Throughout his career in the sports media business, Darren Rovell has abided by a principle that has guided his decision making and maintained both innovation and productivity. Being able to detect a point of diminishing returns has rendered him shrewd and adept in recognizing when to make a move and adjust his path. Adhering to the established standard, he has found, leads to success through calculated, discernible moves in the next direction.
Rovell determined last fall that his time at The Action Network covering the sports betting industry was coming to a close. Five years prior, he had left ESPN for a second time when he began to see a lot of advertising for sportsbooks such as DraftKings and FanDuel, making the decision after realizing that he could spend 85% of his time covering the gambling business.
The insightful and prudent lens through which Rovell perceives sports business has always served him well and garnered both recognition and plaudits over the years. Even though he has worked for both established and startup sports media and business brands, he has always maintained an entrepreneurial approach. Aside from his work in reporting, he continues to run food and beverage venture capital endeavors at the same time, including a brewing company, bagel distributor and a penetration into the canned cocktail market. When Rovell began to consider covering the collectibles business, he realized that he would be able to thrive by leveraging both his brand and industry expertise.
“I’ve spent the last 15 years putting [a] significant amount of money into the collectibles business, sports and otherwise, and the community is amazing,” Rovell said. “The upside if you’re smart has been tremendous.”
Rovell estimates that there are 15 auctions per week within the niche business area, a figure that is nearly seven times larger than five years ago. Amid the global pandemic, he explained, consumers began to reflect on nostalgic elements in their lives, some of which have included cards and collectibles.
Transitioning away from full-time sports business reporting, a craft in which Rovell had excelled for over two decades, was a facile decision because of the inconspicuous nature of the opportunity. He was able to successfully raise money to launch Cllct this past April, which features news, analysis and storytelling pertaining to the collectibles industry. Investments in the brand emanated from venerated capital venture groups and various industry luminaries, collectively including more than 20 owners of professional sports teams.
“When I took the money, I turned down some big money from big players because they’re in the industry, and I said, ‘If you’re on my cap table, even if it’s under your wife’s name, I can’t take your money because I don’t want to be questioned,’” Rovell explained. “So it started with kind of the investment and making sure that everyone understood who was investing that maybe they were investing because it helped that we were talking about this and they had a massive collection, but they weren’t investing because we were going to curry favor and actually talk about their collection without mentioning it.”
Maintaining journalistic integrity throughout the process has been fundamental in building credibility and emerging as a trusted source that can withstand greater fluctuations. The brand features a staff of experienced sports media executives, including chief content officer Kevin Jackson, chief product officer Ted Bishop and producer Matt Liberman. Employees are located around the country but spend one week per month together in the company’s New York City office where they are able to ideate and collaborate on projects in person.
“We’re all over the place, and I think of us as kind of like a Costco where people go on our site, they know what to expect, they look around, they see what they came for and then they start poking around, and we’ve seen that on days where we’ve had massive news stories,” Rovell said.
Over the years, there have been many media startups that have never advanced beyond the exploration phase for a variety of reasons. Rovell is ensuring that his brand does not succumb to the same fate, safeguarding against unforeseen circumstances by outlining his ambitions and operating in a niche space that gives it a degree of protection. Cllct covers a wide breadth of topics within the collectibles business, including auctions, autographs, tickets, game-worn memorabilia and sealed iPhone devices and is working to augment its brand equity in the business.
When he was working for CNBC, Rovell became one of the first journalists to join Twitter, largely because he wanted people to know where he was. In the preceding years, he had carved the sports business niche at ESPN after catalyzing the creation of his role through a conversation with deputy editor David Albright. Equipped with an eight-page laminated media guide he had created, Rovell questioned the lack of coverage in this area and promulgated his skills. Two weeks later, he was flying to Bristol, Conn. to begin working at ESPN in a sports business reporting role right out of school.
Six years later, Rovell left the company to join CNBC in a similar role and was subjected to rhetoric that he would never be hired by ESPN in the future. During his time away from Bristol, he utilized social media to brand himself and gained an extensive following for the information and accompanying differentiation he offered.
“Tiger Woods makes a putt and becomes a champion or wins a major, and 30 seconds later, I’m putting how much money it is, making sure that sports business was inserted so that you couldn’t really avoid it,” Rovell said, “and I think given my timing and how I did it, it became, ‘That’s what Rovell would do,’ right?”
The identity that he created by happenstance elicited the taxonomy of his vernacular as ‘Rovellian,’ something that he also attributes to being raised by his parents “to have a hard head.” His skills in reporting, along with the brand he had built through social media during his time at CNBC and second stint at ESPN, benefitted him when moving out of the sports business niche to cover other subsets of the industry.
“Before I left ESPN, and I had a couple months left on my contract and I asked if they’d let me out, I said, ‘Are you going to go full bore into gambling?,’ and the answer was, ‘No.’ You know, ‘We’re Disney and we’re not going to do that,’ and I said, ‘I’d love to kind of leave and take this opportunity,’” Rovell articulated. “Chad Millman, who had been my editor for so long who I’d known for 15 years up until that point, was at The Action Network. He made the jump before legalization, which I give him a lot of credit for, and the goal was just to build this thing, kind of put my name in the ring [and] boost Action.”
Rovell officially joined The Action Network in 2018 as a senior executive producer where he was responsible for covering sports betting and developing product ideas. The startup media company proved to be a perfect fit for him because of the quantitative analytics and data-driven approach it used across its platforms. Three years later, the company was sold to Better Collective for $240 million and continued to innovate in the space as user penetration and average revenue per user expeditiously heightened.
“Obviously in the beginning, it was just talking about gambling in a smarter way and being able to magnify it through my Twitter, which led to a lot of hits for The Action Network, [but] then, the model changed several times,” Rovell said. “[The] first time, there was thought that it would be advertising. Then it became affiliates, where we would get a piece of new gamblers that would come to sites, so certainly by augmenting Action, that led to higher revenue.”
Rovell felt that the reporting had reached the sports betting space last year, precipitating his move to the collectibles industry. As the founder of Cllct, he ensures that the company is on track for growth and reporting in areas of the industry that inform and appeal to consumers. Whether it is autographed memorabilia, jersey sponsors or a look at new styles of presentation, the venture objectively reports on many facets of the burgeoning production.
“The one thing I will never do – that we will never do – is we will never have words be put in our mouths,” Rovell said. “We will always be who we are, and it will come from us, not it being on the site because we’re not publishing advertorials. I think the journalistic integrity here is a major part of who we are.”
The indefatigable work ethic and commitment to Cllct exhibited by its staff has allowed the brand to enjoy a strong first quarter in operations. Through the early success, the team is trying to plan for the future through several areas of its business, including the means through which it disseminates its content. Multimedia production through its Cllctv will be a focus going forward; however, the company is in the process of determining the best means of building a studio.
Rovell expects Cllct to be pitching full concept, collectible-type shows to companies such as Netflix, Apple and Hulu within the next six months. Furthermore, Cllct is in the process of developing its podcast plan, building its newsletter business and also anticipates more longform content off the site that could potentially implement company branding.
“We know we have the content, but what are people expecting as far as a look, and we’ll figure that out, but we know that people talking about collectibles piecemeal on social media is there,” Rovell said. “We just think that there’s a place for it to be more of an owned kind of one destination, one-stop shop.”
Starting the business has had its normal challenges, but Rovell has been satisfied with both the quantity and quality of content along with the look of the website. Functioning within a meritocracy in which search engines reward consistent and reliable content, the company continues to substantiate its product and also allocates part of its budget in vehicles of promotion and marketing. In the next four to five years, Rovell sees the business either adding another partner “at a significant valuation” or selling to either private equity or an auction house as the future path for Cllct.
“I have obviously a fiduciary responsibility to my investors,” Rovell said, “but right now, I think my goal in the first three months was to put out a site that no one’s ever seen before with the quality that is out there and the quantity that is out there, and we’ve done it.”
