Social media has become vital in sports during the pandemic, as teams and organizations strive for continued engagement with fans and consumers. On the latest episode of "SBJ Unpacks: The Road Ahead," Slate co-Founder & CEO Michael Horton and co-Founder & COO Eric Stark join our Andrew Levin to discuss social media dynamics across sports business, including recent investments from TitletownTech and WISE Ventures in the mobile-first content-creation platform.
On TitletownTech and WISE Ventures investing in Slate:
Horton: Once we started gaining some traction in sports, we were really focused on reaching out to as many sports-focused investors as we could get in touch with. We definitely had a leg up with both of them, in that the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers were both already customers of ours when we started these conversations. So, it was really easy for them to do due diligence on us by just walking over to the offices next door and start talking to the social media team about the value they were getting out of Slate.
On how Slate plans on using the investment capital:
Stark: We’re going to use it to kickstart the development that we see as the next step of where we can really expand. It’s been pretty incredible that our CTO, who’s been manning the ship himself for awhile there, and we were able to grow to most NFL teams and get customers really across every major league, really with just him holding it down and managing this product, updating it and creating new features. We really want to expand the help that he can get on the tech side and continue to innovate. We’re in a nice position right now where we’re really the first in this space doing what we’re doing.
On how Slate targets certain demographics with particular social media platforms:
Horton: For us specifically, we’re in a little bit of a unique space, because we are a product that is about creating content for social media. So, we’re targeting other social-content creators so that we’re putting out content where we know they’re going to be able to do it the easiest. … We definitely have a little bit of a different voice across our different platforms with like Twitter and LinkedIn and Instagram. Those are definitely the main ones we are creating content for, because that’s where we see our audience the most active.
