Overtime Raises $80 Million — Investors Include Drake & Jeff Bezos

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Friends,

Last month, sports media company Overtime almost broke the internet when they announced the launch of Overtime Elite (OTE), a professional basketball league that will pay high school-aged players $100,000 or more.

Now, they’ve raised enough cash to make it happen — announcing an $80 million Series C round yesterday that values the business at more than $250 million.

The interesting part?

The round included some BIG name investors:

• Jeff Bezos

• Drake

• Alexis Ohanian

• Devin Booker

• Pau Gasol

Furthermore, Sapphire Sport and Black Capital led the Series C round, with more than 25 current and former NBA players participating.

Overtime was founded in 2016 by Dan Porter, a former executive at Endeavor, and Zack Weiner, a former Endeavor employee. The sports media platform quickly gained popularity by attacking a niche space — high school sports — that was growing in popularity but lacked the appropriate infrastructure to support the creation or distribution of content.

The solution?

Overtime created a short-form programming content creation and distribution process. They paid a network of contributors to attend high school games and upload highlight-style clips in real-time from their mobile devices.

The concept caught on, and the business exploded — especially on social.

• Overtime’s videos now generate more than 1.7 billion views every month.

• Overtime now reaches an audience of nearly 50 million through its channels on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and other social platforms.

Overtime has since expanded its offering to include original shows, merchandise, and live events, picking up investments from Andreessen Horowitz, Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, and others along the way.

The 5-year old sports media company now has about 120 employees.

As for what’s next, that’s where Overtime Elite comes in.

Here’s a quick recap of what I wrote last month:

They’ve since hired Kevin Ollie, a 13-year NBA veteran and national championship-winning coach at UConn, as head coach and director of player development for Overtime Elite.

Even better?

The $80 million funding round will enable Overtime to hire 80 employees, including about 40 focused on producing content specifically.

Overtime mentioned other potential revenue-generating categories of interest in the press release, like non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and sports betting, but in reality, it doesn’t really matter. When you have an incredibly large and hyper-engaged audience like Overtime, the possibilities become endless. It all comes down to execution.

Ultimately, Overtime is a new-age sports media company. They have an established audience, a digital distribution model, and perhaps most importantly, an abundance of social equity.

In today’s culturally dominated society, that’s a winning formula.

Have a great weekend, and we’ll talk on Monday.

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