Inside Sports Media with Overtime’s Zack Weiner
In the world of business meets sports for high school-aged fans, Zachary Weiner is a major influencer.
Not sure where he fits alongside Charli, Jojo and Billie? Just think crazy slam dunks on TikTok, episodes of the Overtime Challenge on YouTube, and Overtime Elite amplified on Amazon Prime.
The Overtime Opportunity
Zack is president and co-founder of Overtime, a sports media company that generates original sports content on social media geared toward younger fans who are always on their phones – and endlessly scrolling posts. This is not your parents’ sports fandom. The next generation of sports fans does things differently. Think watching highlights, not entire games, and following specific athletes, rather than entire teams.
Last count? Overtime has 26.5 million followers on TikTok and more than 10 million on Instagram, making it a serious sports media brand on social, alongside big players like ESPN (44 million followers on TikTok). The company boasts more than 70 million followers across seven platforms. What makes Overtime particularly unique is its market: its target audience is 13-35-year-olds (both Gen Z and Millennials), with the sweet spot hitting around 18-25.
For many high school players and sports fans, like Miles L. from Philadelphia, Overtime has become a Gen Z Sports Oasis (so says the Wall Street Journal).
So, when Zack, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (C’14), visited Penn’s campus as a keynote speaker at the Wharton Sports Business Summit, Miles didn’t want to miss it. This was a chance to learn about the business behind one of his favorite sports platforms.
“I like Overtime because it’s not just a sports Instagram account. Its random videos that pop up are funny – some related to sports and some not. I like that diversity,” said Miles, who particularly enjoyed learning about Zack’s life before Overtime during his campus keynote talk. “Overtime is a credible source for all my sports information and for finding funny videos…and I like how they highlight high school sports students and give them a platform to build their social media. Athletes need a significant social media presence to get their name out there and get recruited.”
Zack’s Highlight Reel
Started in 2016 by Zack (a Gen Zer) and co-founder Dan Porter (a Gen Xer), Overtime first focused on posting short-form content of high school athletes – highlighting the most popular high school sports stars. The company has since expanded in lots of ways, including starting pro basketball leagues called Overtime Elite featuring men and women athletes who are 16-20, as well as OT7 for football and OTX for boxing. Overtime also recently partnered with the National Football League (NFL) in its first national partnership to provide Gen Z-focused content across its platforms.
“Sports is unique in the way that it is able to occupy space in people’s minds and hearts, which ultimately creates this interesting business opportunity,” said Zack, who was interviewed at Wharton’s Sports Business Summit by Sam Schwartz, vice president of corporate development at Comcast in Philadelphia. “I’ll walk down the street in my Overtime hoodie and some 19-year-old will [give a] shout-out to Overtime and throw up our hand signal. I don’t think that’s happening in other industries. Our job as a business is to translate that passion and influence into monetization.” — as in, making money.
Here are 7 more sports-business highlights from Zack’s visit to the Wharton School:
Accidental entrepreneur. When Zack Weiner the student arrived at the University of Pennsylvania from New York’s Stuyvesant High School in 2010, he was a mathlete and chess champ (he ultimately won three Ivy League titles as Penn’s chess team captain and can play chess blindfolded). An entrepreneur? Not so much. But it didn’t take long. “My freshman year, I was waiting to play tennis and a guy comes up to me because I was wearing a Yankees shirt,” recalled Zack. “After about 10 minutes he said, ‘Do you want to have a radio show at Penn?’ I said I was interested. He brought me over to WQHS, and I had a radio show. The most amazing part of it was how I was able to leverage it into other things. I was going to Philadelphia Sixers games and Eagles games as press. I got professional athletes and agents on my show, and it gave me this entrepreneurial spirit. It was my first opportunity to spread my wings. I started my first company after my sophomore year called The Sports Quotient, which was a phenomenal experience. It was a platform for young people to write about sports: podcasts, videos, all those things. We got up to 250 writers and 80 universities.”
Always supply and demand. A few years out of college, The Sports Quotient shut down. “An important lesson for entrepreneurs is that you have to know when something isn’t working,” said Zack, who majored in economics and math at Penn. “What wasn’t working at The Sports Quotient was the demand side. We had the supply. I probably could have recruited 1,000 students to write about sports. But there was not a lot of demand for more written content on the Internet and not enough advertiser demand [to make money from this model].”
Pivot and shoot. Mere months after stopping The Sports Quotient in 2016, Zack co-founded Overtime, with a sharp market focus. “When I think about Overtime and my journey, it’s a direct result of that supply-and-demand problem that I saw with Sports Quotient,” said Zack. “Every company is looking for product-market fit. The majority of companies start with a product and then iterate that product to find a market. At Overtime…we did the reverse. We identified our target demographic, which is Gen Z and Millennial sports fans, and because of a lot of the trends in the industry, this is who we [decided to target] through content, apparel, and experiences. We didn’t exactly know what the product was going to look like, but we knew the guiding principle was the 23-year-old sports fan.”
“One of the things we tried early on that did not work was that we went really wide with the next generation of athletes. I wanted to build a Sports Center for every single high school. There’s not an appetite for that.” –Zack Weiner, President, Overtime
Audience is boss. Overtime has given a lot of thought to how it connects with its younger sports-fan followers. You have to know your audience. “The voice that you’re speaking in and the language you use is a big part of how you get into the hearts and minds of a person,” observed Zack. “Am I talking in a way that resonates with you? If you look at Overtime content, there might be something that a 55-year-old doesn’t even know what we’re talking about. And that’s okay! Because the 25-year-old says that Overtime feels like their friend. [We also try to build] a sense of community and belonging. We respond to almost every DM and comment. We have a relationship with the audience that to me is the new wave of media… Overtime is not one-to-many, it’s one-to-one.”
The Eli Ellis effect. For Zack, Overtime has been a continual learning process. “One of the things we tried early on that did not work was that we went really wide with the next generation of athletes. I wanted to build a Sports Center for every single high school. There’s not an appetite for that,” observed Zack. “Instead, we focused on the best of the best and the best stories… The second mistake was related to that. I used to think the better the athlete, the more interesting they were. That’s not true…If you actually talk to young people, the most popular player on the City Reapers, which had both of the Thompson Twins [Overtime Elite basketball players who were drafted to the NBA], was neither of them. It’s this athlete Eli Ellis, who is huge on TikTok and very relatable…It’s not just about talent, it’s about personality.”
Hoodies and deals. While raking in eight figures through merch and e-commerce helps Overtime make money, its revenues flow from many streams. “We’re lucky that the audience we have is coveted for advertisers,” noted Zack. “Our core, core is 18-25, and most advertisers really want to hit that, so we fell backwards into advertising. Brands started reaching out to us. You want to pay us hundreds of thousands? Okay! A lot of those are now multi-million-dollar deals. What’s good for us is that we’re not seen as a normal media company. They want to leverage us for how to reach young people…To monetize long-term, years ago we made a commitment to launch leagues (basketball, football, boxing). It opens a lot of revenue streams (sponsorship dollars, licensing and merchandise). I think in the next couple of years, league revenue will surpass media revenue for us.”
Parting shots. Think like an entrepreneur, be experimental, be willing to break some rules and step outside of your box, urged Zack. “What I’ve learned in these past 10 years running these two companies is that you could filter an entrepreneur’s journey just through the lens of risk. Not only do you have to take a big risk, you have to convince other people to take risks. You have to figure out what is the next big risk you’re going to take. What are you not going to take a risk on? The positivity and the risk-taking that Overtime portrays externally, we also do that internally.”
Conversation Starters
Are you an Overtime fan? Why do you like Overtime? What would you hope that Zack Weiner and Overtime know about your profile as a sports fan? Is Overtime getting it right?
Zack Weiner says, “I’ll walk down the street in my Overtime hoodie and some 19-year-old will [give a] shout-out to Overtime and throw up our hand signal…our job as a business is to translate that passion and influence into monetization.” How is Overtime monetizing or making money from Gen Z’s passion for sports?
Do you have a favorite Overtime league, video, player, memory? Share your story in the comment section of this article.
As the sports media and business world has evolved over the years, companies like Overtime and MaxPreps have raked in the rewards of this industry. However, the intelligence and business ideals of someone like Zach Weiner isn’t the only thing that I find made the high school sports world so successful. Overtime has become universally popular and as a sports fan myself, I usually find myself watching this. But this shows that the most important aspect of business is timing. At the time that Overtime was founded, starting to post high school basketball clips in 2016, high school basketball was rapidly growing with people like Lamelo Ball and Julian Newman were leading the way. Meanwhile, as these players continued to leave, the effect was permanent as players like Sharife Cooper carried the torch. This created such a market that an evolving business like Overtime could carry over to create their own league. This adaptation is perhaps the best business move by Zach Weiner.
The Overtime Elite League started in 2021, while it offered a chance to regain your NIL and gain exposure, it provided a risk to many players. Being able to secure noteworthy stars like Jahzare Jackson, the Thompson Twins, and Alex Sarr was key to the upbringing of OTE. Out of just those four players two are in the draft this year, with one being projected to go 1st, with the other two already being established NBA players this, gamble paid off. The timing of this wasn’t just based on the popularity of high school basketball too, with a universal addiction to social media occurring during and after the pandemic. When everyone is scrolling on their phones, it’s much easier to capture the attention of others on their phones. While Overtime has successfully captured all of its goals as a business. We’ve seen another example of using a growing market to succeed.
As a teenager and avid sports fan, I fall under Overtime’s targeted demographic. They have mastered mixing serious sports news with entertaining clips, and because of this, they are constantly relevant. They are the primary source of sports entertainment, which is why millions of teenagers rely on their platform daily. This can all be credited to the genius business model created by Zach Weiner.
Overtime stands out because it understands and caters to how my generation consumes sports. We don’t have the patience for full games; we crave highlights, funny moments, and engaging personalities. Overtime delivers this with its short-form content, making sports accessible and entertaining. The platform’s focus on individual athletes rather than teams also aligns with how we connect with sports – we follow players, not just franchises. This attests to Overtime’s ability to know their audience, something that is absolutely vital in business. This shift is evident in Overtime’s success on social media, boasting millions of followers who appreciate its fresh, relatable content.
Zach Weiner’s journey from a mathlete and chess champion to a successful entrepreneur is inspiring. His story emphasizes that a career pivot can be necessary at times. His flexibility is the main attribute I would recommend young entrepreneurs to take after. Mr. Weiner’s education at Penn has taught him what works in business, and he goes after this diligently. His ability to connect with and understand the needs of Gen Z and Millennials is key to Overtime’s influence and growth in the world of sports.
Overtime’s monetization strategies are a masterclass in leveraging digital media trends. By targeting a coveted demographic for advertisers, Overtime has secured lucrative deals that go beyond traditional media. The expansion into professional leagues like Overtime Elite, OT7, and OTX opens new revenue streams through sponsorships, licensing, and merchandise. This diversified approach not only sustains the platform financially but also enhances its brand presence and community engagement.
Personally, Overtime has become a go-to source for sports entertainment. I love how it blends serious sports coverage with fun, diverse content that keeps me hooked. My favorite memories include watching high school athletes get their time in the spotlight, which is inspiring for any young athlete. Looking ahead, I hope Overtime continues to innovate and perhaps expands its educational content, teaching young fans about the business side of sports. This blend of sports and finance is precisely what makes Overtime so exciting and relevant for my generation.
Overtime’s story of success proves that understanding and adapting to the preferences of your targeted audience is vital in the world of business. Zach Weiner is inspiring because of his comprehension of adaptability. He gets that in order for a business to be successful, its product must change as time goes on. It is important to avoid stagnancy and complacency, which he does beautifully. This is a prime example of how innovation can transform an industry.
As an enthusiastic sports fan, I can completely agree with Alex’s comment. Overtime’s innovative tactic of providing audiences with entertaining clips has revolutionized sports media. Overtime’s understanding of the audience and their credibility are what make them so successful.
In agreement with Alex, this media outlet’s ability to adapt to its audience is what sets them apart from other sports media. As explained in the article, “Think watching highlights, not entire games, and following specific athletes, rather than entire teams” (Drake). As noticed by both this article and Alex, our current generation has a tendency of watching important parts of sport games instead of the full game. In order to market to this type of audience, Overtime began uploading highlight clips onto different social medias that capture the attention of sports fans around the world. This demonstrates Overtime’s success and supports Alex’s opinion, since they have accumulated over 26.5 million followers on TikTok and over 10 million followers on Instagram.
To add on to Alex’s comment, this organization’s credibility and brand deals have helped them develop into the successful company they are today. As explained by Alex, the company has established several deals with professional sports leagues such as Overtime Elite, OTX, and OT7. As the brand has expanded into different sectors of the sports industry, they have gained recognition and credibility which attracts massive amounts of views. In agreement with Alex, I believe that Overtime’s presence positively affects them as they begin to dominate sports media.
To finish off, Overtime’s techniques are the keys behind their success, both in attracting views from millions of people around the world and creating an influential presence in the sports world. To ultimately agree with Alex’s comment, this sports content provider epitomizes how adapting to the modern day world can create a lasting impact.