Roger Federer & The Biggest Sports Channel on YouTube 🎾📺
How 5 College Roommates are beating Red Bull, FC Barcelona and the NBA.
Let’s start this week’s newsletter with one of the greatest quotes ever written about sports:
“Almost anyone who loves tennis and follows the men’s tour on television has, over the last few years, had what might be termed Federer Moments. These are times, watching the young Swiss at play, when the jaw drops and eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you’re OK.”
― David Foster Wallace, String Theory
Here’s one of those Federer Moments:
You will find hours of videos like this on YouTube filled with trickshots by the Swiss.
Since Federer announced his retirement, people have started to look back on his achievements.
103 career singles titles.
20 Grand Slams, including 8 Wimbledon crowns.
The first Billionaire in tennis.
Those achievements are incredible, and many will consider him the greatest of all time based on this evidence alone, but the main reason everyone in the Athletic Interest Office will miss him can be seen in those trickshot compilations on YouTube.
Even the billionaire Virgin is getting in on the act.
Sorry, typo… ‘Billionaire Virgin Founder.’
Trickshots aren’t exclusive to tennis. Whether it’s a goal from the halfway line, or a crazy dunk, every fan from every sport has that one moment they will remember forever.
But did you know that you can turn performing trickshots into a multi-million dollar business? Even without winning Wimbledon.
Just ask Tyler, Cory, Coby, Garrett, and Cody. Aka Dude Perfect.
These former college roommates noticed the incredible virality of trickshots and decided to make an entire YouTube Channel dedicated to making their own tricks.
This formula of pushing the boundaries with each video has made them one of the biggest sports channels on Youtube.
Think about that for a second. Companies like Red Bull, FIFA and Barcelona spend hundreds of millions to create content that engages fans. They even sell this content (e.g. football matches or Formula 1 races) to broadcasters for billions. And yet here are five friends with a camera and some balls (both literally and figuratively) getting far more engagement.
In total, the group has almost 15 billion views on YouTube, which means that you could argue that they are one of the largest and most influential channels on the entire platform.
Just look at their view per video rate compared to the other big names:
So, how did Dude Perfect take the trickshot, a phenomenon once reserved for pro athletes, and turn it into a multi-million dollar business?
To learn more about the evolution of trickshots (and humans), make sure you watch our latest video:
🍎 Sports Business Bites
🤖 Cristiano Ronaldo has lost 1.6 million followers on Instagram in the last weeks.
Peanuts for the superstar and yet a question remains: Are people not interested in Portugal's performance in the Nations League?
Probably not, but that's not the main reason for the decline. Almost all celebrities have recently lost some of their social media reach. Lionel Messi, for example, lost 2 million followers, Kim and Khloe Kardashian even 2.4 million each.
"The loss of followers should not be a concern for influencers or the brands they work with," said Alexander Frolov, CEO of HypeAuditor, the company that came up with the declining trend.
It is Instagram itself that is removing bots and inactive accounts, he explained.
With that being said, Ronaldo can continue to pocket almost $3.6M for a single sponsored post. The Portuguese leads the ranking of the most influential footballers by far.
🏀 Talking about influential athletes: Michael Jordan is breaking new records.
Earlier this year, Maradona's famous "Hand of God" shirt was sold for a staggering $9.3M. But the record didn't last long.
The jersey from the 1998 "Last Dance" season - named after the ESPN/Netflix documentary - was auctioned off for $10.1M, making it the most expensive piece of game-worn sports memorabilia in history. Auctioneers at Sotheby's were only expected to fetch about $5M...
Jordan wore the jersey in their first game of the 1998 NBA finals where the Bulls were victorious over Utah Jazz and celebrated their sixth NBA championship within eight years.
🎟 We started the Newsletter with Roger Federer, we will end with him as well.
The Laver Cup is simply an annual tennis clash between “Team Europe” and “Team World”, this year held in London.
But things have changed since Federer announced his retirement in mid-September; the tournament has become the last chance to see the Swiss play live.
We suppose that Federer’s announcement led to burning servers in the tournament’s office - and big smiles at Viagogo…
The official prices for tickets, which could be bought via the Laver Cup website, were at £510 per session. That’s already a lot of money for two tennis matches.
But nothing compared to the price explosion after Federer announced that it would be his final tournament.
We did a little feasibility study ourselves to see if we could get to watch the Swiss play live in London.
To buy tickets for the event on resale sites like Viagogo, we had to invest at least double, if not triple the original prices. The most expensive tickets at the time of research were close to £300K. That was a little over our budget.
But will it be the last chance to see Federer playing live anyway? Well…
Let’s just hope for that event to come!
The Lallantop (3rd in the list pf most followed sports channel) is NOT a sports channel. It is a news channel.