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Overtime—on Pace for $100M in 2024—Inks NFL Partnership

The remaining half of its revenue comes from a mix of media rights deals, advertising and commerce. Its commerce business alone is on pace to generate eight figures in revenue and projected to grow 50% this year, according to Porter.

Distribution deals for its media rights have also become a significant tranche of its business, and its expanded partnership with the NFL aims to supercharge this effort.

Through the new distribution arrangement, the NFL will broadcast the games from the upcoming season of OT7, which begins April 6, on both the NFL Network and NFL+. The two channels will air OT7 games on Saturday and Sunday for two hours, exposing fans of professional football to the rising athletes who could one day become fixtures of the league itself.

“The partnership helps the NFL expand beyond live football,” Greenfield said. “It also ages [the NFL] down and allows it to connect with a demographic that isn’t watching linear TV.”

The NFL partnership follows on the heels of other distribution agreements Overtime has signed with prominent media partners. It inked a three-year deal with Prime Video in 2022, through which it airs 20 OTE games per season, and will air the first and second seasons of OTX exclusively on DAZN. It also has a distribution deal with Bally Sports Network.

Its media rights strategy is part of a broader plan in which Overtime aims to capture, package and distribute its footage in a manner that allows it to monetize the video several times over. 

For instance, it livestreams games as they occur, sells the rights to air the games to a variety of streaming services, houses the footage on its YouTube channel and repackages it as highlights to share across its social channels. It monetizes this content, at various points, through sponsorship, advertising, media rights, branded content and apparel sales.

This approach positions Overtime as both a builder of disruptive sports leagues and a creator of original sports content, but one without a singular website, channel or product to which it drives viewers. 

The strategy runs counter to the prevailing logic of the media industry, but for Overtime—whose primary goal at the moment is building awareness of its players, products and leagues—it has so far proven successful.

“Many companies have failed because they think that the purpose of platforms is to push fans back to their websites,” Porter said. “If you can flip that on its head, you can be successful. We hope to do $100 million this year, but none of that comes from the website.” 

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