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Not like many media moguls, Nish Patel — founding father of sports activities media firm ClutchPoints — stays a fan first.
That zeal has formed each step of his profession. His path into sports activities media wasn’t pushed by fame or fortune, however by a easy want to cease annoying his associates. A lifelong Lakers fan, Patel would flood his Fb feed with play-by-play updates about Kobe Bryant — from spotlight reels to taking pictures percentages.
“Ultimately, a few of my associates who weren’t sports activities followers had been like, ‘You must in all probability simply make a web page for this — most of us don’t care about that stuff,’” Patel tells Entrepreneur.
Little did they know that web page would evolve into one of many largest gamers in trendy sports activities media.
As Bryant’s profession neared its finish, Patel began questioning who would carry the torch for the subsequent technology. His reply got here within the type of then-Bulls rookie Derrick Rose. Impressed, he launched an “admittedly corny” fan web page titled D-Rose is D-Man. It rapidly took off, racking up a whole bunch of 1000’s of views inside months.
However the basketball gods giveth and taketh away. When Rose tore his ACL in 2012, it was a heartbreaking second for NBA followers — and a turning level for Patel.
“I keep in mind pondering, rattling, I spent a lot time constructing this fan base, however I ought to’ve been pondering greater image,” he says.
In February 2012, Patel launched NBA Memes, a parody account sharing humorous pictures and information from across the league.
“My inspiration got here from this UCLA memes web page the place college students posted inside jokes about campus life,” Patel recollects. “It was hilarious — however tremendous area of interest. And I assumed, nobody’s doing this for basketball.”
NBA memes was an prompt success, reaching 1,000,000 followers in simply six months.
“We had this entire group of individuals submitting memes and creating content material for us,” Patel says. “We’d credit score them, they usually’d go loopy — sharing it with their family and friends, saying, ‘I received featured!’ That was actually the early model of the creator group that’s so enormous now.”
After the Derrick Rose expertise, Patel realized to not put all his eggs in a single basket. He began interested by his on-line presence “like a inventory portfolio.” As an alternative of specializing in one participant or workforce, he started constructing fan pages for each franchise, no matter league or sport.
“My imaginative and prescient was easy,” Patel says. “As a Lakers fan in an enormous market, when Kobe was out with accidents, nobody was speaking in regards to the workforce on SportsCenter. I assumed, if that’s the case right here, think about followers in smaller markets like Charlotte or Memphis. I wished to create content material that each fan truly cared about.”
Fairly than pushing polished narratives, ClutchPoints adopted the lead of its viewers, often sharing fan opinions and feedback.
“It goes again to our origin story with NBA Memes,” Patel says. “Individuals would ship us content material, and we’d inform them, ‘You’re a part of ClutchPoints — you’re a part of the Clutch fam. Let’s get your content material on the market. We see everybody who talks to us as our model of Stephen A Smith or Max Kellerman.”
As ClutchPoints grew, Patel discovered himself overwhelmed managing it alone.
“I’d get up at 1 a.m., 3 a.m., 5 a.m. and seven a.m. simply to put up — there wasn’t even a scheduling choice again then,” he recollects. “It was simply an excessive amount of.”
Patel’s first rent, a highschool pal from UCLA, helped reply to the flood of fan messages.
“We wished folks to know we cared — that we noticed their submissions and appreciated what they shared,” Patel says. “It was at all times about creating one thing for followers, by followers.”
The concept labored. Sports activities figures like Maverick Carter started reaching out, noticing that ClutchPoints was producing huge engagement.
“He actually messaged us by Fb,” Patel recollects. “He was like I’ve entry to expertise, I’ve entry to manufacturing, I’ve entry to manufacturers keen to spend, however I don’t have the impressions that you just guys have for the team-specific strategy.”
In 2015, Patel joined Startup UCLA, an on-campus incubator, the place he realized tips on how to construct a extra skilled firm.
“Originally, certainly one of my workers was simply accepting funds on PayPal till we hit a restrict and realized we wanted to determine one thing else out,” Patel recollects.
By UCLA’s startup community, Patel related with traders and entrepreneurs throughout enterprise and tech — two areas he sees as elementary when constructing an organization. After finishing this system, the newly named ClutchPoints raised its first funding spherical in 2017 — and the remaining is historical past.
When Patel launched NBA Memes, he was nonetheless a pre-med pupil finding out for midterms. However his lack of media expertise turned out to be his largest benefit.
“Once I was elevating funding, folks would ask, ‘Oh, you’re constructing one other Bleacher Report?’ or ‘One other SB Nation?’” Patel recollects. “However I didn’t wish to be company. I wished to create one thing that felt like followers speaking to their associates — as a result of that’s the way it began.”
That fan-first mentality has fueled ClutchPoints’ evolution into one of many largest unbiased sports activities media networks immediately. Patel now oversees greater than 300 social pages throughout X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Fb, with a mixed viewers of over 38 million throughout each main sport and workforce.
The corporate is increasing its fan base throughout a variety of sports activities verticals past the main skilled leagues, together with ladies’s sports activities, HBCUs, school soccer and school basketball.
The corporate has generated greater than 5 billion lifetime video views, positioned NBA reporters in over 20 arenas and WNBA reporters in additional than half the league’s venues, and landed sponsored content material offers with manufacturers like State Farm and McDonald’s.
“Our aim was by no means to be a media firm that felt above the followers,” Patel says. “We wished to be proper there with them.”
Not like many media moguls, Nish Patel — founding father of sports activities media firm ClutchPoints — stays a fan first.
That zeal has formed each step of his profession. His path into sports activities media wasn’t pushed by fame or fortune, however by a easy want to cease annoying his associates. A lifelong Lakers fan, Patel would flood his Fb feed with play-by-play updates about Kobe Bryant — from spotlight reels to taking pictures percentages.
“Ultimately, a few of my associates who weren’t sports activities followers had been like, ‘You must in all probability simply make a web page for this — most of us don’t care about that stuff,’” Patel tells Entrepreneur.
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