SVG Sit-Down: House of Highlights' Sam Gilbert on the Live Strategy Behind the HoH Creator League
10/05/2022
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
LINK: | https://www.sportsvideo.org/2022/05/10/svg-sit-down-house-of-highlight... |
See more stories from svg |
More from Sports Video Group
23/04/2024
Soccer's Appeal to Younger Audiences: Inside the Gamification of European Football Coverage
Soccer's Appeal to Younger Audiences: Inside the Gamification of European Fo...
23/04/2024
With NBA and NHL Playoffs in Full Swing, Never a Dull Moment for TNT Sports Production and Ops Teams
With NBA and NHL Playoffs in Full Swing, Never a Dull Moment for TNT Sports Prod...
23/04/2024
NAB 2024: AT&T Business's Scott Beckett Details Transmission Firepower With Robo Dog, Mini Copter
NAB 2024: AT&T Business's Scott Beckett Details Transmission Firepower With ...
23/04/2024
NAB 2024: Manufacturers Focus on Cinematic Look for Live Productions
NAB 2024: Manufacturers focus on cinematic look for live productions By George Bevir Tuesday, April 23, 2024 - 10:40 Print This Story With live sports pro...
23/04/2024
Save the Date: SVG Sports Content Management Forum Returns to NYC on July 24
Save the Date: SVG Sports Content Management Forum Returns to NYC on July 24 By SVG Staff Tuesday, April 23, 2024 - 4:05 pm Print This Story | Subscribe ...
22/04/2024
NEP Battles Weather to Keep the Going Good for Grand National Coverage
NEP battles weather to keep the going good for Grand National coverage By Adrian Pennington Monday, April 15, 2024 - 11:48 Print This Story The 2024 Grand...
22/04/2024
ITV Racing Under Starters Orders Live at the Grand National Festival
ITV Racing under starters orders live at the Grand National Festival By Adrian Pennington Friday, April 12, 2024 - 09:10 Print This Story The Grand Nation...
22/04/2024
Inside the Deal: EFL Fans to View Enhanced Broadcasts For the Next Five Seasons as IMG Becomes Official Production Partner
Inside the deal: EFL fans to view enhanced broadcasts for the next five seasons ...
22/04/2024
To 4G, or Not To 4G: EMG on Bringing the Iconic 2024 London Marathon to Viewers Globally
To 4G, or not to 4G: EMG on bringing the iconic 2024 London Marathon to viewers ...
22/04/2024
NAB Show 2024: Our Full Collection of Video Interviews From the Show Floor
NAB Show 2024: Our Full Collection of Video Interviews From the Show Floor Industry insights from key leaders on the NAB Show exhibit floor By SVG Staff Mond...
22/04/2024
PENN Entertainment Adds ESPN/Disney Exec Aaron LeBerge as CTO
PENN Entertainment Adds ESPN/Disney Exec Aaron LeBerge as CTO By SVG Staff Monday, April 22, 2024 - 3:18 pm Print This Story | Subscribe Story Highlight...
19/04/2024
NAB 2024 in Review: West Hall - SportsTech Buzz From AWS, Appear, Ateme, The Switch, TATA Communications, Telstra, TVU Networks, Verizon, and More
NAB 2024 in Review: West Hall - SportsTech Buzz From AWS, Appear, Ateme, The Swi...
19/04/2024
NAB 2024 Draws 61,000+ Attendees With More Than Half Attending the Show for the First Time
NAB 2024 Draws 61,000+ Attendees With More Than Half Attending the Show for the ...
18/04/2024
Ping Pong for the Masses: Bringing an Old Sport to a Brand New Audience With World Table Tennis
Ping pong for the masses: Bringing an old sport to a brand new audience with Wor...
18/04/2024
Fanatical Fans: IMG on Bringing the World of Table Tennis to a New Global Audience for WTT
Fanatical fans: IMG on bringing the world of table tennis to a new global audien...
17/04/2024
Live From NAB Show 2024: Zixi CEO Gordon Brooks on Live Cloud Production with the NHL and Version 17 of the Zixi Platform
Live From NAB Show 2024: Zixi CEO Gordon Brooks on Live Cloud Production with th...
17/04/2024
SportsTechBuzz at NAB 2024: Wednesday's Latest From Vegas
SportsTechBuzz at NAB 2024: Wednesday's Latest From Vegas By SVG Staff Wednesday, April 17, 2024 - 3:00 am Print This Story The NAB Show is in full sw...
17/04/2024
Live From NAB Show 2024: Zixi CEO Gordon Brooks on Live Cloud Production with the NHL and Version 12 of the Zixi Platform
Live From NAB Show 2024: Zixi CEO Gordon Brooks on Live Cloud Production with th...
16/04/2024
SportsTechBuzz at NAB 2024: Tuesday's Latest From Vegas
SportsTechBuzz at NAB 2024: Tuesday's Latest From Vegas By SVG Staff Tuesday, April 16, 2024 - 3:15 am Print This Story The NAB Show is in full swing,...
16/04/2024
Live From NAB Show 2024: Calrec's Henry Goodman, Solid State Logic's Tom Knowles on Audio in the Cloud
Live From NAB Show 2024: Calrecs Henry Goodman, Solid State Logics Tom Knowles o...
16/04/2024
Live From NAB Show 2024: The Switch's George Lopez on Remote Production, The Cloud, and the Future of Connectivity
Live From NAB Show 2024: The Switchs George Lopez on Remote Production, The Clou...
16/04/2024
Live From NAB Show 2024: LiveU's Steve Wind-Mozley on IP, REMI Solutions for Light Weight Production
Live From NAB Show 2024: LiveUs Steve Wind-Mozley on IP, REMI Solutions for Ligh...
16/04/2024
Live From NAB Show 2024: Blackmagic Design's Bob Caniglia on Upgrades to ATEM Production Switchers, Recent Work in Replay and IP
Live From NAB Show 2024: Blackmagic Designs Bob Caniglia on Upgrades to ATEM Pro...
16/04/2024
Live From NAB Show 2024: Canon's Staff Gives a Tour of New Lenses, Multi-Camera Control App, Enhanced Use of Free Viewpoint
Live From NAB Show 2024: Canons Staff Gives a Tour of New Lenses, Multi-Camera C...
15/04/2024
SportsTechBuzz at NAB 2024: Monday's Latest From Vegas
SportsTechBuzz at NAB 2024: Monday's Latest From Vegas By SVG Staff Monday, April 15, 2024 - 3:00 am Print This Story The NAB Show is in full swing, a...
15/04/2024
Live From NAB Show 2024: Vizrt's Nicholas Jameson on the Democratization of High-End Graphics Tech
Live From NAB Show 2024: Vizrts Nicholas Jameson on the Democratization of High-...
15/04/2024
Live From NAB Show 2024: Sony's Hugo Gaggioni on the Power of Sharing and Connecting Live Production Resources
Live From NAB Show 2024: Sonys Hugo Gaggioni on the Power of Sharing and Connect...
15/04/2024
Live From NAB Show 2024: Lawo's Andreas Hilmer Walks Through HOME Apps, Dishes Latest on IP
Live From NAB Show 2024: Lawos Andreas Hilmer Walks Through HOME Apps, Dishes La...
15/04/2024
Live From NAB Show 2024: AWS' Julie Souza on the Maturation of Live Sports Production in the Cloud
Live From NAB Show 2024: AWS Julie Souza on the Maturation of Live Sports Produc...
15/04/2024
Live From NAB Show 2024: FUJINON Lenses' Stosh Durbacz on the Debut of the Duvo HZK14-100mm Lens, Adding Cinematic Feel to Broadcasts
Live From NAB Show 2024: FUJINON Lenses Stosh Durbacz on the Debut of the Duvo H...
14/04/2024
SportsTechBuzz at NAB 2024: Sunday's Latest From Vegas
SportsTechBuzz at NAB 2024: Sunday's Latest From Vegas By SVG Staff Sunday, April 14, 2024 - 12:41 am Print This Story The NAB Show kicks off today, a...
14/04/2024
Live From NAB Show 2024: Program Productions' Bob Carzoli on Investment Growth and Supporting Freelancers with the ProCrewz App
Live From NAB Show 2024: Program Productions Bob Carzoli on Investment Growth an...
14/04/2024
Live From NAB Show 2024: Appear's Thomas Bostrm Jrgensen, Alex Pannell, and Ed McGivern on Backing the Continued Growth of Live Sports
Live From NAB Show 2024: Appears Thomas Bostr m J rgensen, Alex Pannell, and Ed ...
14/04/2024
Live From NAB Show 2024: Amagi's Dan Marshall on Migrating On-Prem Data Centers to The Cloud and the Exciting Growth of FAST Channels
Live From NAB Show 2024: Amagis Dan Marshall on Migrating On-Prem Data Centers t...
14/04/2024
Live From NAB Show 2024: Ross Video's David Ross on Celebrating 50 Years with Major Product Intros
Live From NAB Show 2024: Ross Videos David Ross on Celebrating 50 Years with Maj...
14/04/2024
NAB 2024: NHL, Verizon Business, and AWS Roll Out 5G-enabled Cloud Broadcasting Solution
NAB 2024: NHL, Verizon Business, and AWS Roll Out 5G-enabled Cloud Broadcasting ...
12/04/2024
Inside the MultiVersus NHL Face-Off' Live Animated Broadcast With the NHL's David Lehanski and Keith Horstman
Inside the MultiVersus NHL Face-Off' Live Animated Broadcast With the NHL...
12/04/2024
NAB 2024: Suppliers Continue To Expand Networked-Audio Offerings
NAB 2024: Suppliers Continue To Expand Networked-Audio Offerings New and updated products boast IP and ST 2110, software systems, virtual control By Dan Daley,...
12/04/2024
Amazon Prime Video Chooses Onsite Production Path for Its 27 NWSL Matches
Amazon Prime Video Chooses Onsite Production Path for Its 27 NWSL Matches The streamer made its league debut with the 2024 NWSL Challenge Cup on March 15 By Kr...
12/04/2024
ESPN Rides Wave of Women's-Hoops Momentum Into WNBA Draft Production at Brooklyn Academy of Music
ESPN Rides Wave of Women's-Hoops Momentum Into WNBA Draft Production at Broo...
12/04/2024
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Mimir's Andr Torsvik on Enabling Remote Collaboration Through the Cloud
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Mimir's Andr Torsvik on Enabling Remote Collabor...
12/04/2024
Inside the MultiVersus NHL Face-Off Live Animated Broadcast With the NHL's David Lehanski and Keith Horstman
Inside the MultiVersus NHL Face-Off Live Animated Broadcast With the NHL's D...
11/04/2024
Case Study: Inside ESPN's Monday Night Football AR Graphics Launch
Case Study: Inside ESPN's Monday Night Football AR Graphics Launch By SVG Staff Thursday, April 11, 2024 - 8:18 am Print This Story | Subscribe Stor...
11/04/2024
All Love: Creative Media Producer Jhalen Wingate on Capturing South Carolina Women's Basketball's National Championship
All Love: Creative Media Producer Jhalen Wingate on Capturing South Carolina Wom...
11/04/2024
Miami Marlins Leap Into Artificial Intelligence With 2024 Team Open
Miami Marlins Leap Into Artificial Intelligence With 2024 Team Open The Famous Group played a pivotal role in its third consecutive project with the club By Kr...
11/04/2024
SPORTEL Rendez-vous Buenos Aires Four Weeks Away!
SPORTEL Rendez-vous Buenos Aires Four Weeks Away! By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director Thursday, April 11, 2024 - 10:46 am Print This Story | Subscribe...
11/04/2024
Sinclair Turns to Generative AI for Language Translation in Original Content
Sinclair Turns to Generative AI for Language Translation in Original Content Audio for Tennis Channel's Petko Unfiltered will be translated into Spanish By...