
SVG Sit-Down: House of Highlights' Sam Gilbert on the Live Strategy Behind the HoH Creator League Twelve-week 1v1 hoops tournament shot with iPhones boosts engagement for the digital brand By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Tuesday, May 10, 2022 - 2:02 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
In an era when social-media influencers and independent content creators have greater reach and impact than ever, media brands are looking to harness the power of the organic side of digital media.
One of the preeminent brands in digital sports is House of Highlights, the Bleacher Report-owned vertical that built its prestige as a social-media destination for sports highlights and pop culture. These days, HoH is increasingly turning to its own live productions, most notably putting a wrap on a 12-week-long 1-on-1 basketball tournament streamed on YouTube and pitting popular hoops-content creators from across the internet against each other.
The series, the HoH Creator League, wrapped last month and was, by all metrics, a massive hit. According to Bleacher Report, HoH Creator League saw 11 of its 16 matchups trend in YouTube's top 25, with the championship game hitting the No. 5 spot on YouTube Global Trending. The league registered more than 226 million views and more than 20 million engagements across all House of Highlights social channels.
In an interesting wrinkle, the productions were shot on two iPhones.
House of Highlights Director, Content, Sam Gilbert sat down with SVG to share what his team has learned about these productions and offer his thoughts on the value of engaging with the brand's following with live, engaging content.
House of Highlights' Sam Gilbert: Our focus is to continue to test, to push boundaries, and to see what works and what doesn't in the live space in particular.
How would you describe the approach your team took to producing these live programs in a less traditional-television manner?
One is to, obviously, produce them as cost-efficiently as possible while not reducing any of the audience interest and overall production value. Knowing that they are YouTube-first live streams and knowing that they're creator-focused, we're able to allow a slightly less polished production because it's more natural and authentic to what these audiences are used to seeing on creator pages.
Our focus was giving it to them as raw and as authentic as possible. We used two iPhones. We have some backend technology that we stream back to our New York control room, where we have a single producer/editor or producer/director live-cutting those two streams and a graphic [operator] who's updating the score.
Other than that, this was very much focused on getting the audience there to see what they want and then delivering it to them in the cleanest way possible. It's 1-on-1 basketball; we're not adding any bells and whistles. [The audience] knows what they want to see, and we're giving it to them exactly how they want it.
When was this an idea that you guys started knocking around, and when did it make the shift from an idea to something you actually decided you could execute on?
We initially dabbled in 1v1 basketball back in 2020 with a few one-off events. We did them with a couple content creators - FaZe Rug played against his brother, Brawadis - and that was our first real test of an iPhone stream. It did decently well. I think we had 20,000 concurrent [viewers], but it was definitely the most we had ever done at the time and for the least cost that we've ever had to do it. We were able to see at least that nugget of thought that these don't need to be highly produced pieces of content to perform at the level that we want.
Then we tested again with FaZe Rug playing Aiden Ross, who is another prominent streamer/creator. That one led to 70,000 live concurrent viewers. Again taking that performance-first cost metric, it was the most efficient thing we've ever done. The audience seemed to love the structure of how we developed the 1v1 game. It felt more focused on Gen Z, not as buttoned-up as what other basketball or sports tournaments in general look like these days.
Once we had a few of those under our belts, we needed to solve for the one-offs, where we would have a week of lead-up [to promote]. We would have the main event; it would be a huge success, but then we would be dark the day after. We were starting from the ground up, again, on how we build all of that anticipation for the next one.
We looked to figure out how to make it more of an always-on experience. Let's take all the things that we love about regular sports leagues and strip away all the things that we think are unnecessary or just bog it down. That's where we got eight creators in the pick-up basketball space to sign up to a 12-week season where they played weekly. That way, we were able to build that storyline, create that compounding effect from week to week, up until the finals.
Were there any substantial challenges, technical/ operational obstacles that your team had to overcome to feel confident about executing live?
The biggest difficulty that we had to overcome was the varying levels of production within the same production. We had this fully built-out studio in New York where we do our NFL Draft shows and all of our very high end executions. It can host 20 production people, and it's got everything that you need. Meanwhile, onsite, we have two people holding cellphones in their hand. How do you get those to work together naturally and keep the authentic visuals that we want to have come across on-screen to our audience?
Another one of the biggest struggles that we had the entire time was cellular service. We have some Wi-Fi connections that we bring with us remotely, but, depending on the indoor facility, that
More from Sports Video Group
30/06/2022
Ratings Roundup: 2022 NBA Draft Goes Up 33% From Last Year; Yankees Stay Hot on ...
30/06/2022
Top hat and tails: NEP uncovers the drama and excitement behind the production o...
30/06/2022
SVG On Demand: SVG Australia Summit Panel Asks Which Flavor of IP is Right For ...
30/06/2022
USFL Championship 2022: FOX, NBC Wrap Season 1 of Sports' Live Production La...
29/06/2022
A legend and a gentleman: The sports broadcasting industry pays tribute to Barry...
29/06/2022
Inside LIV Golf's broadcast plans with chief media officer Will Staeger By George Bevir
Tuesday, June 28, 2022 - 10:17
Print This Story
LIV Golf chief...
29/06/2022
Stats Perform Transforms Sports Media Content Creation With PressBox Platform By SVG Staff
Wednesday, June 29, 2022 - 12:00 pm
Print This Story | Subscrib...
28/06/2022
Hill Climb Fever: Behind the Scenes at Goodwood Festival of Speed 2022 With Host...
28/06/2022
Death diving meets the Challenge with first US event live stream via Viz Now By Jo Ruddock
Wednesday, June 22, 2022 - 16:30
Print This Story
Death diving,...
28/06/2022
NEP Australia Rides IP Tech to Make Andrews Hub, In-Field Facilties Fully 4K Cap...
28/06/2022
SVG On Demand: SVG Australia Summit Panel Addresses the Current State of Cloud a...
28/06/2022
Mobile TV Group Announces New MTVG Edge Live Production Solution By SVG Staff
Tuesday, June 28, 2022 - 11:09 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highl...
28/06/2022
Gravity Media Awarded Contract For The 2022 Fina World Aquatics Championships By SVG Staff
Tuesday, June 28, 2022 - 4:53 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
...
28/06/2022
Telos Alliance Extends Container University Series That Educates And Empowers Br...
27/06/2022
SVG On Demand: Aussie Sports Production Tech Innovators Look to the Future in SV...
24/06/2022
Behind the Mic: CBS Sports' Nick Faldo To Retire at End of 2022 Golf Season By SVG Staff
Friday, June 24, 2022 - 6:50 am
Print This Story | Subscribe ...
24/06/2022
SVG On Demand: Charleston Southern University's Nick Case on Coming Back Str...
24/06/2022
Stanley Cup Final: Big Sound for the Big Games ESPN is combining technique and technology to put fans on the ice By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Friday, June 24, ...
24/06/2022
SVG On Demand: SVG Australia Summit Panel Advocates for Gender Equality in the W...
24/06/2022
Men's College World Series 2022: ESPN To Deploy Top-Tier Technology for Cham...
24/06/2022
Robert J. Ross, Former CBS Head of East Coast Operations and Engineering, Dead a...
24/06/2022
EMG UK Chairman Barry Johnstone Dead at 76 In 2013, Johnstone became the first European inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame By Ken Kerschbaumer,...
24/06/2022
SVG On Demand: NHL's Matt Celli Goes Inside the Creation, Success of League&...
24/06/2022
SVG Sit-Down: NHL on ESPN Producer Jeff Dufine Talks Stanley Cup Final, Skate Ca...
23/06/2022
LIV Golf Aims To Take Golf Audio on a Really Long Drive Upstart association puts sound near the core of its broadcast identity By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Thu...
23/06/2022
SVG On Demand: Key Industry Leaders Tackle Next-Gen Technologies in SVG Australi...
23/06/2022
NBC Sports Executive Producer Sam Flood Says NBC, USA Network Ready for NASCAR R...
23/06/2022
SVG On Demand: University of Notre Dame's Alessandra Dickos on Developing a ...
23/06/2022
SVG On Demand: Mississippi State University's Bennie Ashford on Producing a ...
22/06/2022
SVG On Demand: University of South Carolina's Valerie Gerfin on New In-Venue...
22/06/2022
New York Islanders Augment HomeIce Digital Experience With Virtual Watch Parties Powered by BlueJeans by Verizon, the platform is connecting fans around the glo...
21/06/2022
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Wasabi Technologies' Whit Jackson on Enabling Low...
21/06/2022
SVG On Demand: University of Michigan's Kurt Svoboda on Slowly Returning to ...
21/06/2022
SVG On Demand: Harvard University's Imry Halevi on Winning the 2022 SVG Coll...
21/06/2022
Live From the U.S. Open: NBC's Allison McAllister, Marc Caputo Reflect on Ch...
20/06/2022
Stanley Cup Final: ESPN Offers Visually Appealing Return With Two On-Ice Skate C...
20/06/2022
SVG On Demand: Ross Video's Kevin Cottam on the Company's Continued Supp...
20/06/2022
SVG On Demand: University of North Carolina's Ken Cleary on the Importance o...
20/06/2022
Stanley Cup Final: ESPN Offers Visually Appealing Return with Two On-Ice Skate C...
18/06/2022
Live From the U.S. Open: USGA's Kevin Landy on the 2022 World Feed Efforts a...
17/06/2022
Live From the U.S. Open: Sky Sports' Katie Harrison, Jason Wessely Discuss E...
17/06/2022
SVG College Summit: Industry Celebrates SVG College Pioneer Award Recipient Imry...
17/06/2022
CBS Sports, Exceptional Minds Create New Career Paths in Media Management for Au...
17/06/2022
Live from the U.S. Open: Sky Sports' Katie Harrington, Jason Wessely Discuss...
16/06/2022
U.S. Open Tech Gives NBC Sports Lead Golf Producer Tommy Roy Storytelling Tools Bunker Cams, FlyCam, Augmented-Reality Graphics Provide All the Angles for Fans ...
16/06/2022
MediaPower and ClassX create light' virtual graphics studio for Mediaset By Roberto Landini, Italian Correspondent
Monday, June 13, 2022 - 17:36
Print...
16/06/2022
RaceTech gallops back to the start line to support ITV Racing at Royal Ascot 202...
16/06/2022
SVG College Summit: 400 Attendees Reunite in Atlanta for First In-Person Summit ...