“We make it as easy as possible to be a sports fan,” says Howard Mittman, CEO of Bleacher Report, the Gen Z– and millennial-friendly sports media brand—78% of its audience is under 35—owned by WarnerMedia. Sports in the social media era have become as much about the off-court soap operas as who scored 35 points last night, and Bleacher Report continues to adapt, adding coverage of sneaker and betting cultures and beefing up its app to pull in all the feeds a fan needs to get news and shareable clips. The goal is to build more communities like the breakout House of Highlights, which grew in 2019 from an Instagram-only NBA-centric account into a full-fledged brand, with 18 YouTube series, a strong presence on TikTok (where it has attracted 2.3 million followers in five months), youth basketball camps, and a branded content program capable of creating several Taco Bell posts that were among the most viewed sports videos on Instagram last year.
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A version of this article appeared in the March/April 2020 issue of Fast Company magazine.