HMA's Creator Collective Pairs Digital Creators, Beat Writers in New Model for Local-Sports Coverage

The live, YouTube-native roundtables combine fan voices, credentialed reporters, and former players while HMA handles production, distribution, and monetization

The rise of the digital creator has become one of the most significant shifts in the sports-media business. What began largely as supplemental fan content on YouTube, podcasts, and social media has evolved into a legitimate piece of the sports-content ecosystem, with creators amassing audiences that can rival - at times, surpass - those of traditional media outlets.

At the same time, the infrastructure that once surrounded a local sports team has changed dramatically. Newspapers have reduced staffs and eliminated beat positions. Regional sports networks have undergone their own well-documented upheaval. Team-owned media departments are producing more content than ever - all, naturally, from the filtered perspective of the franchise.

For HMA founder Borna Nazari, that collision of trends represents an opportunity.

The digital-sports-media agency and commercial network is expanding its Creator Collective, a portfolio of team-specific live roundtable shows intended to bring the best of traditional and creator-driven sports media together under one roof.

HMA's Creator Collective brings together digital creators, veteran beat reporters, and former players for live, team-focused shows built primarily for YouTube. The first Collective launched was for the San Diego Padres.The formula is relatively straightforward: find an established digital creator with a passionate audience, pair that person with an experienced reporter who possesses access and institutional knowledge, add a former player or other authoritative voice when it makes sense, and let them cook. HMA currently has 20 Creator Collective shows and is approaching coverage of half the NFL while expanding across NBA, MLB, college sports, and other properties.

For lack of a better term, [we] build the Avengers of each market, cracks Nazari. And that has been crushing it for us.

From Padres Fan to Digital Sports Network

Nazari's vision for the Collective grew in part from his own experience as a sports fan and creator. While working at CAA in basketball, brand marketing, and NIL partnerships, the San Diego native began producing a podcast focused on his hometown Padres. He felt that there was no independent, digitally native outlet giving him the type of daily team coverage he wanted to consume.

So he built one.

HMA founder Borna Nazari describes Creator Collective as a blue-chip, one-hour conversation with the best people in the space. The show eventually grew into what Nazari says became the largest independent sports show in San Diego. Meanwhile, his work at CAA gave him experience with the brand side of the equation and, perhaps more important, a realization that there were creators building similarly passionate communities around teams throughout the country without much infrastructure supporting them.

What turned into two clients turned into four, says Nazari, and now we own and operate [and represent] this massive sports network on the internet.

HMA's broader network now comprises more than 270 shows across owned-and-operated and licensed properties, according to Nazari, including roughly 250 licensed shows for which HMA manages sales and partnerships.

It also planted the seed for something bigger. Nazari notes the instability of the regional-sports business - including his hometown Padres' losing their RSN distribution arrangement - as an example of why he believes there is room for a new era of team coverage.

We're kind of building the newer form of decentralized sports networks on digital, he says, and finding ways to monetize that in different ways.

Combining Access With Audience

The fundamental bet behind Creator Collective is that traditional reporters and digital creators provide different but complementary strengths. It's a partnership that each side might have stuck their nose up at a handful of years ago. Today, the odd coupling makes more and more sense.

A veteran beat reporter may have years of relationships with players, coaches, executives, and franchises but not necessarily a substantial personal audience on YouTube. A creator may have hundreds of thousands of subscribers and an intimate relationship with a fanbase but lack the access and institutional knowledge that comes from covering a team professionally.

Nazari sees value in putting the two together instead of viewing them as competing camps. The creator brings to the show this massive digital audience that is where all the eyeballs are going. The beat writer brings credibility, player relationships, franchise relationships, and legitimate insight that you can't get from a creator.

Add a former player who can break down film, provide X's-and-O's analysis, and tell stories from inside the game, he argues, and the show can hit several layers of the fan experience at once.

I put myself in [fans'] shoes, Nazari explains, and [thought that] people would watch my content for the emotions. People would read beat writers' content to get what's going on in the clubhouse. They would want to hear from former players for the stories. We already consume all this content everywhere. Can we just consolidate it and get it into one medium? That's kind of the whole premise of the Collective.

One of HMA's most established examples is Lakers Collective, which features Trevor Lane of Lakers Nation, longtime Lakers reporter Jovan Buha, and Pete Zayas of Laker Film Room. According to Nazari, some editions have drawn 7,000-8,000 concurrent live viewers.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2026/08/18/hmas-creator-collective-pairs-d...
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