When will the next big sports insider go independent?

Sports insiders have more leverage than ever. With the growth of legal sports betting and fantasy sports, instant information is incredibly valuable. At the same time, as more sports media moves online and audiences find sports content free and on-demand, the power is in the person who has the information – the insider.

For now, the biggest sports insiders all work for ESPN, league broadcast partners, and league-owned networks. But for how long?

In recent years, hosts like Pat McAfee, Shannon Sharpe, Gilbert Arenas, and JJ Redick have built sizable businesses around their popularity. Some siphoned audiences away from their day jobs at big networks, but they got viewers to tune in because they were entertaining and capable.

The business followed suit. Rather than buying out their operation or hiring them away full-time, sports media became a licensing and sponsorship business. Whether it was Redick with Amazon and DraftKings, Arenas with Underdog Fantasy, or McAfee with FanDuel and eventually ESPN, entire media startups were funded through money from other companies. So long as you have a loyal audience and consistent output, you can find enough money to build a studio and hire staff. If you were lucky, your partners might even handle marketing, ad sales, and distribution.

What is standing in the way of the next Ian Rapoport, Adrian Wojnarowski, or Jon Heyman from doing the same? That insider would have to significantly alter how they deliver information, but there’s enough evidence out there to suggest they could make plenty of money and maintain a massive platform outside the comfort of a big business.

The idea was floated by Ryan Glasspiegel of the New York Post in a recent episode of the House of Strauss podcast and makes a ton of sense.

Shams Charania is the latest sports newsbreaker to come up for a new contract and is reportedly expected to consider a move after spending the last several years with The Athletic and Stadium. While Charania is by no means the most prolific or highest-paid insider right now, he has a few advantages that illustrate how this sort of setup could work.

First, Charania has experience in a digital format. He has broadcast on sponsored live streams with Stadium for several years during the NBA trade deadline and draft. For a news breaker, he is comfortable on air and can hold an audience better than his older, stiffer colleagues.

Charania also has no issue wading into various elements of the hoops world beyond transactions and front office minutiae. He interviews athletes, coaches, and executives. He often reports on the sneaker world, overseas basketball, preps, and college ball. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine Charania holding his own as the main voice broadcasting directly to fans on a livestream or consistent independent podcast.

Outside the U.S., global soccer insider Fabrizio Romano already works this way . Romano’s personal social media feeds hold incalculable value, and he streams on both YouTube and Playback weekly or more during transfer windows. His YouTube channel has more than 2 million subscribers. Romano also publishes a daily paid newsletter on Substack and hosts a podcast for the Men in Blazers network in partnership with Wondery.

There’s no reason an American reporter couldn’t split their work among multiple platforms and bring the revenue indirectly. Whether that was YouTube and Substack or Amazon-owned Twitch, where popular South American soccer streamer Casimiro has built a huge audience and simulcast events through Amazon licensing deals, the possibilities are growing for independent sports content creation.

As ESPN, Fox, and the other corporate-owned sports media outfits delayed their inevitable transition to digital-first output, other creators and platforms beat them to the punch. The information from someone like Romano or Charania is as valuable as ever, and the economics of small-scale subscriptions and ad sales pile up quickly. A corporate media entity like The Athletic, ESPN, Sky Sports, or even CNN is still comfortable and offers infrastructure . But news breakers are even better suited for independent distribution than others, given that their product is news, not entertainment.

Still, traditional media outlets know news sells, too. While nearly every sports media outfit has shrunk in recent years, insiders still bring in top dollar. It is still a risk to set up shop outside the usual networks and distributors.

But with more gambling companies, social and video platforms, and independent publishing platforms cropping up for creators and insiders by the year, the environment is ripe for more newsbreakers to take that leap and sell their info directly to hungry fans and consumers.

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