With its millennial-driven sports content that lives across more than 300 YouTube channels, Whistle Sports is a digital sports media company with a large online audience in the era of cable cutters. Today, this digital presence has attracted an impressive Series C funding round from TEGNA Inc., NBC Sports Ventures, Sky and Emil Capital.
Whistle’s channels combine to group 400 digital and social sports personalities to create content that is geared for cross-platform sharing to their aggregate audience of 170 million social followers.
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According to the press release announcing the news today, “Whistle Sports has activated and inspired a new generation of sports fans and followers. Our strength in distribution coupled with their innovative content, will create numerous opportunities for both companies to grow across platforms,” said Gracia Martore, President and CEO of TEGNA, Inc. “This investment and strategic partnership will not only enable both of our companies to reach valuable new audiences, it will also combine our respective expertise to create more innovative content and advertising solutions.”
Additionally, this is a strategic play for NBC Sports Group as they try to position themselves to keep up with the global digital presence that is taking over sports.
“Whistle Sports has successfully captured the imaginations, attention and engagement of millennial sports fans, and consistently delivers compelling content and options to brands and agencies eager to connect with that critical and growing demographic,” said Rick Cordella, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Digital Media, NBC Sports Group. “Whistle Sports has proven to be a reliable source of original and creative content, and their data-driven approach to developing new audience insights sets them up for an even stronger future.”
As Whistle has been growing they have had success recently with executing advertising campaigns across their digital platforms for a litany of brands, including athletic apparel, movie studios, auto companies, and more. Digital ad campaigns, whether it is native or commercial content integration can be extremely valuable to advertisers who want to reach Whistles’ strong hold on millennial viewers. The key will of course be to continue to create genuine sponsored content as this new round of funding will further spur this strategy for Whistle.
Whistle CEO, John West is rightfully bullish on the company’s growth.
“We launched the company with the belief that young millennial fans were looking for new ways to engage with sports and built a team and community committed to serving them on the places and platforms where they were spending more of their time. I’m so proud of the incredible work they’ve done to deliver consistent growth in both audience and revenue. “We are thrilled by the enthusiasm, confirmation and commitment from these exceptional companies and their strong support for our continued growth.”