Overtime is a sports technology and media startup that is focused on the teenaged athletes who are on a trajectory to be stars in the future. Players like Zion Williamson, Luther Muhammad and LaMelo Ball are the kind of transcendent basketball talents that Overtime wants to focus its coverage on.
Overtime also has a big-name supporter in the pros, announcing that Golden State Warriors star Kevin Durant has added the company to his list of tech investments through The Durant Company. Dan Porter, the CEO of Overtime, believes Durant is a great partner for the company for multiple reasons.
“(Partnering with KD) wasn’t just about finding a pro athlete, but finding one who gets what we are about,” Porter said. “He’s entrepreneurial, digital-first and someone kids can look up to.”
Overtime recently released a video where Durant watches the tape of some of the top high-school basketball players in the nation. He breaks down their athleticism, play style and overall attitude from his perspective.
“He gave 20 minutes to look at videos of six kids, and to all those kids, it is super meaningful,” Porter said.
While many of the players Overtime is focused on are high school-aged, Porter stresses that it is not a high school sports site.
“What we are doing has nothing to do with Hudl or MaxPreps or Rivals,” Porter said. “We don’t cover high schools, we cover players.”
Porter came from William Morris Entertainment (WME), one of the largest movie and TV agencies in the world. He said this brings him a unique perspective.
“I am coming from WME, from working with movie and TV guys,” Porter said. “I am thinking about things like format, character and story structure — then applying that to sport.”
He believes this approach will pay dividends down the road and has lofty goals for the Overtime sports network. The Overtime website is just one part of a much larger operation, according to Porter.
“I am not a website. Is ESPN a website? They have a website but they are not a website,” Porter said. “With Overtime we are trying to build a digital first sports network. We are leveraging social media as a starting point to build what we think will be the biggest sports network in the world.
“My goal is for in the next three years to be part of a cable bundle. We want people to be like, ‘Wait, I can get Netflix, I can get Barstool Sports, and I can get Overtime, yeah I will pay 20 bucks a month.”
Porter is focused on appealing to the young sports fan. Recruiting, he said, is a small market compared to the mainstream appeal of highlights.
“I don’t cover recruiting,” Porter said. “I don’t do commitment videos. Our audience does not care where they are going to college. They care about Zion and LaMelo. They care about watching these kids do epic stuff.”
“We’re building the next-generation sports network because we are building it for the kids who are 15, 16, 17, 18 years old now. So they are going to grow up with us as their sports channel.”
The Ball family in particular, led by patriarch LaVar Ball, has been a big source of content for Porter and the Overtime writers. At the time of writing, three articles on Overtime’s front page focus on the polarizing family.
“LaVar Ball is a promoter extraordinaire. He knows how to make media,” Porter said. “Go to E! and ask them what it is like to have the Kardashians.”
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The partnership with Durant (ex-NBA commissioner David Stern is another investor) helps push Overtime towards Porter’s vision. Durant has been an outspoken critic of mainstream sports media for a long time. On Hot Ones, Durant answered the question, “What do the ESPNs and Bleacher Reports get wrong about Kevin Durant?”
“They don’t let me create my own content, they don’t let me tell my own story,” Durant told host Sean Evans after eating a wing seasoned with peppers “harvested from the walls of hell.” “That’s why I’m on YouTube, I get to tell my own story.”
The Players’ Tribune is an example of an athlete-first media platform, and it makes sense that Durant would choose that site to announce his “Next Chapter” with the Warriors, as he owns a stake in the company. Porter wants Overtime to focus on the athlete but utilize video instead of text.
“From the athlete’s perspective, digital and social media give athletes the ability to shift the balance of power in sports,” Porter said. “I think a lot of the players aren’t always happy with how they are portrayed or how sports media is oriented.
The athletes have the social media numbers to back up a shift in media. The Golden State Warriors have just over five million followers on Twitter. Stephen Curry has 11 million. Durant has 17 million.
“Some of the athletes followings are bigger than the teams they play for. KD has more followers than Bleacher Report,” Porter said. “We are not covering these athletes, we are working with them.”
Big things to come @Overtime #TheDurantCompany https://t.co/6KSIOL8oxL
— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) December 19, 2017