Audience segmentation is the new surface area

• I picked the wrong morning to write about how sports has taken over the media business. After last night’s Eagles game, focusing on U.S. presidential politics would be better for my mental health. In any case, I did a podcast with Adam Mendelsohn about why “The Decision” was ahead of its time and his new sports-meets-culture publishing brand OffBall.
• For TRB members (you should join): Why audience segmentation is the new surface area.
• On Friday's PvA, we had our 100th episode with guest Emily Sundberg of Feed Me. You can now watch PvA on YouTube.
• Final reminder to news publishers: Please take this brief survey about the state of sustainable news business models. The Rebooting will publish the results later this month. Thanks to Outbrain for partnering on this project. Take the survey

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Revisiting "The Decision"

In July 2010, ESPN aired “The Decision,” a live TV special during which LeBron James famously declared he would “take his talents to South Beach” and leave the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat.

The entire show at the time felt ludicrous. This was just not… how it was done. ESPN’s own ombudsman – Yes, ESPN had an ombudsman then – slammed the show, saying ESPN “abdicated its journalistic responsibility to an athlete and his entourage.” Different times.

"The Decision" was a sign of the direction of travel in sports, media and culture. It signaled the shift in power from gatekeepers, whether “owners” or ESPN talking heads, to the athletes themselves. Nowadays, Decision-like spectacles are a regular part of high school football and basketball players announcing their college team. Top athletes like James no longer have “entourages” but diversified media and investment companies. What was once dismissed as narcissism is now personal branding.

“He got killed for it,” said Adam Mendelsohn, a media advisor to James who joined soon his team soon after “The Decision.” “Even from day one back then, I thought it was visionary. This is where the world is going, but people just weren't ready for it."

A veteran of politics, Adam has served as part of a circle of advisor to James, other athletes and many companies that operate in the nexus of sports, media and culture. He’s recently launched his own publishing effort, OffBall, which is a throwback to the Drudge days of curation rather than algorithms.

Sports are unique in a fragmenting culture as one of the final shared experiences people have, even if that shared experience is an exceptionally painful loss. Brands clamor to be attached to sports of all kinds. The rights deals keep rising, as tech platforms enter the fray and TV networks find sports as the last lynchpin of live TV viewing. The relationship between Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift shows how sports are no longer a specific category but stretch across culture into music, fashion, business and more.

With sports media in ascent, OffBall aims to capture the intersection of sports and popular culture. Rather than aggregate content, OffBall links directly to the sources, whether they’re news articles, X posts, podcasts, Instagram posts, you name it. His cofounders are Players Tribune veteran Michaela Hammond and former Sports Illustrated editor-in-chief Chris Stone.

Adam joined me on The Rebooting Show this week. We talked about the legacy of The Decision, how sports mirrors the overall shifting dynamics in media, and why sports are so well-positioned at a time of intense fragmentation in the Mediaspace.

Listen to The Rebooting Show on Apple | Spotify | other podcast platforms

Audience segmentation is the new surface area

The term surface area is often used to describe the breadth of a publisher. Creating more surface area  means creating more places for advertising. The thinking is rather crude: If you want more attention, you need to create more things that have a shot at getting that attention. That’s proving a difficult game to win. Instead, publishers need to rethink the role of surface area. Instead of creating more stuff, they need to create more depth in audience segments.