When professional sports leagues were put on pause due to the onset of the global pandemic in the United States, Annie Agar found herself out of work. Leading up to this point, she had been reporting in local news for WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids, Mich. in a multi-faceted role that involved writing, anchoring and editing. Although Agar was not let go from the station, a lack of events to report on led her to move back home with her parents and contemplate her future. The world was full of ambiguity and caused her to think differently about what could come next in her career.
Agar was with her family on Mother’s Day when she decided to explore TikTok, a social media app that she had installed several weeks earlier predicated on video content. She received the impetus to experiment with the platform when her sister told her that she would not understand it. During that afternoon, she extemporaneously thought about staging a video in which teams in the Big Ten Conference had a Zoom meeting to try and restart football through the pandemic.
Without a script and bonafide plan about the video, she used her cell phone to record and combine different clips of herself playing different teams in the videos, indicating the characters through clothing featuring their logos. Once Agar posted the video to her TikTok account, it began to gain traction and was subsequently shared on Twitter, eliciting remarks from brands and other sports media personalities.
“I didn’t have any intention of it taking off the way that it did, and somebody had put it on Twitter and overnight [it] had 2-3 million views,” Agar said. “I just remember thinking, ‘People want this right now. They want something to laugh at, and I think now is the time to do that.’ I think the timing of it was incredible, and it’s still wild to think about.”
As Agar continued to produce videos depicting other conferences and the National Football League, she was determined to build her social media following and avoid being considered a one-hit wonder. Being a football fan herself, she found it easy to genuinely relate to and resonate with others in the space and tried to remain true to her roots as her profile grew. From the beginning, all of the content she was creating was meant to echo the sentiments of fans and generate conversation and interest in the game.
“I’m so glad I kind of thought to do that because there’s always something going on in the NFL,” Agar said. “It’s just exactly how I would talk with friends and family when I’m talking about the NFL; I just put it in video form.”
Everything occurred expeditiously for Agar, and she was suddenly being contacted by various brands and companies to collaborate ahead of the NFL season. ESPN reached out to try and implement her in a segment on Sunday NFL Countdown, something she was willing to do for free. Once she began working with her agent though, Agar attained more clarity about her path moving forward and how to leverage her career path in a highly competitive industry.
“I didn’t want to waste an opportunity because I was now appealing to the fans, which is exactly what I got in this industry to do, so I saw what it could be and I saw potential,” Agar said. “I just wanted to make sure I marketed myself well enough and really took advantage of all these opportunities that were coming to me.”
From speaking to several industry professionals at a young age, Agar evinced a common paradigm of beginning in local news and trying to effectuate consistent advancement in the business. Taking heed to this methodology, she majored in journalism and pre-law at Grand Valley State University and completed an internship with the local NBC-affiliated station.
While in school, Agar remained around sports by working as a bartender for the West Michigan Whitecaps, the Class-A affiliate of the Detroit Tigers. Aside from gaining personal skills and interacting with sports fans, she also met several executives with the team and informed them of her career plans.
“At one point, they needed a host to do this on-field stuff and they knew I was studying sports broadcasting at the time and I was like, ‘Absolutely – it’ll look great on a résumé,’” Agar recalled. “That happened just being around the field and around the guys and bartending.”
Although Agar was initially apprehensive about taking the field, she affirms that it loosened her up and made her more comfortable connecting with fans. In moving to local news, she became more versatile in the process of creating original content, a skillset that has indirectly paid dividends in the process of compiling weekly meeting videos.
Many people assume that Agar has a production team helping her script, record and edit these videos. In reality, she is her own production team and follows a schedule to ensure she has timely, organic content ready at the conclusion of the NFL week. Agar usually watches the games alone on Sunday afternoons and takes notes about key moments in the action. At the same time, she is monitoring social media and trying to gain a feel for what fans are discussing in order to write jokes to use in the video.
When Monday morning arrives, Agar is awake between 6 and 7 a.m. and immediately conducts game-by-game research to remember what occurred. The seven-hour endeavor, while copious, is essential to create an engaging and informative final product, which she begins to record later that day. Setting up her cell phone in front of a white wall, Agar prepares a wardrobe filled with an interminable amount of NFL team gear.
As her videos began to burgeon in popularity, teams started to send her jerseys and shirts to wear so they would be represented in the meetings. The filming takes between three-and-a-half to four hours, a time when she sometimes comes up with new jokes extemporaneously and refines the script. When her filming for the day concludes, Agar watches the entirety of the Monday Night Football game and amends the video as necessary.
Agar has a 3 a.m. wake-up call on Tuesday morning to commence the editing process, all of which is executed on her phone using the Videoleap mobile application. This past NFL season, she began to slightly overlap the audio from different clips to create the effect of conversational fluidity. Additionally, she makes sure that all of the footage is recorded behind a white backdrop to accentuate the wardrobe, even booking hotel rooms based on the walls themselves. All of these videos are recorded with a medium shot in vertical orientation, emitting an element of simplicity rendering the content easy to consume.
“I [have] thought, ‘Well, this is how it started, but people are adapting to the industry, and once you get a better feel for how you shoot the videos, then maybe you can make it a little bit higher production,” Agar said, “but honestly I think the videos do so well because they’re lower production and it feels that you’re just in a room with all of these teams talking to each other in a meeting.”
Once she records the final shots for the video on Tuesday morning, Agar posts the finished outcome and sees as people express their opinions through likes and comments. There are times when she will respond to fans on social media and utilize feedback for future projects while also remaining cognizant of criticism. Messages of enthusiasm and support outweigh those explicating repulsive and acerbic parlance, a community she has built that has become evident at in-person events. Agar recently attended her third Super Bowl and took part in interviews and other initiatives while on site for the league’s championship game.
“I was working my way up as much as I could, and now it just is unbelievable to be recognized by the people that I watched on TV and looked up to and hearing them say that they like the videos – I can’t even explain how cool it is,” Agar said. “….I wanted to make it to a big network, but I wanted to do it in kind of a different way, and I’m just so glad it worked out this way.”
While the meeting videos have proven to be an integral part of her building a career, Agar’s presence spans far beyond this setting. She frequently posts photos and videos with pithy captions, sometimes containing sardonic undertones, that both amuse and agitate fans spanning beyond football. For example, Agar recently attended a Chicago Blackhawks game against the Detroit Red Wings at the United Center on a significant night for the organization and its fans.
Former Blackhawks forward Patrick Kane made his return to Chicago as an opponent for the first time after playing parts of 16 seasons with the team and capturing three Stanley Cup championships. Kane ended up scoring the game-winning goal in overtime for Detroit, prompting Agar to post, “Got to see Patrick Kane last night. You know Chicago should really get someone like him.” The X post alone has 17,000 likes, 532 comments and 1.5 million impressions, which in turn leads to traffic towards her other content and sports media commitments.
“I do all the work and all the research so that fans are laughing at the end of the day and the fans are happy,” Agar said. “It helps maybe when their team – like the Panthers fans when they only get two wins a season – it gives them something to laugh about.”
The niche of comedy and sports is an area that she hopes to help augment as time goes on with dreams of one day launching her own network. A challenge in the process, however, has been converting the elements of short-form content into different areas of the sports media space. Nearly a year after her videos went viral, Agar accepted a position with Bally Sports as its national NFL and college football correspondent while also serving as a host. The regional sports network brand of Diamond Sports Group allowed Agar to continue establishing her digital presence while providing content for the platform and appearing on select programming.
“When I’m on air, I try to be as fan-based as possible,” Agar expressed. “Some people try to be unbiased, but I love knowing your bias. Everybody I interview, whether [it is on] the sports media side or [a] player, I want to know who your team is because you’re going to respond differently whether you try to be biased or not.”
Akin to her approach on social media, Agar seeks to convey her legitimate self to the audience through her zealous passion for sports. It is an aspect of her career she attributes to her family always stressing authenticity over the years and remains a key factor in pondering over her future. The proclivities and predilections she has shared in public forums have made her more relatable to the audience and cultivates a deeper understanding of the theory behind her comedy as well.
“People have asked if I want to go to an ESPN or these higher networks, and of course everybody wants to, but I also don’t want anybody to limit my jokes,” Agar said. “I’ve come to realize a lot of these bigger networks – they don’t want the right-on-the-line joke, which [are] the jokes that I’m going to make, so we just have to be careful about that.”
As a content creator working in a journalistic correspondent role, Agar seeks to bring entertainment and lightheartedness to sports with an ability to discuss sports objectively. Furthermore, she implements the audience through social media polls and calls to action. For her meeting videos after the AFC and NFC Championship games, Agar asked fans to submit videos to be included as part of the meeting. Many of them demonstrated feelings of disappointment because of their absence from the Super Bowl, and Agar was able to play off of that to create a unique and memorable content offering.
“Comedy is my defense mechanism; it’s how I cope with things,” Agar said. “I think it’s just a natural tendency for me to want to bring light to situations because I hate when people are upset. I’m a people-person, [and] I can’t stand when people are hurting or upset, so I try to lighten the mood with certain things.”
Agar will be hosting a panel at the 2024 BSM Summit centered on garnering social media success, focusing on specific types of content and strategies for growth. Participating in the session, which is presented by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), is Steve Braband, WWE vice president of digital; Marc Kohn, chief content officer at Overtime; and Omar Raja, ESPN digital and social commentator and creator of House of Highlights. Aside from taking the stage in this capacity for the first time, Agar also looks forward to listening to industry colleagues and gaining new perspectives on sports media.
“The networking is going to be great, and especially in these kinds of spaces, everybody’s guard is down a little bit, I think, because we’re all in the same boat; we’re all in the same industry, so I’m excited to network and hear what everybody else has to say,” Agar explained. “I’m just going to take a little backseat and listen this time.”
Over the last year, Agar has observed growth in the video metrics and feels good about her work with Stadium and other brands. Even though her path may seem atypical compared to others, she is aware that the path to industry success can differ between professionals. More creators continue to gain notoriety and foster sustainable business propositions through digital verticals both within original and derivative content schema. In order to remain cognizant of new trends and best practices, Agar has consulted with new creators and industry veterans in her prudent quest for viability.
“Look at all these creators that are now on a big stage and going to NFL Honors because they were seen on TikTok,” Agar divulged. “It’s just opened up a different world, and I think it would be frustrating to people that are already in the industry that are like, ‘Well, I worked my way up this way and you guys are just jumping on a phone and doing it,’ but I think the best way to not be cynical of the industry is to learn and be open to learning.”
As she continues to build her career in the industry, Agar is concentrating on how she can continue to make people laugh and imbue levity into sports. Despite the content she creates resonating with fans, she does not consider herself an influencer per se because it goes against why she is doing this work. Conversely, she is trying to assemble content as a sports fan to benefit the aggregate community of sports fans as a whole. With new creator networks emerging and finding ways to withstand potential pitfalls, Agar is ready to adapt with the industry while blueprinting a pliable strategy to continue moving forward and giving a voice to sports fans through trials and tribulations alike.
“Just be original to what you are and the content you want out there, and just do it; just start putting out content,” Agar said. “It sounds so simple, but really, you’d be surprised how many people don’t do it because they think people are already out there doing it.”
Derek Futterman is a contributing editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, find him on X @derekfutterman.
