When David Katz launched SportsFanLive in 2008, it was set up as an early social media site — a community website where fans could follow their favorite teams.
In 2011, SportsFanLive relaunched as ThePostGame and remained focused on editorial, producing long-form stories to run alongside the social media parts of the site. A couple of years later, Katz recognized that the sports media market had become too crowded for independent publishers, so he pivoted.
“Two years ago, I looked at the landscape and saw trends that would make it difficult for independent publishers to survive,” said Katz, founder and CEO of the company. “We’ve always had more of a distributed media mentality.”
Katz turned to video, and his company began syndicating video clips and stories to news organizations and sports companies that needed to ramp up their online offerings. ThePostGame found clients across the sports landscape, including blue-chip companies such as the NBA, International Olympic Committee, ESPN, NBC Sports and the New York Knicks, Rangers and Jets.
Katz kept expanding his business. The consulting group Bevilacqua Helfant Ventures invested in the company, which started advising clients on how to approach the digital world.
This summer, ThePostGame rolled out yet another arm of its business, as the company will sell the global media rights for Canadian Soccer Business. That’s the group that holds the rights to the men’s and women’s Canadian National Team games, plus the Canadian Premier League, which is expected to launch next spring.
“We’ve been doing pieces of this before,” said Eric Herd, chief operating officer of ThePostGame. “As a company, we are constantly evolving.”
Katz said the push to sell rights is a logical step for his company, especially given his familiarity with digital companies.
“We’ve done a lot of work behind-the-scenes on a confidential basis,” he said. ”This is the first time we have taken the steering wheel and driven the process ourselves.”
Canadian Soccer Business CEO Scott Mitchell said he was comfortable using ThePostGame because of Katz’s experience with digital companies.
“We’re at a time and a place where you’re seeing an emergence of a lot of new bidders,” Mitchell said. “David is someone who has the necessary experience to work with those digital bidders.”
Katz says he’s looking at these rights, which encompass 2,400 matches, for both TV and digital, referencing TV-owned streaming services like ESPN+, B/R Live and Fox Sports Go as potential destinations.
