Reasons Sports Network Twitter account has a little over 12,000 followers. With that page, as well as the other podcaster’s pages, Skolnick feels he’s captured every South Florida sports fan who’s on Twitter. The goal isn’t just to bombard the internet with local sports content, it’s to capture the audience in a way the other outlets in the city are failing to reach. That’s by owning Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and every other social media platform that’s out there.
“We want South Florida content that’s quick-hitting and draws people in,” said Skolnick. “That’s what I want and I also think that’s what people want these days. I know who we’re competing with, because I worked at all of them and they haven’t taken us seriously yet. We completely out-work them on Twitter and they don’t engage, just post.
“I’m a little stunned they’ve watched us do this, because everyone knows about us here now. We’re credentialed with all the teams. The arrogance of traditional media, which has always been the case, has been really good for us. We’re just building, building, building, and eventually as they regress the advertising money will start to come to us. That’s when things start to really happen.”
The Podcasts
12 total podcasts can be found on the Five Reasons Sports Network. From covering the Heat with the Five on the Floor podcast to A Canes Thing that covers the Miami Hurricanes to even a few podcasts that focus more on culture, South Florida coverage is locked up with multiple podcasts. With Skolnick and other hosts having big connections in the sports world, you’ll often hear riveting content as well as big name guests that both play and cover a respective sport.
Five Reasons will put its ability to pump podcasts on social media against anyone. But, more importantly, it will put its content against anyone else, too.
“The consumers want content on demand,” said Skolnick. “They want content that’s tailored to them, on their schedule and they want to be able to stop it and go back to it later. The biggest thing I always tell people about podcasting, literally, if you’re in the car and you have your GPS on, the podcast will stop for you until the GPS is done talking. The radio doesn’t do that.
“Honestly there’s no reason to listen to radio over podcast anymore. I don’t listen to radio anymore and most people who have switched over to us don’t listen to radio anymore either. We studied the numbers on this. 40% of people leave when you go to a seven minute break. I won’t have a break that’s more than one minute on our podcast.”
More than Just Podcasts
Videos, quick-hitting local stories, there’s a lot you’ll find outside of the 12 podcasts featured on Five Reasons Sports Network. For instance, during halftime of last Saturday’s Miami vs. Florida game, two staff members posted a quick video on Twitter with instant thoughts of the first 30 minutes of action. That was met with 10,000 views and 50 retweets. All from a simple video that featured the quick, halftime thoughts of two fans.
Skolnick even brought in writers that have no podcast duties to write stories on the front page of the website that pertain to local teams. On the front page of fivereasonssports.com you’ll see several local stories with headlines that pop and catch the reader. This isn’t just about audio, the goal is to be the ultimate destination for south Florida sports fans.
“I brought in all these people and I’m not even paying them a salary,” Skolnick said. “It’s just people who want a platform. Now, I have more than 70 contributors total if you include the website folks. I’m not paying salary to anybody, it’s all self-generated and it’s all people believing in it. The people we have here are incredible.”
Last night on Twitter, a video was put up on the company’s official page that creatively highlighted the brand, along with all the podcasts the network has to offer. From the music, to the highlights, it truly had a professional look and feel to it. Most of the time, there’s money and resources that go into making a video like that but Skolnick revealed it was made by a newly hired intern who did it for free. Though it’s just one video, it’s the tireless work of free help that’s put the network in the situation it’s in.
Expansion
Though the goal is to win Miami, that doesn’t mean the dream stops there. In fact, the end goal might be to win all of Florida. Initially, Skolnick wanted to be in Tampa Bay, Orlando, Tallahassee, Gainesville and Jacksonville by the fall. However, time ran out with so many things happening across the network.
That desire only grew deeper after Skolnick was recently approached by a member of the PR staff of the Atlanta Hawks. While he was inside the Hawks’ locker room, the PR man came up to Skolnick and asked when Five Reasons was coming to Atlanta. The thought behind the question, is that the team could use more coverage and the ever-growing network based in south Florida might be just the thing to help.
But whereas several other podcasts networks have chosen to go national with several different podcasts in several different markets, Five Reasons believes in a localized product.
“I think we’re the only localized podcast network in the country,” said Skolnick. “There’s a lot of national ones, but what I found with those, is that, and this is no disrespect to any of them, I’m friends with a lot of people who run them, but it’s very difficult to understand what the local podcast needs.”
Though expansion is in the cards for Five Reasons, don’t expect a move to a market considerably bigger than Miami. Why? Skolnick is adamant about not going to Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia or Los Angeles because it’s too competitive and the other media outlets in those cities are still relatively healthy.
“To me, this only works from the ground up in places like South Florida, north central Florida or Atlanta,” said Skolnick. “Places that don’t have the healthiest or most competitive media operations.”
Merchandise
If you’re able to sell merchandise in the sports media world, it’s a sure sign you have a pretty healthy audience. Almost always a profitable venture, Five Reasons Sports Network has ventured into selling merchandise such as shirts, hats, jackets and even socks on its website.
“It’s really done well and that’s an easy play for us,” said Skolnick. “I’m very lucky, because a lot of the guys we have are really talented in doing other things. One of the producers of our podcasts, happens to be an extraordinarily good designer that works really fast. When something happens in sports or Miami sports, he literally sends me a T-shirt in the next hour.”
Talk about a potential money making venture. With the cheap cost of making a T-shirt combined with a designer that’s already on staff and puts out creations at a given notice, Five Reasons has found a source of revenue that most in its spot strive for.
“Some of the stuff we do is for giveaways at watch parties to help with our name building,” Skolnick said. “But when we have a player who’s hot like Preston Williams for the Dolphins, who has taken off as an undrafted free agent, my guy will just send me a design in an hour and we get it up. We just react to trends. Some people may regret buying a shirt if he doesn’t make the team but we’re just trying to have fun with it and be current.”
Monetizing
Ahh, the real question, right?
Everything might sound good up to this point, but how do you make money with it. Well, for starters, Five Reasons Sports Network is already off to a great start with the merchandise sales it has. No, that probably can’t fund the entire network’s ambitious plans, but it’s a steady stream of revenue that can be used. But as for finding money for podcasts, there’s many out there wondering how they can be profitable, even if the download rates are high.
“Well, this has been the hardest part right?” said Skolnick. “It always is, the monetizing. We’ve kind of gone about it a couple of different ways. I had an ad firm and it didn’t really work out, they just weren’t in position to sell us properly. We didn’t have the numbers at that point to really make it worth their while and drop their other business.
But what I did, was I went to Twitter and found people with sales experience who are already engaging with us and I’ve been giving them commission to sell us, so they reach out to the companies for me.”
Five Reasons’ plan to sell has landed with good reception. Bigger companies such as AutoNation and BetDSI have signed on, as well as local car dealerships and several south Florida restaurants. Combine that with ads soon coming on the website and the network just might have a solid path to carving out a nice pay day.
“Are we where we need to be, no, but that is the big push,” Skolnick said. “But my point is that we’re not just selling podcasts, we’re selling content. That means video, tweets, podcasts, it means several things. There’s a lot of different ways you can make money off this.”
Final Word from Skolnick
Though Skolnick might be the face of the company, he strives to make it very clear it’s not just about him. In fact, he says it’s very little about him.
“There are so many people who are devoting a lot of their time, a lot of it for free, this is about having really talented contributors that should have been snapped up by other outlets. And we’re so fortunate to have them. It amazes me the work they put in.”
The journey is just beginning and nowhere near being completed, but thanks are still in order to the people who helped get the company off the ground.
“Chris Wittyngham is no longer with us,” Skolnick said. “He was my original partner and he did incredible work to get us started he just decided to pursue soccer play-by-play full-time, which he’s really good at. He’s a really talented person. His role was really major.”
Tyler McComas is a columnist for BSM and a sports radio talk show host in Norman, OK where he hosts afternoon drive for SportsTalk 1400. You can find him on Twitter @Tyler_McComas or you can email him at TylerMcComas08@yahoo.com.
