How Bleacher Report is using sneaker and fashion content to bring new advertisers into the fold

One of its series that’s distributed on linear is a segment called “Fit Watch,” which runs on TNT on Tuesday. The shows hosts — Dwyane Wade, Candace Parker, Shaquille O’Neal and Adam Lefkoe — critique NBA players’ outfits that they see online.

“‘Fit Watch’ is something specifically that has opened doors for us with Bloomingdale’s and Saks. A lot of the shows that [Marcelo] produces open the door — it doesn’t always mean that that’s the exact thing we sell, but [an] entry point into [Bleacher Report],” said Rapp.

The goal of “Sneak This” is to further replicate the successes that “Fit Watch” has had with getting new advertisers to start conversations with Bleacher Report. In the 24 hours of going live, the show collectively earned more than 5 million views across all of the social posts and on the app, Marcelo said.

Media companies regularly realize their audiences have more interest than one particular vertical and want to monetize those other adjacencies, said Barry Lowenthal, CEO of media buying agency Media Kitchen. That’s why newspapers have many different sections — to give advertisers the ability to be next to content that is more in line with their brands, as well as to avoid controversial subjects elsewhere in the paper, he added.

While it’s not a unique distinction that they’re making, Lowenthal said, it is a smart business decision. Creating a larger ecosystem of content by adding fashion and lifestyle coverage through the lens of sports will enable B/R to monetize even more aspects of their existing audience. 

There needs to be proof of concept, however. Buyers for retail brands who are being introduced to a traditionally sports-focused company like Bleacher Report through a vertical’s sneaker and lifestyle adjacency are going to want to see affinity data between a football fan and a fashion house, for instance, said Seth Hargrave, VP of strategy at media buying agency Media Two.

“As we look at hard conversion data for our retail advertisers, the importance of affinities for other brands paints a picture of who we need to target and how they need to be addressed with messaging,” Hargrave said.   

B/R Kicks still generates only a fraction of the popularity of the B/R main channel, with 12,500 subscribers to the Kicks’ YouTube channel, compared to B/R’s 2.25 million. On Instagram and TikTok, however, there are better indicators that the B/R Kicks audience is both present and sizable. Kicks has more than 750,000 TikTok followers and 2.1 million Instagram followers, compared to B/R’s 2.4 million and 16.1 million, respectively.

“Choosing to ‘diversify’ can be a dangerous game and shouldn’t be done just for the sake of it,” said Niki Bell, a media strategist at Media Two. “At the end of the day, the question should be, ‘Is B/R Kicks providing value to the audience, and are they engaging?’ Otherwise, any ad revenue increase will be short-lived.”

“The question is how far can they stretch the environment before they seem inauthentic,” added Lowenthal.