Roger Morph 
Sports media company Overtime recently raised over $80 million in its latest funding round, bringing its total funding to over $100 million. This round included investments from stars like Drake and Jeff Bezos and other high profile investors. Many may wonder why these notable figures have invested in a sports media company.
Overtime is a unique platform dedicated to young athletes looking to enhance their career prospects and join the professional world of sports. Overtime helps bridge the gap between amateur and professional sports by providing resources such as athlete profiles, an interactive player network, professional gear and gear analysis, exclusive content for athletes and fans, access to free training videos, interviews with coaches and athletes, and even advice from sports industry professionals. The platform also allows fans to connect with their favorite players.
The purpose behind the investment made by Jeff Bezos and Drake is twofold: to help build out Overtime’s technology product offering which will provide unparalleled service to users; and also to tap into the massive market of engaged young athletes that Overtime could potentially serve. By partnering with someone like Drake who is already so heavily invested in athletics—through his talent agency October’s Very Own—the biggest names in tech understand that they can bring added value to a business currently focused on serving the next generation of superstars across all sports genres.
Jeff Bezos, Drake and others invest in sports media company Overtime
Overtime is a media company that creates short-form sports content for young athletes and fans. They boast a massive network of sports talent from celebrities like Jeff Bezos, Drake and others.
Founded in 2016, Overtime has gained much attention, raised more than $100 million in funding, and reached about 30 million monthly viewers.
Let’s learn more about Overtime and why it’s a valuable investment for Jeff Bezos and Drake.
Overview of the Company
Overtime is a sports media company and social platform founded by Dan Porter and Zach Gelb in 2016. The company’s mission is to drive professional-level content creation and to engage casual fans through short form videos, entertainment features, highlight compilations, interviews and more. With its creation of a grass roots network for content creators, Overtime has enabled young athletes and artists worldwide to create content easily and securely, share it with their networks, and get compensated directly by viewers.
Overtime’s success has led to the involvement of some of the most renowned names in digital media. Jeff Bezos’ investment platform Obvious Ventures has invested into the startup previously — for example, the company participated in a $23 million funding round lead by DST Global in 2018. Famous musicians like Drake have also invested into Overtime due to their growing ownership position from 2017 onwards. As of April 2021, members from 24 countries have created over 11 million pieces of content on Overtime with 8 billion video views — making it one of the most popular sports media companies today.
As such, Overtime seeks to become an advocate for athletes who use its platform while also facilitating an exciting storytelling experience for casual viewers with its broad array of engaging videos — all at a fraction of time that it would take traditional networks to produce similar content.
What Services Do They Offer?
Overtime is a sports media company founded in 2016 that has rapidly gained popularity. It creates and distributes authentic, innovative sports content to young fans through its mobile app, YouTube channel and website. From original series to experiential events, Overtime aims to create a world around its users’ favorite sports — basketball, football, soccer and more.
Its main mission is to help fans discover new talent on their screens engagingly. It does this through various services that include:
-Original Series: Overtime releases original series featuring celebrity stars and athletes like Kyrie Irving and Pete Alonso. The series use innovative storytelling techniques to give an inside look at the sport they are covering such as NBA 2K grind or Lebron James’s latest venture with I Promise School.
-Live Streams: Fans can watch live streams and highlights of games from basketball leagues worldwide on Overtime’s platforms. It also produces live events like tournaments where fans can see some of their favorite teams or individuals compete in real time.
-Experiences: Overtime hosts physical experiences like one of the largest basketball tournaments for youth – the OTF open tournament in Chicago – where upcoming athletes get to showcase their talents and gain exposure from the brand’s network of coaches, scouts, agents and content creators who are always on the lookout for future stars.
-Creative Content Library: On top of live streaming games, Overtime has also created content libraries filled with athlete stories about what it takes to be successful both on and off the court. These effectively capture inspiring stories from current players that motivate youth athletes across all sports from all walks of life.
Overtime’s growth has sparked interest among industry giants like Drake and Jeff Bezos who invested millions into it’s mission – proving that providing unique experiences through innovative youth-focused content has truly become a winning model in the modern age!
Why Did Jeff Bezos and Drake Invest in Overtime?
Jeff Bezos and Drake recently announced their investments in sports media company Overtime. With their involvement, Overtime has become a prime example of how powerful investors can turn a small startup into a rapidly growing venture. But why did these two giants invest in the company?
Let’s look at the reasons behind Bezos and Drake’s decisions.
The Investment Opportunity
Jeff Bezos, Drake and other high-profile investors have recently made a sizable collective investment in sports media company Overtime. Founded in 2016 by entrepreneurs Dan Porter and Zack Weiner, Overtime is a rapidly growing platform that provides engaging content for passionate sports fans.
High profile investors such as Bezos and Drake are attracted to various aspects of the business, as it offers immense value for users and businesses. By providing an excellent source of engaging video content for users, Overtime keeps its viewers highly engaged with its brand. This has allowed them to build strong relationships with sponsors and advertisers looking for exposure on the platform—providing additional sources of revenue.
Furthermore, what the company is doing seems to have struck a chord with the millennials who are now beginning to enter into adulthood. Combined with their forward-thinking business models which focus on user data mining and analysis via mobile apps, this makes them particularly attractive investments given their current potential growth potential in the advertising market.
Given these factors, it makes sense why Jeff Bezos, Drake and other investors are making such large investments into Overnight—offering strong opportunities for users and businesses alike.
Benefits of Investing in Overtime
Jeff Bezos and Drake recently invested in Overtime, a sports media company that creates content focused on minority athletes and teams. The company has raised over a hundred million dollars from investors such as Bezos’s Amazon, News Corp, and Fidelity Investments. These high-profile investors saw an opportunity to make a positive social impact while having access to valuable data on the sports market. Overtime has also become increasingly popular with younger generations which could have been another factor driving their investment decisions.
Overtime’s mission is to increase representation for diverse athletes and provide them a larger platform for their stories. Creating media content around teams and players in communities that otherwise would receive little or no attention can spark major change in the sports industry. Diversity brings something unique to the table, while providing insight into an untold story that can give everyone who watches it a different perspective.
Moreover, investing in Overtime could provide investors with financial security and data information on younger generations of audiences, something which traditional television networks have yet to tap into adequately. This provides Bezos and Dryke with the right opportunity at the right time: although traditional TV giant Walt Disney recently announced plans to acquire two of the most-viewed series of 2019 – GAME OF THRONES (HBO) AND THE BIG BANG THEORY (CBS) – there is still room for alternative channels such as Overtime when it comes to capturing different aspects of sport that just cannot be conveyed through mainstream TV networks alone.
With its strong mission as well as its potential for giving back financially, it’s understandable why Jeff Bezos & Drake had invested in Overtime –– because this investment will not only benefit them fiscally but also leave behind a bigger social impact regarding diversity in sports beyond just making money off it alone.
What Does This Mean for the Future of Sports Media?
The recent investments made by Jeff Bezos, Drake, and other high profile celebrities into the sports media company Overtime has had the sports world buzzing. The implications of such investments are far reaching and suggest that the sports media industry is transforming.
Let’s take a closer look at what these investments mean for the future of sports media.
Impact on the Sports Media Industry
The recent investments by influential figures like Jeff Bezos, Drake and others into the sports media company Overtime will likely have an outsized impact on the industry. It signals an increased willingness of major firms to invest heavily in content geared towards Gen Z viewers, a demographic that prioritizes sports media consumption through streaming services-based platforms. Such a move also implies that traditional closed networks such as cable and satellite may become increasingly marginalized within the sports media space.
The advent of streaming giants like Amazon Prime Video (which counts both Jeff Bezos and Drake among its investors) provides close-knit access to certain demographics that were previously not tapped into, mainly because they do not pay for costly cable or satellite packages. This has disrupted traditional viewing strategies in the sports world, with streaming services posing a tremendous threat to standard TV outlets. Moreover, by segmenting content towards younger audiences in this way, sports opportunities can be made more accessible through mobile devices, laptops and tablets – potential game changers for technological entertainment consumption as well as new sources of revenue for major firms investing in such ventures.
That said, it remains unclear how these newer platforms will effect traditional TV providers; however what is certain is there will be shockwaves felt throughout the industry from these high profile investments from Jeff Bezos and Drake’s consortium which extends well beyond just Overtime. As such, this new era of technology facilitated comprehensive access could fundamentally change how we consume content, especially regarding televised sporting events.
Implications for Other Companies
The influx of big-name investors into Overtime signals a major shift in the business model for sports media. Jeff Bezos’ investment alone gives Overtime access to Amazon-level strategies and help build a more sustainable future for the sports media industry.
Jeff Bezos’ participation helps the already established sports media industry become more premium, high-end and valuable from an advertising perspective. His injection of cash, combined with high-profile investors like Drake, Kevin Durant, and Stephen Curry builds a path to scale this business beyond what was previously possible. In addition, the attention generated from these investments will lead to further investment opportunities for Overtime, such as ad deals with gaming companies and more creative and unique marketing partnerships that differentiate them in the crowded market of sports content providers.
These moves also are visible signposts to other potential players in media who now see sports as an avenue to maximise brand engagement and create highly passionate followers and deeply engage advertisers with long term partnerships. Brands can get closer than ever through curated deals that couple sponsorship packages with tailored content assets they won’t find elsewhere — like immersive content pieces or exclusive broadcast events.
This influx of money from outside sources is creating heightened competition which will drive innovation throughout the industry and offer substantially better ways to keep people engaged across platforms, like social streaming services that connect directly with viewers during games or creating immersive AR experiences available during matches to give viewers unique access into the action on their TV or mobile device screens. Ultimately resulting in massive opportunities for increased ad spend linked directly to each user’s personalized preferences and ad ROI/metrics/KPIs designed around measuring engagement levels in real time rather than waiting until after an event has completed or a season has ended. Additionally, this competition will push traditional players like ESPN who have had a near monopoly on exposure to take risks and innovate – something they largely have not been doing since they lost linear broadcast subscribers which drastically reduced their available audience reach compared their peak years 10+ years ago when cable bills weren’t quite so expensive!
