By now everyone knows about the struggles of programming sports TV channels when there are no sports happening. But what about sports-focused social media feeds?
Omar Raja said his ESPN audience has become much choosier about content they want to see.
When I posed that question to Omar Raja, who runs ESPN’s “SportsCenter” feed, the 26-year-old said he’s been relying on the amount of content sitting in ESPN’s archives — content that is brand new to him and the younger demos he’s been reaching on social media.
“I never grew up watching Jordan,” Raja said during SBJ’s World Congress Comes To You event last week. “I wasn’t really aware of Kobe when he first came to the league. I’ve been able to look and find archive footage of Kobe Bryant in high school. Footage of Michael Jordan behind the scenes. There’s been a lot of stuff where I’ve been able to kind of go back in time and kind of relive those moments.”
Raja said it’s been harder to come up with good content as the stay-at-home orders have continued. He said his audience has become much choosier about the type of content they want to see.
“The first week of the quarantine, the bar was very low — it kind of felt like I could post anything and it would get 2 million views,” Raja said. “But now people are kind of getting tired of a trick shot that they’ve seen a hundred times. The bar keeps getting higher.”
Raja, who built up Turner’s popular House of Highlights feed before moving to ESPN at the beginning of this year, said he mainly picks videos based on his own personal preferences. Around 20% of his video picks are based on the analytics of what people like.
“People like the trick shots they do at home of a ball going from upstairs to the living room to the basement, just bouncing around and going into a cup,” he said. “I personally don’t care for those videos, but the audience loves them.”
Raja’s feed has a lot of NBA and UFC clips. He said he would like to include other sports, but he doesn’t have the rights to post them.
“It’s a rights issue,” he said. “I’m actually a huge NFL fan. I’m a huge Dolphins fan … I still care when they lose every game."
