055 Austin Kruger on Building Sidelinr Sports with 3.5M Views in 90 Days

Welcome back to the SBL podcast. Today's guest is Austin Krueger. Thanks for coming on the show, Austin. Appreciate y'all having me, Justin. Great to be here, man. Sideliners, a new platform that's redefining how fans experience sports media. Austin, he saw the frustration fans had with clip-bait headlines, repetitive narratives, and the talk-it-you formats that a lot of podcasts and broadcasts have as well. And he built sideliners to put fans from the newsbleeds into the sidelines, where through the flagship podcast, which is called talk, chalk, talk, social, and a wave of fans' driven content. Sideliners are already making noise with interactive debates, gamified segments, and authentic conversations that gives fans a real seat at the table. So with that said, Austin, we'd love to hear more about the origin story, your background, and how you ultimately ended up here. Yeah, man. I've been a die-hard sports fan my entire life. And I think for the longest time, I've had this like itch, this voice in my head saying, you gotta get in sports, you gotta find a way into sports, you gotta work in sports, and you gotta make your own thing. I've always had that itch and that drive, and that creative something. And through doing sports writing for a couple of years, writing about the packers at different media outlets, like cheesehead TV or on fan-sided, it was really a way for me to test, like my hypothesis is like, what if I just take what fans are talking about? Good or bad, critical or gung-ho, and just write about it and see if I can drive more engagement, more views, more conversation, because it's just topical and meaningful to the fans. And so that's how I kind of tailored what I was writing, to tell a story around it. And that was something that stood out to me as like seeing how many comments and engagements it was getting, 'cause you know, I was also around outlets where it's just a lot of stuff getting thrown at you that you just kind of weed through, it's empty calorie, clip 80, and there's never my thing. And then I think accidentally the timing worked out to where, when I started building silent, I just started building something. I started making the website, I started throwing together a business plan, I didn't really have much of an idea where I was going. I just wanted to like see what was gonna spill out of my head. And as it kept going, I knew ultimately, I need to find like a niche, a home where I can live and actually do something that's gonna be slightly different, not be the next bar stool rip off, not be the next whatever it is, 'cause everything, we all know, there's a million and a half podcasts and a million and a half sports podcasts. So what was I gonna do that's different? So I spent a ton of time listening to, I can't even tell you how many podcasts and how many sports podcasts and how many sports shows, I just tapped into and see what was going on. The one thing I found was consistently missing, no matter who says we are the platform of the fans, is well, I don't see the fans in your content. I see like your maybe tailoring stuff to your fans. Great, and I see that maybe you're talking to them in the comments, great, I don't see the fans in your content. What also really is, is like radio, is that legacy platform of radio where fans are always on there. They know that's where they can go rant about their favorite teams. So for me, I was like, radio's kind of the biggest thing, but it's more legacy, it's not as, you know, into the digital age as other things are. So that's where I kind of settled, fan involvement being, that's where our nation's gonna be. And we do have a podcast where, you know, that's kind of the biggest thing. But that was kind of the journey to get here. It was weird, it was kind of just making stuff up. And then eventually, got to the point of like, all right, I think where sports media is at a national level, you did one search online, go to Twitter and type in national media or sports media. And it's not even trying to find negative comments. You just, all there is is negative comments about the commentary, about what is being talked about, how politicized everything is. He's like, I just want sports. I just want that old school sports center where they're just showing highlights and they're just like, yapping, like fans. Whatever this is now is like, accidently, I accidentally started making sideline or time where people were itching for something new or bar stool is huge. There's a million and a half bar stool rip offs, not, I don't know why I keep using a million and a half, but and so for me, I don't want it to be that. I want it to be something where it's like, all right, we're gonna say we're gonna be a fan of both platform by actually doing it and being a national sports show that has fans from every fan base across NFL football, any NFL baseball basketball college, have their fans come on and you do the sports coverage. We're not gonna sit up here and act like we know about Tulane or we know about Oklahoma or we know about the bangles but I'm a Packers fan and all of that stuff. And so getting that authentic passionate, real voice of a fan on our as a sports coverage, you never know what you're gonna get. That's the best part. It's always gonna be different every time as can be authentic and real. And for me, I was like, let's lean into that 'cause no one's leaning all the way into that model to the fullest extent and that's what I wanted sideline or to really be. - Yeah, it's really an interesting model Austin and the coolest thing that I took away from that is just what he said there, the authenticity that you bring with a table that's not necessarily visible anywhere else and I love the passion around things and I know off air, when we first met, we talked about you being a Packers fan. I was actually at Lambo for Eagles Packers game pretty recently so. - Oh no. (laughing) - You're an Eagles guy, oh no. - Yeah, yeah, I'm really guy so. - Not good. - Yeah, you kind of answered the first question here which was what was like the aha moment for you? - Going one step further there. As we said, signliner promises that fan coverage more than any other content provider out there. So can you talk more about what that actually looks like in practice and you're different than those traditional outlets like a bar-stool sports? - Yeah, and yeah, there's nothing wrong with the bar-stool sports. They're amazing and successful for a reason and so are a ton of other platforms that I look up to and again, I wouldn't be sitting here if it wasn't for the conversations with the folks who have been there, done that and could help me build a strong foundation to signliner because while we're in the same space, it's like we're not exactly stepping on each other's toes and so I appreciate all the advice and mentorship. I've been able to get along away from people at some pretty major spots. So I have another look respect for the guys in the game doing it already, guys and girls. But in practice, I think the biggest thing for me is when we're putting out content is there's still gonna be stuff for now where it's like it is talk at you. We're trying to build an audience, we're trying to get our voices out there and build familiarity around our content around our personalities. Ultimately with the goal being, we want every one of our podcasts to have fans on it. Do we get a Discord channel where we just have a room of waiting people who can come on, jump on, we bring them on and we just start going, we just rip it off the rift, talking to fans. Ultimately that's something we wanna get so every podcast we put out, it's not me and my co-host talking. It's me, my co-host and a slew of different fans. That's what we're trying to go. At least with our digital media. So then when we're putting our clips out there, our goal is to have our most memorable moments, our most memorable content and our general culture be around that fan experience of like, hey, we're not trying to change sports media. We're just trying to evolve and elevate fan culture by actually letting the fans have the voice, not just sitting on the sidelines with in the comment section, right? That seems to be where it ends. Sometimes you get a comment back, sometimes you get an acknowledgement. So that's I think where we're gonna differentiate is like, I'm not trying to bring fans in to ultimately become personalities for the brand. Like, you know, again, I just, barstrels and easy example, those are all sports fans. So you can very easily be like, well, isn't barstrels. So then that's like, well, they find sports fans who also like just genuine creators and wanna create and wanna do that for a living. We're just looking for fans to come on, almost do like a little bit of radio mix with a little bit of like that barstrels. Kind of find like an in between happy medium there. But so ultimately our goal is like, I want people to be able to land on our Twitter page on our TikTok, our YouTube, our Instagram and be like instantly be able to tell like, everything on here is like fan. I see fans at every turn. Maybe it's a fan, like a collage of like fan tweets that we're reacting to or it's a couple of fans segments from the podcast. That's what it's gonna look like. And you know, it's a little difficult to do that off the jump when you're just trying to get fans to find you in the first place. So it's been a little bit less of that. But I think the biggest thing for us that I'm very happy about is we've turned every one of our shows that goes out on Friday, we feature a fan. So ever since we started three months ago, we've had fans on every single Friday episode. Shoot, we started out our first month, we had a fan on every single episode. So we're really living and dying by that model. 'Cause I said, that's where we're gonna lean all the way in. That's how we're gonna be different to the extent that we wanna keep growing that. And like I said, you know, every episode will just be less and less of me and my co-host talking more and more of fans talking. That's where we're trying to, you know, start shifting the scale a little bit as we continue to grow to lean into the model and the vision. - Yeah, yeah, I love it. It's like sports talk radio essentially, but blended in with the podcast. And it's just a unique spin on it, at least the way I see it. And correct me out. - Yeah, I mean, yeah, and it's a full spectrum. Like the podcast is the main driver for it. As we grow, as we, you know, have some of money to spend and can get out there, we really wanna start executing on bigger things in person will be massive for our opportunity to grow. But we have the full, it's a full sweet media brand. We have the website, we have a bunch of writers, we have the full editorial team taking care of stuff where, you know, we're trying to be a little bit different on the editorial side as well where, you know, we do have, I think really good writers, we have really good guidelines and our guidelines that are around, around like, hey, it's again, back to what I was doing as a packer writer, pack into the pulse of your fan base. I'm asking my writers out to jump for one article a week, that's it. Because of the circumstances and how we can compensate people at time, I wanna be very fair to folks. 'Cause I've been writing without getting paid much at all. So I understand being on the other side of this and I wanna try to be right by folks. When you're gonna contribute to us, make sure it is relevant, topical is what that fan base is talking about. And that's it. That's how we'll take our blog and allow our blog to also lean into the same model of that fan involvement. Maybe it's not like, because I remember Bleacher Report back in the day, started off as like just fans writing about the team type of thing. Very casual, wasn't, I think they're founder of Mids, it wasn't the greatest thing and they evolved off of it. But if we can at least incorporate the voice and what they're talking about in the active mood and pulse of the fan base into our articles, that's how we can kind of live that fan vision, that fan involvement in our editorial side as well. And really just, the full suite will just continue to grow through that vision. Yeah, yeah. And the thing I love about our conversation here all stands that you're an early stage founder and think of it. A lot of times we have people that are a little bit later stage, but it's really cool to just hear about the weeds and what you're doing currently as you're going through it here. And in your first, it's been about three months, correct? Yeah, just over now. Okay. And just the over three months that you've been around now, as you've talked about, you've been doing it as we speak. So what's been the most exciting or surprising sign for you that sign letter is resonating with fans? I think what's been most encouraging is that when I look at some analytics on our content is one, everything's been up into the right since we started. As you zoom out, everything is going in the right direction, which means we are, it's been consistent. We've posted on our socials at least twice a day every day. We haven't missed the thing, which has been great. It's exactly what you need. I have a great team of supporting cast behind the scenes, helping out, making us all come true. I think early on pretty quick, we got some content, some evergreen content that was picked up by bar stool accounts. We had, we went pretty viral very early on in our launch. And I think the most encouraging thing has been some of our strongest performing content has been where there's fans of the team on it, whether it's a short, whether it's just the segment from the podcast that we post individually on YouTube has posted some of our strongest numbers and gotten really good engagement and commentary and banter going from those fan bases. And that's the point. That's exactly what we want to do is be really able to tap into those fan bases. Hey, I'm a Packer's fan. Let's go talk to a Texans fan. Let's ask him some questions. Let's ask him some maybe some contentious questions just to get the, let's see what, the see where thing they're at. And we get to learn about that team from the perspective of the fans rather than the perspective of someone who's, you know, again, not trying to knock these guys, but on TV reading a script when they didn't actually watch this stuff because let's be honest, you know, national media guys, they're not watching the panthers. They're not watching the Texans. We have panthers, fans of Texans, fans coming on telling us exactly what we need to know from the heart and the thick of it. And that's where we've gotten really strong engagement, which is the point. So at this point being three months live, being, we've equipped three and a half million views across our socials, well over 120,000 engagements across our socials as well. It's been very, very positive. Our watch time on YouTube's going up, the bounce rate on the website's going down where the blog views go up. Like I said, it's just momentum's been there. It's been very exciting. We've been picked up by some other channels as well. Got some good visibility across different platforms. And I think something we'll continue to lean into and I got to shout them out. My guy, but a big content creator. He's a big Ravens content creator. I'm a big believer in not renting a content creator's audience, but actually like, hey, how can we have a long-term partnership here? So having Buddha brought onto the crew and having him create weekly content for us around the NFL has been tremendous. I like to call him my Beyoncé because he has been really a star for us because he's got this huge NFL audience. People love him. He's hilarious. Chad Johnson, shout some out. Chad Johnson's bringing him to the Bangles Ravens game. Gonna have him the sideline. Pat McAfee has him on his show. Like our sideline logo has appeared on the Pat McAfee show because of him. So it's having those types of relationships and cultivating those types of content creator relationships to bring them in. Let's find a situation that works for you. We're going to lean into you and your style. That's been another thing we're looking to grow and will help us continue to grow. But for me, it's been huge for getting us off the ground. And this is going to be something we're going to continue to repeat with other creators. And we have a foundation to show that it works and it's been successful for us. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. You know, talking about where you guys have been over the short amount of time that you've been around, it's impressive that what was it? Over 3 million views across all your social channels. Is that right? Yeah, about 3 and a half at this point. Okay. Yeah, I mean, it's exciting. Excited to chat with you in a year from now and see what that looks like in over a year. And kind of that same vein here also, can you talk about where you see sideline are going in the next year to two years as you guys continue to progress the business? Yeah. It's going to start to spend a little bit more because right now it's been totally organic. We haven't spent the dime on marketing, haven't spent the dime to promote anything. And that's another thing I'm proud of. But that's going to have to change. So actively starting to plan our in-person engagements for next football season is going to be huge, maybe a little bit of the back end of baseball season as well. But where sideline is going to continue to grow and be the best that we can be is going to be in-person activations. And that's going to again come down to getting a bigger cast of content creators, kind of spread across the country who can get out in person and want to get out in person. And you know, street interviews is one thing. That's a very popular thing right now. It's something that we have a couple different formats we're planning for with content creators to be very specific and sponsor driven to, you know, again, activating sponsorships is going to be huge for us to continue to grow. And our in-person events that we planning on doing, I won't give away too much. But one thing I'm very excited about is having our own version of like, I guess, college game day, if you want to call it without getting into the weeds too deep on it. The plan is to essentially replace the crew behind the desk with fans behind the desk. And we go around to different stadiums, different teams, different tailgates. We set up and we kind of have a college game day type show where we have fans there and then we do just different stuff there. I mean, now I'm in the weeds of it. But essentially activating something like that will be a huge, huge thing for us and something that, you know, it's going to start small. It'll probably be a little ugly at first. But is what we're going to lean into and try to build a community round, build an audience around, build a following around. So when we go to different spots, and again, this has been inspired just by like, look, the guys at like, um, snap exports, the things they do with going to different campuses and doing their thing kind of the, it's inspired by that amongst some other things. That's going to be huge and that's something I'm very excited about. And then we were talking about the next 12 to 18 months. I will be huge for us with like college football season. But like I said, it's going to be continuing to expand our digital footprint, building that audience and then evolving our podcast to be less talk at you, more talk with everyone. That's going to be our big focus as we continue to just grow our audience to what we've seen. You know, I think we're, I think couple days ago, we eclipsed a thousand total followers across everything. If I'm not mistaken, I'm maybe shaking that a little bit. But again, we're not buying followers. We want as real as it gets authentic as it gets and I'm very happy about how it's been grown and what it's going to lead to at this point. Yeah, it's exciting, really exciting times lost in here. And actually, too, we'll have to talk off air. We're with one of our clients, TrueFan Travel. We're helping them with the tailgates at the Eagles games that you do, but they also do games all across the country. So we'll have to chat more about that. I think you would connect to me with those folks. And actually I was just, I just was thinking about them because I see something, I see something there with all this and maybe partnering with them. I see that. So thank you guys. You sent me up with them at one point. So thank you. Yeah. Hey, that's what we do. Any last words, Austin? It's been a grind. It's very fun to do. And again, I didn't want to be on my deathbed being like, man, I wish I would have done this. So regardless of how this goes, you know, I think being in the world of sports and just engaging myself in the business side of sports has been one of the most fulfilling things in my life. And you know, sideline or came about as not a, not like, oh, there's a gap in the market. Let's go jump in and let's try to make money. Scytheir Sports is a genuine like passion project extension of myself that, you know, I'm very excited about growing and excited about, you know, hopefully taking to the next level. And then, you know, I, I, I point my heart and soul into. So, you know, you know, if any of any of them are listening, I just want to shout out the folks behind the scenes again. I'm extremely grateful for everyone who's taken the time to meet with me. Everyone who's been a part of our team. I literally can have done this without, without them. And you know, the circumstances are perfect, right? We're not profitable because we're so young. It's hard to monetize when you don't have a real product, you're just a media company. But because of their efforts, we've been able to monetize four different, three, four different revenue channels, which has been huge for us as we now have enough kind of traction building up to go get some sponsor activations rolling and get some big, some big things cooking up in the near future here. So I just want to shout out everyone who's taken the time to meet with me, allow me to learn from them. And then the folks who've been on board with us, like again, just been incredible people to keep this going. And really believing, like I think we got a team of over 30, 35 people right now, just who believe and want to be a part of it. And they're doing amazing things for us. So I had to shout them out before, before leaving this. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. Awesome. Thanks again. And how can the audience stay in touch with you and follow along with Sideliner? Yeah. Thanks for the handle. It was open everywhere because I spelled Sideliner funny. So at Sideliner Sports, just anywhere S-I-D-E-L-I-N-R Sports on any social media, wherever you do them scroll. It's on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, you name it. We'll eventually begin into Discord, maybe some other spots as well. I'm on LinkedIn if you ever want, if anyone wants to find me, Austin, Craig, around there. Otherwise, that's kind of it. Go buy some Sideliner merch while we're at it. I got no problems with that. Sideliner store. But that, that's kind of everything. Awesome, really appreciate you talking to me. today best of luck and excited to follow along. Yes, thank you so much, Justin. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Sports Businessative Podcast. For more content like this, be sure to like and subscribe.