Sportonomics

Riley Martin doesn’t break news or argue hot takes — he explains sports so clearly that anyone can follow along. This week, Jake and Tyler sit down with the creator behind Sportsball to unpack how data visualization became his creative edge, why he designs content for casual fans first, and how focusing on a single fastball helped him build a durable, brand-friendly creator business without chasin...

Nathan Dorton started his football brand with a $65 loan, a Photoshop glove template, and a factory connection in Pakistan. Today, Phenom Elite is a $10M business redefining how football gear, culture, and IP intersect. This week, Jake and Tyler sat down with Nathan to talk about building an equipment brand without VC money, why licensing SpongeBob and Kool-Aid works better than superheroes, and h...

Most sports innovation focuses on what fans can see . Almost none of it considers what happens when you can’t. This week, Jake and Tyler sat down with the founding team behind OneCourt, a startup using real-time player and ball-tracking data to turn live sports into a tactile experience for blind and low-vision fans. They break down how the idea started in college, why accessibility has lagged beh...

A lot of people dream about playing professional sports. Fewer think about the careers built behind the scenes that make those games possible. This week, Jake and Tyler sit down with longtime athletic trainer Lenny, whose 50-year career spans high schools, minor league baseball, the NBA, and the Philadelphia 76ers. They talk about breaking into pro sports, the importance of networking, life on the...

Youth sports used to be simple — show up, play, go home. Today, it’s a fully developed industry with travel requirements, hotel contracts, massive tournaments, and real money flowing through every weekend on the calendar. This week, Jake and Tyler sat down with John D’Orsay, CEO of EventConnect, to break down how the youth sports economy actually works — from the rise of elite travel teams to the...

Stadiums track everything. Tickets, fans, sponsors, on-field performance, but one problem has quietly resisted innovation for decades: lines. This week, Jake and Tyler sat down with Sam Porta, founder of Queues, to break down how he went from hacking together queue data at Georgia Tech to helping the Atlanta Braves cut wait times, increase throughput, and uncover hidden inefficiencies using comput...

Thanksgiving and football feel like they’ve always gone together...but the story behind that tradition is way stranger than most fans realize. This week, Jake and Tyler break down the full history of Thanksgiving football, from Yale vs. Princeton in the 1800s to the Detroit Lions’ radio-fueled rise, the Cowboys volunteering their way into a national spotlight, and how the NFL turned a quiet holida...

Jordan Green isn’t your typical 22-year-old founder. He’s built meme pages with millions of followers, brokered NIL deals for brands like Fox Sports and Gymshark, and launched his own agency — Glacier — from a college dorm room. This week, Jake and I sat down with Jordan to talk about the evolution of NIL, how athletes and brands can actually build trust instead of hype, and what the future of col...

Kurt Benkert and Matt Blakely are redefining what a football brand can be. After Kurt’s NFL career, they launched DimeLab, a direct-to-consumer company making game-ready footballs that feel perfect right out of the box. This week, Jake and I sat down with them to talk about building a product from scratch, growing without burning out an audience, and turning 40,000+ bootstrapped orders into a reta...

Dean Snell has built golf balls for Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, and thousands of weekend players, but his story is about craft, not fame. After decades at Titleist and TaylorMade, he launched Snell Golf to deliver premium performance without the price tag or tour hype. Jake and I sat down with Dean to unpack the creation of the Pro V1, why most golfers use the wrong ball, and how he’s quietly bui...

Brian Davison’s path into the sports industry wasn’t traditional—it was relentless. After leaving a college coaching job, he started selling sneakers at a Nike outlet for $11/hour. Over the next decade, he networked his way into corporate Nike, became one of the company’s elite EKINs, and eventually landed on the Nike basketball team, helping re-sign Giannis Antetokounmpo on a $240 million deal. T...

Carlo Jiménez didn’t come from a broadcasting family. He didn’t play college ball. But at just 24, he’s already the radio voice of the LA Clippers—calling playoff games at Intuit Dome and growing a massive social media following along the way. This week, Jake and I sat down with Carlo to talk about how he went from JV benchwarmer to NBA broadcaster, the role content played in getting the job, and...

This week, Jake and I sat down with Drew Goodger, co-founder of Prevent Biometrics — the company behind those flashing red mouthguards you’ve seen all over rugby pitches and football fields. But Prevent isn’t just making gear — they’re building an infrastructure layer for head safety. Their tech tracks real-time head impacts with verified data, provides instant alerts, and is already shaping polic...

John Zeglinski was a two-sport athlete at Wake Forest back when concussions meant smelling salts and getting back in the game. Now, he's the CEO of SAFR—a spring-loaded helmet cover shown to reduce concussions by up to 48% in live play and 77% in lab testing. In this episode, Jake and Tyler talk to Ziggy about the business of head safety in football: how SAFR works, why aesthetics are critical for...

This week, Jake and I sat down with Michael Gursha—co-founder of Rookie Road and CEO of Point Curve—to talk about what it means to own content in a world that’s being overtaken by AI. Mike’s team has quietly built a network of 13 media brands across niche verticals, powered by custom-built infrastructure and original content. In this episode, we unpack how Rookie Road scaled from a football explai...

Frank Michael Smith has built one of the biggest audiences in sports content—over 3 million followers, 2 billion views, and major partnerships with brands like Underdog and PointsBet. But this fall, he’s betting on something entirely new: Solo Survivor , a live, elimination-style fantasy game that blends sports, trivia, and real-time payouts. In this episode, Jake and Tyler sit down with Frank to...

Basketball hasn’t changed its playing surface in over 100 years. ASB GlassFloor wants to change that. This week, Jake and Tyler talk with Chris Thornton, President of ASB GlassFloor Americas, about the rise of LED-powered glass courts and what they could mean for the future of the game. Already used at the NBA All-Star Game and in professional leagues across Europe, ASB’s surface is softer on play...

This week on Sportonomics , I sat down with Sam Berman, Head of Brand at Underdog, to unpack one of the boldest activations we’ve seen in the sports betting space. As sportsbooks fight for market share, Underdog is going a different route—ditching promos in favor of personality. Their latest stunt? Two 8.5-foot “Portals” dropped into Norman and Ann Arbor ahead of Oklahoma–Michigan, letting rival f...

Pro volleyball is booming—but the pro game hasn’t caught up. College matches are drawing millions of viewers, participation is surging, and cities like Omaha are packing stadiums. But until recently, the pro side of the sport was fractured and underfunded. That changed with the $325M merger between PVF and Major League Volleyball. This week, Jake and Tyler called up Abby Benton—a volleyball conten...

Jack Settleman isn’t just making content around college football—he’s investing in it. This fall, he’s spending $250,000 to embed Snapback Sports into the college football season, with creator-led partnerships, game-day content, and a bold $100,000 jersey patch offer. Jake and Tyler sat down with Jack to talk about the future of creator brands in sports, how schools are pricing attention, and what...

Tommy John surgeries are up 170%. Pitchers are spending 2x more days on the IL than 15 years ago. And 50% of youth arms report pain during the season. This week, Jake and Tyler sit down with Jason Colleran , biomechanics expert and founder of Kinetic Arm , to break down the root causes of baseball’s injury epidemic—and why the coaching ecosystem isn’t equipped to stop it. Jason explains how his pa...

Jack Adler is the founder of Out2Win, a data platform that ranks college athletes by their off-the-field marketability. With NIL projected to reach $2.55 billion by 2026 and 81% of payments still flowing through booster-led collectives, Jack joined us to explain why the current system is broken—and what’s coming next. In this episode, we unpack how brands can stop wasting money, why true influence...

Jake and Tyler sit down with former NBA referee and inventor Mike Costabile , the founder of the Precision Time System —a game-changing piece of officiating tech that’s now used in every NBA and March Madness game. In this episode, Mike walks through the controversial 1990 Bucks-Sixers game that cost him his job, the fallout that pushed him to invent a new way to keep time, and how he bootstrapped...

Jake and Tyler sit down with Brodie League founder Connor Renton to break down how he turned adult rec sports into a scalable business. At just 28 years old, Connor has built Brodie into a 34-market operation with a full-time team, hundreds of part-timers, a custom app, and a brand that feels more like a lifestyle company than a local league. The three talk about scaling community, building system...

Full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1-qKU1Ro_A&t=1s&ab_channel=TylerWebb Before the age of 21, Derrick Brown had already tried to quit football, he had his first child and had turned down over $10 million. So how did he become one of the NFL’s best young superstars, all while starting a $6M side hustle? Well, the answer lies in his working-class upbringing, a piece of advice from...