Strahan and Brady want to create a multi-platform storytelling business GETTY IMAGES
Patriots QB Tom Brady, Pro Football HOFer Michael Strahan and filmmaker Gotham Chopra are "launching a new sports media startup" dubbed "The Religion of Sports," according to Jonathan Shieber of TECH CRUNCH. The group is seeking around $3M in "outside capital." Brady, Strahan and Chopra, alongside the startup's CEO Ameeth Sankaran, "want to create a multi-platform storytelling business that functions like an old-school studio -- dedicated to sports -- that tells the best stories in the medium that’s most appropriate for them." Strahan enjoyed a "long-standing friendship with Brady and through mutual friends was connected with Chopra, who floated the idea of the company to him." There is already the Religion of Sports series on The Audience Network and the "blockbuster success of the company’s latest endeavor -- the Facebook-distributed 'Tom vs. Time' series." In some senses Religion of Sports is "trying to upend the idea of a network in the same way that Players’ Tribune has." The Internet has "given a means for any group equipped with enough of a following and the means to produce quality content to set themselves up as a new take on the ESPN model." Viewers will not "need a 'channel' because the site and its attendant mobile app are the channel." Strahan: "A lot of people feel that traditional networks and other media outlets are a dying breed and they are going down because you have all of these new mediums" (TECHCRUNCH.com, 2/12).
