Digital sports media company Overtime, which has built a community of millions of young sports fans with social clips and original content, is doubling its sales staff and has added its first chief revenue officer, Rich Calacci.
Calacci was previously the CRO at Pluto TV, with earlier stops at Turner Sports, Bleacher Report and CBS. “The challenge for Overtime, simply stated, was [that] the awareness for brands who should be doing business with Overtime was, in my opinion, lower than it should be,” Calacci said.
Calacci specifically mentioned automakers as a segment he feels should be interested in targeting Overtime’s young demographic. “The goal is always to double your revenue year-over-year,” Calacci said. “To me, that’s a fair expectation.” With an existing sales staff of around 10, Overtime has already increased its brand outreach, growing its advertiser base by 50 percent in 2020 compared to this time last year.
Early in the pandemic, the company laid off more than 20% of its staff as the result of “strategic moves in light of the macro environmental change,” CEO Dan Porter said at the time.
Since then, Overtime has found new ways to engage with its fanbase. The brand produced a series of at-home workout videos for Facebook Watch over the summer, and later this fall will host an online business conference with Kevin Durant’s 35 Ventures aimed at young professionals. The Young CEO Experience Conference is something that could turn into a live event down the line, Overtime president Zack Weiner said.
“I think we were hot coming into COVID, and it caused a little recalibration and reflection,” Weiner said, “and I feel really fortunate that since the beginning of COVID, I feel like we’ve really been able to continue to innovate.” Riding this year’s TikTok boom, @Overtime has doubled its followers since February. It now has more than 13 million, beating the NBA and ESPN.
Weiner said that, much like Overtime, the company’s advertisers slowed down early this spring but since June have been looking for new opportunities again. “The more people are open to change, the better that is for us,” he said.
