Tyler Brosious, former Digital Content Manager at the XFL, on launching a professional sports league
Brian Bosché:
Hey everyone. It's Brian Bosché with the Creative BTS podcast. I am so excited to be sitting down here on Zoom with Tyler Brosious, the formal digital content manager for the XFL. Tyler, thanks so much for coming on.
Tyler Brosious:
No problem, man. Thanks for having me and taking some time out of probably a meeting or something you're in the middle of right now to chat with me.
Brian Bosché:
No worries. I'm taking a vacation day.
Tyler Brosious:
Oh, you are?
Brian Bosché:
It's great. Oh yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
What's vacation day like? Is it nice in Seattle?
Brian Bosché:
Just staying in my apartment. No, it's terrible in Seattle, but I'm just taking a little break today.
Tyler Brosious:
[inaudible 00:00:35].
Brian Bosché:
I like to try to stay sane during the quarantine time. But yeah, I wanted to kick off with just a little bit about your background. You bounced around between a number of different teams and leagues, a lot of experience in sports. So you just want to walk through your experience a little bit?
Tyler Brosious:
Yeah, and I'll try to keep it brief because sometimes this is where I can get a little heavy. But for me, it started in high school. I think it was '09, maybe 2010 and I realized that I want going to grow to be 6'5 and my knees and ankles weren't going to let me be a star center or a left tackle. Granted, as much as I loved sports... I remember all the way back to playing 2K, 2004, I would sit with a controller above my head and I could do play-by-play like I was Mark Zumoff, Harry Kalas. Being a Philadelphia guy, I honestly thought I'd be the next Joe Buck.
Tyler Brosious:
So growing up that was always my aspiration. And in high school, I used to do all the play-by-play. Luckily, we had a really cool media area in high school where I would go to the local channel 19. I did all the play-by-play, soccer, lacrosse, you name it, up to football and basketball. Then I would also live tweet the game on my phone from the account I have now.
Tyler Brosious:
So that was always a passion for me. And I continued that passion at Quinnipiac. Always wanted to go to Syracuse, but it was always like, "Oh, if you're good enough, you get to do a game in your fifth year." It's like I want to get my hands dirty now. So luckily, the best thing that ever happened to me was Syracuse wait-listed me. Quinnipiac, I drove up there. When we always drove, my brother and I, my twin brother was more of an ivy, nerdy type, more introverted. Obviously, I am not that way. We toured 20 to 25 colleges. My dad still laughs, the only two we didn't tour were Quinnipiac and Boston College. And that's where we went on to love it.
Brian Bosché:
Yep.
Tyler Brosious:
We [crosstalk 00:02:24]. So I went to Quinnipiac and I was getting paid 10, 12 bucks to do play-by-play in the fall. Fell in love with sports like field hockey and women's soccer and it was like, how do I continue making this "beer money" in the winter when they go to radio hosts and stuff for soccer and basketball? And our social media just stunk. Granted, when you have older guys and they're just trying to stay afloat in the division one growing program. And your hockey team goes from nowhere to being in the Frozen Four national championship game.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
There's got to be a catch up. So I told them, "Listen, I have this software." I think I found it and it was mp4, I was like, "I can record every single goal and we can post and tag the players." And before you know it, it was like if you're going to do it, you got to do it, but realize... And our athletic communication director at the time was really smart. He was like, "Once you do this for hockey, basketball's going to want it, soccer." And I was like, "Yeah, I got nothing but time."
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
On the weekends, there's nothing better when you're in college then working a soccer game at 10 AM. And I would do play-by-play there and cut the game, so social.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
And have somebody work for me down below to get live stuff. Then I'd go to field hockey at one o'clock, walk over, have a suit in the car, get done that at four, wolf down a hoagie or a sandwich, walk to the arena in a suit, do another game and do a full-feature piece after the hockey game on whoever had the big if we won, or a thought process on the loss for our student media organization. And by 10 o'clock, I was good.
Tyler Brosious:
I only missed like... And this might not sound great to employers, but when you're 21, 20 years old, I only missed the first hour of the pregame and everyone would be like... And I come in like the cool dad in the suit, [crosstalk 00:04:06]. It's an on-running joke. Like, "Here comes dad for more-
Brian Bosché:
Yeah, one-man media company coming back.
Tyler Brosious:
But by the end of my senior year, my buddy who was turned into my color commentator, he had a hockey background. We did all the field hockey games. We traveled to the MAC tournament for field hockey. I was doing social for every single game, and then as I build it out, my other buddies had work-study. My finance major buddy was doing the plus/minus. My biology buddy was calling the game. It turned into a whole family affair, as much as your college family can do.
Tyler Brosious:
So with that, my grad year came and they said, "Hey, we need you to keep doing social media. Come get your grad degree." Did that for a year and a half. Built up the media group with our comms guy at the time. 45, 50 kids, whether it was graphics, photography, video, storytelling, written, however you wanted to do it, we wanted to take the best talent and be like, "You could do that for the local Quinnipiac ESPN basically." Or, "We'll give you 10 bucks and give you a much bigger platform to do it."
Tyler Brosious:
The kids ate it up. I oversaw the group. Probably my proudest getting those guys, taking reference phone calls, internships jobs, 40 or 50 of them, and my proudest number is probably 60 to 70 of them have gone on for sports internships.
Brian Bosché:
Wow.
Tyler Brosious:
And on the full-time gig. So those are-
Brian Bosché:
And you.
Tyler Brosious:
Yeah. And then, for me, I [crosstalk 00:05:28]-
Brian Bosché:
You go to Connecticut Sun.
Tyler Brosious:
I went to the Sun and the Black Wolves, ran campaigns there, social media, email marketing, website. And that was the great thing, I spent my interview and it was all about social. Showed up the first day and the PR director, Jen Hildebrand, at the time, was like, "I need to teach you how to do the email marketing and the websites because you're in charge of those too." And I was like... At the time, I was kind of like, "What the hell?" Three days later I was like, "This is another tool to add to the tool belt. This is going to be fun."
Brian Bosché:
Yep. You got a lot of coverage at Connecticut Sun.
Tyler Brosious:
Yeah.
Brian Bosché:
A lot of snarky Twitter comments, but still a lot of attention.
Tyler Brosious:
For us it was I had the... I wore a bunch of different hats. I was a blogger for Barstool at 18 years old. I helped them with Reddit, social media, stuff like that. And then I had a very structured athletics department and did some news stuff and stuff like that, and internships, NBC Sports. So I got all this knowledge and finally, I really got to put that on display at the Sun because I-
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
I had a PR SID beginning. I had the Barstool funny beginning, memes, being... And I think women's sports really lacked that because it's a camaraderie of, "We're 12 teams and if one team wins, we all win." It's like no. The way you sell your product is beating teams by 30 and laughing at them. That's what's fun.
Tyler Brosious:
We got really lucky. We were the underdogs, but we were really good. Our Burn it Down campaign, I worked some really smart people, Maura Doyle, Robin Brown, Amber Cox. And we were able to really formulate something fun. And the Disrespect campaign, luckily our VP Amber Cox was like, "I'm taking the leashes off." Like, "Do your-
Brian Bosché:
Let's do it. Yep.
Tyler Brosious:
So I was clapping back at guys with the classic like, "Make me sandwich," like, "Oh, how's it feel to be an intern?" I'm like, "I'm making more than you are."
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
We had a lot of fun and ESPN took notice, wrote a feature about me at the finals. Yahoo was writing about how the coach Mike Thibault at the Mystics were flat out telling his players like, "You need to watch. We do not want press out there." Because we were finding [inaudible 00:07:24] podcast anything.
Brian Bosché:
Yep.
Tyler Brosious:
And it working in the locker room, out the locker room, and have an amazing opportunity to join the XFL, took notice there. I'll never forget [Rayelle Ectin 00:07:34] called me. At the time, I was interviewing for the New York social media job for the Guardians. And I just wanted the different change, wanted to get back in the football a little bit. And he called me and we hit it off. We're talking about BYU athletics and Clemson and what makes those guys special. And we talked about it like that. I'll never forget.
Tyler Brosious:
I took the phone call in the lobby at the casino and I ended walking around the entire casino so fired up on the phone. I'm like, "That guy gets it." And it was funny, we always all laugh how all interconnected we were. David Albright who came from ESPN, just a brilliant person who ended up being my direct boss. Interviewed me. Five days after being hired, he was hopping on a flight to finish up some ESPN stuff.
Tyler Brosious:
When I was brought in, it was originally for a social media role I didn't feel comfortable at the New York position and I wanted to be at the league level. And Rayelle and David were like, "This kid gets it." So when I actually interviewed, I actually read the night before that they hired Bailey Carlin, who was just actually recently signed about an hour ago with Barstool.
Brian Bosché:
Oh wow. Yeah, I saw that.
Tyler Brosious:
He was their social guy and they were like, "Listen, we have a digital job." And I was like, "I've done websites." That was where I didn't know 18 months ago complaining to Jen Hildebrand at the time that I didn't want to do websites. Stuff that it would actually turn out to be in my favor. And through there, they realized I was kind of a unicorn. I was in video meetings, I was in social meetings, meetings with Fox and ESPN. I was 24. I'm kind of a different demographic. I'm not your stereotypical macho white guy. I see things through a totally different lens. And they loved that.
Tyler Brosious:
Fred Harner was like, "You're an enigma in all the right ways." And I'll never forget, at the time, he looked at me and he was like, "Describe yourself with one word." I'm like, "I'm dynamic. If you need me to put on a war hat, I can do it. If you need me to put on the Barstool hat, you need me to ride the middle, you need me to clap back, be conservative, I get it. As a league, we need to wear different hats." And I was able to really do that.
Tyler Brosious:
It was a four-month sprint of awesome. As I was telling you before we started recording, I really, when talking with my family, thought that was going to... If the league was going to be a forever thing, I could really see myself... I remember I talked with Fred the day we announced we weren't going to have a regular season. I went into his office and I said, "What's going on?" And he was like, "As of now, we all have jobs. We all need to work our butts off because our off season started way earlier." And I said, "I'm going to do everything I can. I want to be the VP of the head of content for our Philadelphia team down the road." And he loved that because he knew that... I don't think short-term.
Brian Bosché:
The long-term. So go-
Tyler Brosious:
Go ahead.
Brian Bosché:
Yes, but going back to kind of switching over to the XFL, new league, competing against the NFL, what were some of the things that got you excited about the potential of the XFL and wanting to be there long-term? You mentioned wanting to get back into football, but the XFL was something unique and you took a different approach. So what excited you about kind of joining after working for the Sun?
Tyler Brosious:
For me, it was like when you walked in, it's a shame because I love the Sun, but they didn't... We were in the basement at Mohegan Sun. There was no windows. So at first, you're like, "Sweet, I have windows at my office."
Brian Bosché:
Yep.
Tyler Brosious:
But you have to decide [inaudible 00:10:47] when I talked to Fred and I talked to Rayelle, there was a big sense that we knew what we wanted to do and how we wanted to execute it. And how I would start a league was exactly how David would start a league and how Rayelle would start a league and how Fred wanted to start a league.
Tyler Brosious:
So when I was talking to Fred, we spent probably an hour and a half on the phone talking about the PLL and how good, even though-
Brian Bosché:
Yeah, it's an amazing launch.
Tyler Brosious:
... that's the way to do it and how you needed card runners and how you wanted... I said, "We need to get on the phone with Mike and Paul Rabil that if you want to start a league, you need the splash between the ages of 18 to 25 and you do that through their phones. And then you can get to the other side of their pockets." And the way they did it with sponsorships, I had... That's always been my baby and when I was at the NLL, that's what I tried to implement.
Tyler Brosious:
Granted, it was one video guy, one graphics guy, so you can only do so much, but we tried to have a card runner, interns, whatever we needed. I said, "We want to run it like we're the PLL and it's championship day." And that was my process at Quinnipiac, it was, "I want to run every Quinnipiac sporting event, from an acrobatics and tumbling meet to the women's basketball team playing against Yukon in the second round at Gamples like it's our Clemson football national championship game. There should be no excuses why. If you want results, you have to put the money in."
Tyler Brosious:
And I've realized through all the budgets and looking at the numbers, we could do it in a really easy way. Also, considering they were paying me six credits a year and not paying me any cash. So like the brain was working for free. So that level of intensity fun and everything was something I really felt at the XFL. And the ability to sit in a room that was completely diverse I think was really exciting to me. Every nationality, gender, orientation, whatever it was, was heard in a boardroom about 20 people that were mostly my age, in between probably 20 to 30, and that was awesome. We had video.
Tyler Brosious:
We used to have these meetings twice a week where Fred would open it up for not the managers, but everybody. And that was so cool to sit and know deep down, "Hey, Jeffrey Pollack and Vince McMahon wants this. How can we execute this?" And just that transparency allowed us all to feel like we were much... I think our content team walked around there with a little bit of a swagger. One, because the results were good, numbers and social and people are writing stories like, "Look what these guys are doing." And two, we all had trusted each other.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
The content web guys were working with the app, the app were working with social. And that was my big thing was how can we find harmony in all that? And let's make sure... We were still a small team, only four or five video editors, three social people, three web people, overseeing not only our accounts but helping with the team accounts on the team level that only had one video, one web, one social person. So my idea was to always make it cohesive and how can we make it all one product? And the ability to constantly talk and trust really brought it to the next level and that's what excited the XFL.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
Oliver Luck was in the coffee room the day I went to go get a water in my interview. Because as you can tell-
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
... I talk a mile a minute. Sam Schwartzstein knew me by name. I can go over... There was a time where we had to make an edit to the rules and you have someone like the head of football ops that would just slide a chair over and you could edit it right there. If you have a question about a rule, you can call someone. The ability that everyone-
Brian Bosché:
It's exciting starting something.
Tyler Brosious:
That's what-
Brian Bosché:
Being part of that core passionate team that's launching something. And that's why a lot of people start start-ups too. Enjoying start-ups is just you get the passion in those type of organizations that you don't get otherwise. A lot of start-ups get this in putting on our marketing hats a little bit.
Brian Bosché:
NFL, number one league in the country, what problem were you kind of solving on the marketing side where, okay, we see this gap, we see this opportunity, what was that problem, or what were you really trying to accomplish with the XFL? What was that goal?
Tyler Brosious:
I think there was three parts. And granted, I will not sit here and act like I was the brains behind it all because I did start late.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
You want to talk about being thrown in the fire, Monday was my first day, Tuesday I was helping update the website on jersey reveals.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
And give you pull back the curtain, we didn't realize at the time with our website, if you named everything the same, if you named a picture number one and you named the other jersey number one, the photos would all flip-flop. So we had... I was 36 hours in on the job living an hour and a half to two hours away, drove in at 8 AM through [crosstalk 00:15:20].
Brian Bosché:
Trying to get the photos to correlate so the right ones-
Tyler Brosious:
I'm like, "What is going on?" And you got all of marketing and their creative directors and everyone going, "We weren't supposed to release Los Angeles until later tonight. What is going on?" And I'm like... And luckily, Tim [Hini 00:15:36] at the time, we just figured it out. And that was our thing.
Tyler Brosious:
When you're starting up, the three things that separated us from the NFL, was we wanted to be able to continue football in the spring. Football is the baby. I remember going to Eagles games. I'll never forget my first Eagles game. I was in my fathers with Mercedes. I was wearing a Dallas Sucks sweatshirt because Philadelphia. And I was so excited to go to my first game I threw up all over myself. I'm not kidding you. Still to this day when I get anxious-
Brian Bosché:
That's passion right there. If your employees aren't throwing up on themselves, do they even care?
Tyler Brosious:
Literally, I kid you not. And we had turned the car around, luckily we weren't too far away from home, threw on another jersey and we left. And that passion, we want to provide that all year round for fans. I don't think there was ever a situation where we were like, "We're going to be better than the NFL," but we wanted to be... We didn't want to also be the minor league of the NFL. And we knew that.
Tyler Brosious:
For us to do that, it was keep prices reasonable that a family of four could go out and have a nice night of football and have some smaller places like Audi Field in DC or focus on filling the lower bowls in these MetLifes and CenturyLink. Then the next one was we were going to bring totally different content than the NFL. And I think the balance was it was a January day and it was, "What do we like?" And I remember, the meeting was supposed to be 30 minutes. Two hours later we walked out of the meeting.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
And it was, "How edgy do we want to be? Where do we want to fall? Do we want to be the Chargers? Do we want to be LSU?" And we said, "No, no, no, we're going to be the XFL." And I just kept being like, "Once we start trying to emulate somebody else, we're not being true to ourselves. We have 20 or 30 of the best minds in this room. Let's figure it out."
Tyler Brosious:
And we landed on being transparent, being fun, dealing with access, whether it be with the refs, the players or whatever, and we were going to be cutting edge. And I think when we look back on week one, I remember texting Bailey and no one could sleep. Saturday happened, we all crashed at like 1 AM. It was 3 AM Monday morning, I had to be back in the office at 10 to get stuff going for week two. And I remember we were all texting like, "That's how we do it. That stunk. That works. We got this." When you invest in young creatives, their minds don't really turn off.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
And I'm not saying it to be a detriment to anybody else, we don't have kids. Some have a dog. Our significant others totally understand that we are fully invested. This is our child. And that's how we all felt with the XFL, even people who had families. I remember texting Fred the first week and I was like, "This is why I joined. I miss the rush."
Tyler Brosious:
There's actually a photo of me from week one or week two and the whole room, the whole our floor where it usually would fill with about 200 employees from Stanford, and it's just... I was the last one. And there was one light, it's on my Instagram somewhere, and it's one light and I'm like, "You can't beat that thrill."
Brian Bosché:
Yep.
Tyler Brosious:
The thrill of just knowing. And it's almost a high. You can't beat it because the thrill knowing you're part of something special is top-notch. And that's how we all felt week one, week two, week three, and everyone will go, "Well, well, the ratings." Yeah, if you, hypothetically, just in layman's terms, this is how I explain it to my mom and my dad, we started at a nine out of 10. The Fox, the ESPNs were going to be okay with a three out of 10. We never got below a five out of 10. Obviously, we had a drop from 10, or a nine out of 10, but we never dropped to below a threshold where ESPN or Fox was upset with us.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
I truly believe, and down to my core, that if it was not for COVID and not for coronavirus, and not for the blatant uncertainty that we don't know when the NFL or the NCAA will play, which kind of predicates everything we're trying to do by offering spring football, that's why we shut down. It was never going to be a product.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
Never going to be about good football. We're recording this the Thursday of the NFL draft. You will see the Kenny Robinsons names today and it will prove the PJ Walker signings, when Cam Phillips signs, it will prove that this worked. This was not a labor of-
Brian Bosché:
Yeah, it worked.
Tyler Brosious:
... a bad [crosstalk 00:19:53].
Brian Bosché:
Especially the marketing worked.
Tyler Brosious:
Everything.
Brian Bosché:
The product was great. There was a lot of hype in Seattle about the Dragons. It's hard to predict the global pandemic that shuts down sports-
Tyler Brosious:
[crosstalk 00:20:01].
Brian Bosché:
... at the worst possible time. You didn't account for it your marketing plans, should've adjusted. No, it's a really sad reality. A lot of sports teams are being affected by that. And too bad because I think the XFL had a ton of potential, was already good on the field, great marketing. And I think you did an incredible with this launch where it's the PLL's a good example of this. Even starting new franchises, new teams within the league. It's a really hard thing to do.
Brian Bosché:
So to dive kind of... Create a BTS, go behind the scenes here a little bit more, pull the curtain back, for you, you worked for the XFL league itself and you were digital content manager. So can you go over a little bit what that specific role means?
Tyler Brosious:
Yeah. It was kind of weird because I was such a hybrid. I was literally a Gemini or however you want to say it. I was just thrown into random situations in a fun way. For me, I was one of the three editor-in-chiefs of the website. That means anything that [inaudible 00:20:55] puts it on one of the eight teams or the league's website, was seen through me or David or Tim Hini. So we had all eyeballs and everything.
Tyler Brosious:
Also, we were in meetings basically like, "How do we showcase our stats?" Like, "What do... " These are things that everyone takes for granted when you go to NFL or NBA and was like, "Wait, what league leaders do we want? Defense? Offense? How do we incorporate?"
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
Most people-
Brian Bosché:
You're right. I hadn't thought about that. Just like the very basics of any sport media.
Tyler Brosious:
Like, "Oh, what does a player profile look like?"
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
"Do we want it to be a bio? Do we want it to be a moving gif?" We have all this stuff from Fox and ESPN. "What does that look like?" I've sat in meetings like that, which is when you talk about it for months, you could never get that experience anywhere else.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
And people were looking at-
Brian Bosché:
You're creating it for the first time with your unique brand and angle on it. Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
And to boot, I'm the youngest person in the room by eight to nine years. And they're like, "What do you want to see?" I'm like, "Does it look good on the phone?"
Brian Bosché:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tyler Brosious:
I love desktop, but I know when I read long forums or stuff like that, I go to my desktop. I am an old soul.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
I know all the buddies I talk to that are gambling at 21, 22, 23, all are doing it through their phone and maybe... The only person I know that gambles through their iPad is my father.
Brian Bosché:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tyler Brosious:
Love him to death.
Brian Bosché:
Or you're watching the game and it's your second screen experience.
Tyler Brosious:
Exactly.
Brian Bosché:
You don't want to have your computer open. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Tyler Brosious:
And now there's a thing, down to the minutia of when we were editing pieces, our player profiles happened on week two and week three, we were a little delayed, we were actually hyperlinking and pasting in the player.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
We were in the weeds while also I was... Rayelle saw me as a giant resource to the team social editors because I was one of their only social media editors that came from a team.
Brian Bosché:
Uh-huh (affirmative).
Tyler Brosious:
And that [inaudible 00:22:45] the idea of like, "Hey, you're a three-person squad over there. You have to fill up the buffet plate." Meaning, if your video editor is shooting a hundred clips a game and uses 58 of them for a post-game wrap or a pregame pumper, the other 42 need to be standalones mixed into a player profile. You sometimes might have to reiterate the wheel. Then through that, we also were using YouTube as our main video hub for the website. So I basically took over YouTube. I did not know a lot about it. I became a [inaudible 00:23:19].
Brian Bosché:
So websites one, then YouTube's the other. So kind of the main video channel.
Tyler Brosious:
Yup. So at the time, we didn't have a media player on the website so we were embedding everything from YouTube.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
And it was like not even knowing we were so fast-paced. I realized after week two or three that whatever the thumbnail they were reaching down here looks fine as a small square. Once you blow it up to a website, it looks like trash.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
So I had to... Finally got Photoshop on my computer and was like, "Maybe thumbnails." Really it was like I was sitting in meetings up-
Brian Bosché:
Editor-in-chief/graphic designer for [crosstalk 00:23:54] thumbnail.
Tyler Brosious:
I was doing anything that needed to be done.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
And the good thing was I was sitting meetings to how to cut highlights for social and how can I take the social highlights and put them in the YouTube and get them up on the site as one-off pieces because some teams are great. They were writing content every day. Some teams weren't. They were just too busy where they couldn't get over to the field. Like LA, their field's an hour away without traffic.
Tyler Brosious:
We've been able to balance and help anyway we could. And for me, that was a social media meeting in the morning, digital content meeting in the afternoon. I was on the Twitch board. We were working in the off season and when, obviously, COVID hit and everything at home, like Friday our league shut down, on Tuesday, we were talking with Twitch about starting a channel and having players and having things like that. So I wanted to get my hands dirty in everything I could because I don't do well with sitting around. There is no one-
Brian Bosché:
It's a very multi-faceted... Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
Yeah.
Brian Bosché:
Kind of the hub for digital across...
Tyler Brosious:
Yeah.
Brian Bosché:
And for your teams too, you mentioned a little bit about kind of how your team is composed, give us an idea of how many people and what roles were on the XFL side, versus who you worked with on each of the teams.
Tyler Brosious:
So, for the XFL, it broke down that Fred Harner would oversee all the digital media. There was a video team with [Stevelin 00:25:13], I forget his last name, but Stevelin would oversee a video team of about five editors from the league. Then there was digital, which was David Albright, who came from ESPN, Tim Hini. Tim and I were hand in hand. He's insane when it comes to SEO and stuff like that.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
Taught me so much in my four months. Then it was social, where it was Rayelle who oversaw another two to three guys. Then we had a photo editor.
Brian Bosché:
Got it.
Tyler Brosious:
So that whole-
Brian Bosché:
That's XFL specific?
Tyler Brosious:
That is all XFL league. Also, would sometimes create stuff for the teams. And then each team had a content director that oversaw a social media person and a video person. Then we would bring in freelancers for games and stuff like that.
Brian Bosché:
Go it.
Tyler Brosious:
So we were, I thought so, a very well-oiled machine where granted, we were at the luxury of being all eight teams were technically owned by the same person. So there were a lot of ways to keep things similar. And we were all-
Brian Bosché:
Keep the brand consistency, help each other out.
Tyler Brosious:
And the brilliant thing was about that, we had Houston verse Dallas. The Houston throw down, or I think it was called Texas throw down. And it was awesome because we were able to all, behind the scenes, talk to the Dallas social media manager and the Houston one. They knew that they were going to be in a fight that week. Like, "Our barbecue's better," and whatever. And fans, behind the curtain, fans don't know that. They think these are guys actually sitting at their desks being mean, but basically, we had it all written out.
Tyler Brosious:
And that really allows you to have... I think that happens a lot more on the other, what I call the big four, the NHL, MLB, NFL, and the NBA, but that really allowed us, because we were all in the same meetings, we were all having the same discussions, all helping each other, the greater goal. And that was something that was really exciting.
Brian Bosché:
And are you guys on the same system? You have the benefit of the same owner obviously, where other leagues don't have that, but when you're at the XFL working with the different teams and you're trying to collaborate with everyone, are you on the same Slack channels? Give me a sense of what's the technology you're using? How do you coordinate?
Tyler Brosious:
That was the one thing that blew me away. I came from Quinnipiac, which was still up and growing, Connecticut Sun Black was still growing. The day when I walked in, and I never heard about Octa or Octive.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
And he was like, "This will get you into everything you need."
Brian Bosché:
Yeah, Octa, yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
Yeah. And it was like Gmail, Docs.
Brian Bosché:
Just one sign on to everything, yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
Slack. And that was awesome. So we had a social media channel. We had a digital content channel. We had everyone in XFL content so that those three from each team and the league. We had marketing.
Brian Bosché:
Are all on the shared Slack channels?
Tyler Brosious:
Yeah, we had all different channels.
Brian Bosché:
That's great.
Tyler Brosious:
For whatever avenue you need to go to so you never felt alone. Even it was like, "Hey guys, Ella Shoe dropped sick video. Check this out." Or, "Hey, check out this freelance guy. One, he does really cool transitions. How the heck do we do that? Or two, do we need him at a game somewhere?"
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
Or I could reach to our data company and say, "Hey, the website on the team side says 94 rushing yards, the league says 90." There was always-
Brian Bosché:
Let's resolve this.
Tyler Brosious:
It was incredible.
Brian Bosché:
So the transparent... It's almost like you're transparent as a brand and you were in the behind-the-scenes how you worked. Bringing everyone that the same Slack organization, having shared channels. Did that accelerate things? Did you feel that compared to your previous roles?
Tyler Brosious:
Oh, yeah. We used really good scheduling techniques and stuff at the Black Wolves and the Sun. There wasn't really any. It was a one-man band and me kind of just making sure everything went smoothly at Quinnipiac.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
But to come in and you have an IT department. We had an IT guy who was in charge of making sure stuff ran smoothly on game day from just Stanford. And then we shipped... I don't want to speak to it, but I think every single stadium whoever was hosting, had IT. So the thought process down to we all worked off something called wild mocha for cutting. And we had live view cameras at each stadium. And Becky... I forget Becky's last name, but she sat in a room. It had 20 different screens. It looked like a control room.
Brian Bosché:
Yep.
Tyler Brosious:
We built one out in Stanford. And that all ran through one thing. And then she would ingest all of the data from that week. So teams could access games and access files.
Brian Bosché:
Yep.
Tyler Brosious:
The brilliance behind the infrastructure is what after a week or two I said, "This will work." People who want to think this is flying by the seat of your pants, this was the most thought out, well-produced, everything was accounted for down to the off season. When we started we never knew what would happen in a month. It was like, "Okay, who's doing this? What do we need from the teams?" Teams were working on video yearbooks up until Friday.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
The infamous bad Good Friday as I like to joke about it now. So we had a plan in place where we knew what was going to come from team level, we knew what was going to come from the legal level and how we could collaborate. And those experiences of four months, I think puts me at another advantage.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah. You can see that being implemented that effectively.
Tyler Brosious:
It was brilliant. And to see what works, what didn't, I now... I always joke, my dad calls me that Friday, and my dad is very Xs and Os. He grew to be... He was working on a printing press for a long time, started his own business. My mom was a barber and opened up her own barbershop once we flew the coop for college. I come from two entrepreneurs. My mom is more like, "Oh, you'll be all right." My dad's like, "What's the plan?"
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
And I'm like, "Dad, one, relax. Two, I'm 24, I've been in this industry for eight to nine years studying on it." And that's what you thought at XFL, everyone was going home and still working. Not that we were asked to. There was never a better infrastructure than the XFL that believed in work from home.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
Believing. Who would ever think in the middle of the season, my digital manager said, "There's no point in you burning out. Take Fridays off. If we need you to come in, we'll let you know." Thursdays I worked from home. That never has happened to me before, especially in the college and the other ranks. So the infrastructure there was people went home, they were reading, whether it was front office sports. We were all-
Brian Bosché:
Passionate about it.
Tyler Brosious:
We were very passionate about it. And I said to my dad, "I just worked from the ground up four months to help launch a football league that was highly successful if there wasn't for a global pandemic."
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
"I'm going to be all right. I'm frustrated because... " I was fine on Friday. I cried on Saturday because everyone I worked with reminded me so much of myself, whether it was 30 years in the future, 20 years in the future, or two years younger than me. We were hungry dogs and as I love to quote Jason Kelsey and the Eagles parade of, what is that, 27, to like a hundred dogs run faster. And that's how we all felt. We were all coming from a league that was undervaluing content or a place that was undervaluing content, or we got laid off somewhere with tons of experience. We were all like, "No, we're going to do this and do it big."
Brian Bosché:
So you learned the best practices, you bring together all those people with all that experience. I see that all the time. The infrastructure is a competitive advantage. If you are competing against the NFL, you're competing against the big four leagues, and you're like, "Okay, our brand has to be transparent. We have to be able to move quickly, give insights into the players, provide this unique edgy access." You have to put in the infrastructure on the technology side to enable that.
Brian Bosché:
And I love... I definitely see it as a best practice where you're all on the same Slack channel together, if you can afford it. If you can have that level of transparency between-
Tyler Brosious:
Yeah, and it's funny because it was used too and not forced. It was just used. I was part of a WNBA Slack channel at the Sun. It would be like, "Oh, don't forget we have a meeting," or like a quick question about all-star.
Brian Bosché:
But not true collaboration. Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
This was used fully for... Granted, I get it, everyone's a little close to the vest because maybe the separate owners. I get that.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
But that idea [crosstalk 00:33:15].
Brian Bosché:
But if you can, it's an advantage. That's your advantage you have. And if you need to move quickly, like if there's a great soundbite on the field and you want to immediately put it on social, if you have different systems that you're working across, if things aren't consolidated, if it takes forever for it to get on the live feed or to get into the hands of the league, it's just not going to happen. Then the moment's over and you lost it.
Tyler Brosious:
Yeah, and-
Brian Bosché:
Where that was your unique advantage.
Tyler Brosious:
And my big thing was, and I was adamant about it, we went live view for clips. So we could shoot it back to wild mocha, clip it. So like someone's literally standing in a camera in Seattle, live, however this works, through the internet, we're getting a live view. We can gif it, clip it, push on social. It just didn't look that clean still.
Tyler Brosious:
So we were still planning for 2021 top implement card runners and shoot with DSLRs and get to that close as we thought we could get there with the live views. It's close to that PLL, high-crisp level. I still knew we needed to get there. And as a 24-year-old, who obviously never is afraid to speak up in a meeting is like, "No, this great. We're spending a lot of money on it, but we need to do something else. Even if we hire one freelancer and one runner."
Tyler Brosious:
And that was the thing that I was really excited about where it's like no one really looked at me and poo-pooed my ideas. It was like, "Okay, that makes sense. Can you look into that? How much would freelancers cost?" And I think the cohesiveness showed in the one game where we had pretty bad referee mistake.
Tyler Brosious:
Guy goes down on a knee, should've been two seconds left, first and 10 inside the 20. It was a one-score game. Touchdown he could have tied. Seattle could have tied the game up. And we all stood up in the middle of Stanford and we were like, "WE need an answer here. We need to be transparent. This is where we can be different than the NFL." And that was the first time, I think that was week three or four where we were getting slammed on social. [inaudible 00:35:08].
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
People were rate this is a second class league. And wouldn't you know, in about 30 to 40 minutes we had a statement from PR, the referee was reassigned. I don't really know what happened to him. He was sent to the XFL [inaudible 00:35:23] log. And we had it up on social-
Brian Bosché:
You reacted quickly though.
Tyler Brosious:
... graphic. [crosstalk 00:35:28].
Brian Bosché:
Yeah, the transparency, yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
And people were like... It turned out to be one of our top five posts ever. And people were like, "This is what sets you apart." And we all knew it. It wasn't like, "Oh, this will make us look better." It was like, "This is what we've stood on. This is what we talked about in December and January. We need to act on it right now."
Tyler Brosious:
You can't be all access and then go hiding when things go south. And that was what I still think to this day, the way we all got up, we acted, it was up on the website pretty quickly and people really gave us credit for that.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah, that's amazing. And the tech stack's one element of it, but then the processes seem like they were a huge advantage as well, where you can use Slack, you can have all these the infrastructure in place, but like you said, if people aren't using, if there is no structure behind it, it doesn't work.
Brian Bosché:
So it sounds like you're able to turn things so fast at the XFL. You got the statement out day of. What were your processes like for kind of the feedback and approval process? So if we take an example of maybe there's an audio clip from a game, what was your approval level like the marketing team of getting that published? What kind of leeway did you have, freedom? Give me a sense of that approval process.
Tyler Brosious:
The good news is that Fred Harner and even Jefferey and everyone above, knew the importance of content and knew the importance of content in a speed manner. We were really sound on setting up plans before the week and we lived by those. It was kind of like the 10 commandments of the XFL where you knew we were going to be fast and loose. We weren't going to drop F-bombs. Granted, there was one picked up, we could bleep it, whatever.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
But we just knew that there were certain parameters. And the big thing was setting those goalposts and living in between them. That was just the way it was going to be and we were okay with that. And as things popped up, I think the only tweet that really got pulled from the year, and I mean, we did memes, we did everything, anything possible.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah. You guys were very... Yeah, you did a lot of creative, edgy things that I haven't seen a lot [crosstalk 00:37:18].
Tyler Brosious:
The only one that got us, it was a six-nine game and 420 left. And that was the first time... I got called over and Fred's like, "Can you explain this to me?" And Rayelle was out on location, I was like, "Yeah, it's a 69 reference doubled down by a 420 weed warning reference."
Brian Bosché:
With the 420 reference.
Tyler Brosious:
So I think the double down was probably it, but we flew... Not that we... I don't want anyone ever thinking that it was a bunch of 20-year-olds running fast and loose. We had a plan, we were targeting younger audiences. It was mix of really transparent league, Barstool fun, different. And it showed. And I think the idea it was a lot that came to fruition those Tuesdays Thursday meetings where we knew exactly what we were going for and we weren't afraid to pivot.
Tyler Brosious:
We evolved halfway through the season that highlight videos weren't doing... Like pumpers for trying to rev up a non-rival. Houston and Dallas did it from the very beginning. That was authentic. But trying to hype up a matchup between Dallas and New York, not needed.
Brian Bosché:
Didn't [crosstalk 00:38:22].
Tyler Brosious:
We don't need a video out of there, but we could have a video out of there focus on Jordan [Teyamu's 00:38:26] crazy first few weeks. We could have... And granted, I think all the fashion for the first few weeks... We were able to pivot and never afraid to kind of say, "No, no, no. That's the way we've always done it." And that was the power of kind of being a start-up.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
I think a lot of these teams, a lot of leagues, it's, "Well, that's how we always have done it." It's like, "Okay, [inaudible 00:38:44]."
Brian Bosché:
[crosstalk 00:38:45].
Tyler Brosious:
But the way you did it in 2014 and the way you're doing it in 2020, I don't think they should be parallel.
Brian Bosché:
Yep. So you iterate, you just were able to iterate a lot of faster, where the lesson I'm hearing here that a lot of marketing creative teams can take is you set the guidelines, you set the baseline, you all get on the same page of what's on-brand and what you're trying to go for, for the weekend, for the campaign, for whatever project you're doing. You execute on it, you don't have as many touchpoints throughout.
Tyler Brosious:
Yeah.
Brian Bosché:
So they gave you the freedom to post things and trusted you. So there's got to be a lot of trust there. Then at the end of that, you kind of do a recap and you say, "Okay, what did we do well? What landed? What didn't?" So you were constantly setting the baseline, trusting employees to execute on it and they need to recap and kind of figure out what worked, what didn't, and how to make it better the next time.
Tyler Brosious:
Exactly.
Brian Bosché:
Which seems like a great learning sequence to go through.
Tyler Brosious:
And that's the power of when you take the leash off 20 to 25-year-olds that you're entrusting power.
Brian Bosché:
Or anyone.
Tyler Brosious:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brian Bosché:
Any age group can do it.
Tyler Brosious:
Yeah, but-
Brian Bosché:
But yeah, you're right.
Tyler Brosious:
They went and hired younger and they saw the rewards of it. I remember at Quinnipiac and maybe in games, I can kind of do whatever, but it was such a process. I remember at the Sun and Black Wolves when I posting stuff, it would be okay if was in-game. But if there was a big campaign that we were kicking off a big video, approval of copy and stuff like that. That still happened at the XFL to a very minimal degree. It was like promo'ed, anything that really had to do with marketing as compared to content. So promos for tickets, promos for merch. That stuff had a more ebb and flow of, "Okay, this is what we're going to say for the Dragons or Dallas."
Tyler Brosious:
When it came to content, there was a ton of trust in the website people, the at people, which are basically us and the website, and the social people to know what was best, what was going to work come game day, and we execute it.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah. So give me a quick pitch on... Launching a league, I know there's so much that goes into it. It's incredibly complex and I don't want to go for a two-hour podcast, but what's the high-level of... When you're thinking about launching this league, I love the team reveals, the jersey reveals, going through that. What were the big milestones you wanted to hit as you were thinking about this launch of the league?
Tyler Brosious:
For us, it was like we really wanted to capitalize. I started right after football, revealing the brand new football that took a year or two, Sam Schwartz, everyone. Everyone who was involved really looked at that, the jersey reveals, themes were before and then locations before that. That was way before my time.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
But, then it was... There was the draft, there was... Any content that was big-name players coming out like Landry Jones, the PJ Walkers, the Cardale Jones, leaning into that because we were still building [crosstalk 00:41:35].
Brian Bosché:
The star power. Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
And then once it was week one, it was like here's the football. We're done with all this, we're done with the jazz, the rules. We want to showcase the new rules that set us apart from the NFL, the access that set us apart from the NFL and other leagues. And then just our voice and the [crosstalk 00:41:53].
Brian Bosché:
[crosstalk 00:41:53], yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
So that was-
Brian Bosché:
So covering the actual play while also emphasizing what you're best at.
Tyler Brosious:
Yep.
Brian Bosché:
And what separated you.
Tyler Brosious:
Yeah.
Brian Bosché:
And then each week was a new goalpost that maybe players excelling or different games or different controversies, or whatever you wanted hype up. You had their jersey reveals build up the hype, go through the draft, and then launch into the actual season.
Tyler Brosious:
Yeah. So for us, it was like all the football. The great thing, once again, having one owner, we spent our entire "preseason" and training camp all of XFL Stanford basically moved down to Houston. So everyone and every single one of the eight teams also lived in Houston. So all the practices... Teams were able to practice with each other, social media, we were able to have seminars and everything for a month in Houston.
Tyler Brosious:
Everyone was in Houston working together. It was brilliant. So it allowed for live practices and scrimmages and we showed up for the first day preseason in scrimmages. We didn't know the kickoffs were going to be absolutely amazing when XFL. We really didn't know how coaches were going to... If they were going to show what they acts they were going to do and [crosstalk 00:43:02]-
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
... core passes. So we all learned from the ground level. We were pumping in the helmet microphones from the quarterbacks around the PA.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
Seeing how quickly is it they're going to drop F-bombs.
Brian Bosché:
So you were learning. It was like the little proof of concept that you all got to experience together.
Tyler Brosious:
Yeah. And everyone's there with the same goal, whether you're a Viper player or a Guardians assistant equipment manager, we wanted this league to succeed. And when you have a league with employees probably north of 500 to 1000, you have to have that mindset because one bad apple that's looking at something else, really sets things in motion.
Brian Bosché:
[crosstalk 00:43:38].
Tyler Brosious:
And that was the crazy thing, whoever you would come in contact with... We shared a hotel with the BattleHawks, Marquette King and I would take the elevator up together sometimes. And we'd be joking. He'd be like, "What do you do?" I'm like, "I work on the website." He's like, "Oh my God, that's so cool." I'm like, "I know what you do. You're the punter. You used to play for the Raiders."
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
When you have all this camaraderie and all this fun throughout the league, it makes for something special. And it was just such a different proof of concept and it really worked.
Brian Bosché:
What were some of the favorite things that you guys actually produced? What are you proudest of?
Tyler Brosious:
It was funny because after the season ended is some of my proudest work. I thought out "drip" piece about all the guys coming in with their different outfits and [crosstalk 00:44:17].
Brian Bosché:
I saw that on the website. That was amazing.
Tyler Brosious:
Different look. Different, fun, look. I thought out endgame, the way we're able to produce on social, credit to our social team led by Rayelle, so good, so crisp. And he was lucky he came from the Jets. He saw what happens when you maybe have the shackles a little bit more on content. And he... Once you get the shackles off... Like Fox, we had meetings, tons of meetings. Fox and ESPN, there's only so much of highlighting rolls. But if you're promo'ing their tune-in and you're doing it right, no one comes calling. And we were.
Tyler Brosious:
I remember we sat in meetings every Tuesday and Thursday and it would be like... Len Mead who was in charge of Fox and ESPN, our relationships there, was like, "Guys, just remember 30 seconds." And we blew it out of the water every week, but we were doing so well and promo'ing it the right way and doing it the right way, no one was really upset and no one really came to slap down on our wrists a little bit. And I think that, the way we were able to really make everything so smooth on game day and provide our viewer a second lens, a second look at what they were seeing rather than just the television feed down to your phone was next level.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah, exactly.
Tyler Brosious:
And that's what you want in 2020. If they're not putting their butts in the seats, which we were, their TV and their second viewer, whether it's on an iPad or a phone, needs to be second top-level. And it was throughout, whether it was-
Brian Bosché:
Talk about-
Tyler Brosious:
Go ahead.
Brian Bosché:
Talk about the outcomes. From the social media side, I've seen the accounts grew like crazy. So from the digital content perspective, what were the outcomes of doing this different way?
Tyler Brosious:
We were doing... I have to pull it up, but I think we were close... We did almost 1.5 million in uniques on the website the first week. And by the end of it, we were at 5.5 total. And that's what we're talking about. It never really dipped to people to go, "Okay."
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
There was never a nervousness about 2021, 2022 in the office. We knew we were crushing.
Brian Bosché:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tyler Brosious:
And everything on social like engagement, if teams were supposed to be in that sweet spot of like a one, two, we were doing 10.5, 5.8. We were doing astronomical numbers like engagement per follower. It was something that was almost absurd. Very fun. And luckily, we had a very smart analytical team. So we knew what was performing and what wasn't. We tagged everything through the social backend. When you, once again, you happen to have an analytical team that's on the same Slack and they're incorporating their ideas and what they see.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah, easy collaboration.
Tyler Brosious:
I mean, I did, I think it was-
Brian Bosché:
So you're adjusting in real-time. You see what's effective, you can immediately pivot to that, or keep doubling down on that because everyone's so coordinated together.
Tyler Brosious:
And with that, we were... Exactly, and we were realizing that social, organic content was doing much better put behind paid, instead of like, "To get $25, lower bowl."
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
And when you have something that has a web team, a social team, a video team, and an analytical team, all together to make what I call really nice stew, it's beautiful.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
You need the carrots, you need the stock, you need a nice piece of meat. And then the analytical department was the nice pot that kept it moving and boiling for four hours, five hours to really render all that and they made the juice, they made it all flow. They knew what worked and what didn't, and it's what blew us out of the... It really what took us to, okay, this is good, to, wow, leagues are noticing, teams are noticing.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
It's a crazy thing.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah, and that's the back bun behind it. We can talk all day about well, we did this really creative thing. We loved it. But if there's no analytics behind it, if you're not actually able to get that engagement or put butts in seats, which tickets are a huge goal for every sports team and league. And you have to have that backbone to measure that or you're just throwing content out there and have no idea what you're doing.
Tyler Brosious:
And that was, I remember at Quinnipiac, I had to kept justifying how my importance was.
Brian Bosché:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Is the analytics as weak?
Tyler Brosious:
No, no.
Brian Bosché:
You didn't the backbone there?
Tyler Brosious:
That's when I was like, "Okay, I am 20 and I'm going to become an analytic fiend." And to show that-
Brian Bosché:
Yep, you got to prove it.
Tyler Brosious:
And show that the women's tennis assisting coach posting a blurry photo stinks and me getting paid $30 to come to her game to take high-res photos and tag players is what they need. I'm not-
Brian Bosché:
And you get the ROI.
Tyler Brosious:
Exactly.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah.
Tyler Brosious:
And so when I went to the Sun and Black Wolves, I was not getting paid what I wanted to get paid. And I wanted to showcase like, "This is what comes with me." And it was granted, I will never take away that... Are too much of the finals for the first time since '04. That plays a crucial role, but if you do not... If they like the spark, and you can't run with it, it's not worth it. And we did the best season in 2019. The Black Wolves were up in every category besides one category between the Sun and the Black Wolves, almost 15. We were in the green in every single one, like followers, engagement.
Tyler Brosious:
Engagement was doing crazy things we saw it. Down to the point where I was planning everything out. I'm an anxious... I have anxiety, I like to plan. I have sticky notes everywhere above my desk right now. That's just how... Anything from reminders from Alexa to my phone. That's how I work. Everything needs to be labeled for me.
Tyler Brosious:
So luckily, with our marketing director, Maura Doyle at the Sun, we built something called Big Bertha. And it was this Excel spreadsheet that showed... I could type in our whole plan for two weeks on social and everything was labeled. Tickets, merch, game experience.
Brian Bosché:
Yep.
Tyler Brosious:
So I emailed my VP and said, "Listen, we're doing 20% over the next two weeks of tickets. Do you want more? Do you want less? Here's merch. Do you want more? You want less?" It was such a popular [crosstalk 00:50:03].
Brian Bosché:
And you could actually tie it together.
Tyler Brosious:
And everything was so lovely that the day I accepted the job at the XFL over the phone, I was presenting at the WNBA Big Bertha. And teams were like [inaudible 00:50:15].
Brian Bosché:
What is this? We need this.
Tyler Brosious:
VPs were talking to me and CEOs at the company were like, "I don't know if you ever want to leave the Sun, but we'll hire you on the spot." Like, [crosstalk 00:50:23]. I was like, "This is not all me." But it takes someone to put in the pain-in-the-butt effort on Thursday afternoon, four or five hours to write that out, present it on Friday, and then put it in Hootsuite tweet deck and Facebook media manager on Monday morning.
Tyler Brosious:
My thing was always, I'm okay with that. But then I go, "You saw the plan on Friday. If you didn't like it, we could have changed it." Granted, there's always little ebbs and flows, you got to make a move. But that's when I sat down with Fred my first couple times at the XFL. I said, "What's our analytic department like? Let's make... " And he told me everything. Here's the people that's going to work on web.
Tyler Brosious:
I actually got onboarded with one of the analytic people December first, my first day. And you could just tell they were geniuses. They knew everything. And then you had marketing, which so many times you see marketing try to flow into content and try to bleed in, they knew their spot. They knew they were going to handle emails. They knew they had some website banners, graphics, whatever. They would try to keep on sometimes contained in a look and a feel, which I get it, that's their job, but we let content do their thing.
Tyler Brosious:
And when you have everything kind of dancing, it's funny because I always remember when I used to watch Dancing With The Stars as a kid... Now, this is a reference. Stay with me. And you'd see the group dance and everyone knew where everybody else was and they never tripped up on each other.
Brian Bosché:
Yep.
Tyler Brosious:
And it'd kind of like an offensive line. If you go back left foot and they go back right foot and you trip over the guy, you're screwed. But everyone in the XFL knew where they were shifting, where they were moving and it all comes back to that one central hub between the eight teams and the mothership we called it at Stanford, and everyone's there to help each other out.
Brian Bosché:
That's a pretty amazing that you got there so quickly. That kind of just shows the potential. And that's enough of a parting shot itself, but as we wrap up here, which thank you so much for your [crosstalk 00:52:09]-
Tyler Brosious:
No.
Brian Bosché:
... overview of the [crosstalk 00:52:09].
Tyler Brosious:
Thank you for letting me ramble. Did I ramble?
Brian Bosché:
No, you did great.
Tyler Brosious:
Cool.
Brian Bosché:
Not a lot of people understand what goes on to actually get something like that off the ground and how many people and how many processes need to be put in place. And it's pretty incredible that you were able to put that together so quickly. But any parting shots for this audience?
Tyler Brosious:
I leave with this: And I am 24, I have been in this business for eight to nine years and this is my shameless plug. There is nothing I love more than working in sports digital website social media. If you want someone to come in, master a content plan, live tweet their face-off, can write a feature, can write a game recap, can write a preview. I just did it for the XFL. If you want someone to come in, live and breathe your team, your sport, and want to put grassroots down... I cannot stress to you, I want to find a forever team, a forever league. I've moved one too many times for a young kid my age. I want to get a dog.
Brian Bosché:
Well, you're in sports, Tyler. You got to get used to it.
Tyler Brosious:
I know. And I want to travel the globe with a team and just kick some A-S... Can I curse on this podcast?
Brian Bosché:
Sure, why not?
Tyler Brosious:
And kick some ass on content. That's what I'm here for. I come from two entrepreneurs and that's what I'm here for. So my parting shot is take risks on young creators. If it's not me and content planning, maybe take in the consideration the 18-year-old freelance graphic designer like we did.
Brian Bosché:
I love that.
Tyler Brosious:
We hired an 18-year-old graphic designer. He slid in my DMs and by Monday he was making our matchup for week two graphics. Next level. And if you don't realize, if you put the control, sometimes, not a lot, you put a little control in an 18 to 24-year-old's hand, that's the people that are going to come look at your product. And then you have forever fans who bring their kids, their parents. You start there. That's the next level. So take a chance on a young creative, and you never know, 30 years down the road, it might be the best decision you ever made.
Brian Bosché:
I love that. Yeah, and it sounds like XFL was able to do that. Unlike a lot of companies that I talk to where they put in the guidelines, the put in the base and then they trust the creatives to execute, which is a great parting shot. Thanks, Tyler. I appreciate you coming on and best of luck with everything.
Tyler Brosious:
Thanks, brother.
Brian Bosché:
Yeah, thanks. Bye.
