We’ve seen Religion of Sports dive into some interesting new approaches recently, from a World Cup house to the In The Moment interview show with David Greene to projects with Draymond Green, Shohei Ohtani, and Helen Maroulis. The company has also explored scripted projects, including The Owl with Skydance Media, and they said after a $50 million Series B funding round last summer they planned to expand beyond sports. We now know one way they’re going to do that, with ROS announcing Wednesday that they have added Jimmy Fox’s Main Event Media, which will serve as their primary pop culture arm. Fox himself is coming on board as president of Main Event Media.Here’s more on that from a release:
Main Event Media, the production company founded by three-time Emmy winning producer Jimmy Fox joined the Religion of Sports team under a multi-year exclusive production deal. Main Event Media will be a production label under the Religion of Sports banner as the company continues to expand its footprint in all genres.
…“First off, I am beyond grateful to the leadership of All3Media for the past nine years and everything we’ve accomplished together,” said Jimmy Fox. “After sitting with Gotham and hearing his vision for the growth of Religion of Sports as a home for creators across all genres of storytelling, I was extremely inspired and saw clearly how Main Event could complement an already flourishing operation… also, I was told they have an NBA Jam arcade machine in the office which really sweetened the deal.”
“Part of our mission at Religion of Sports as we grow has been to be a platform for prolific creators to strut their stuff,” said Gotham Chopra. “I couldn’t be more excited for Jimmy and his talented team at Main Event Media to join the ROS family – even though his Warriors beat my Celtics in last season’s NBA Finals.”
Also making the move to Religion of Sports will be longtime Main Event Media executives and in-house producers Emily Bon (Netflix’s Girl in the Picture and Dated & Related) and Stephanie Valentin (E!’s Celebrity Call Center and Roku’s Eye Candy) in their roles as VP’s of Development.
Some of the recent work from Fox (seen at right) and Main Event includes Netflix true crime feature documentary Girl in the Picture, Netflix dating series Dated & Related, CNN series United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell, Peacock comedy series Punky Brewster, HBOMax docuseries Sweet Life: Los Angeles, the PGA Award-winning YouTube Originals docuseries Defying Gravity: The Untold Story of Women’s Gymnastics, Nickelodeon competition series Top Elf, and numerous specials for Discovery’s Shark Week. Main Event had previously been a banner Fox started at All3Media nine years ago after spending four years as head of development at Ben Silverman’s Electus, and some of its current projects will still appear in partnership with All3Media. But it’s now sliding over to Religion of Sports.
The projects Main Event has been doing so far are a ways from the sports focus ROS has had since 2017, when Gotham Chopra founded the Santa Monica-based company with Tom Brady and Michael Strahan. But ROS has expanded dramatically since then, not just in the feature documentary and athlete documentary space (and with those showing up in a variety of formats and places), but also with podcasts and events and scripted projects. And that June funding round saw them particularly talk about going beyond sports next:
“We’ve seen a growing demand for sports storytelling across media avenues, a demand that Religion of Sports continues to meet, but we’re ready and eager to expand into new territories and solidify ourselves as an all-encompassing media powerhouse,” said Ameeth Sankaran, CEO, Religion of Sports. “We are excited to expand our mission on a larger scale while enabling our talent partners to tell more expansive versions of their story.”
…”The possibilities of content are continuing to grow at Religion of Sports, and I am proud to have been here from the beginning,” said Michael Strahan. “The team remains committed to raising the standard of non-fiction storytelling in not just sports but also beyond, and I can’t wait to welcome new formats, partners and audiences into our world. From athletes to trailblazers, to important societal themes and world events, there are such incredible and emotional stories to be told and I look forward to jointly developing and introducing groundbreaking work with this team. Evolution and diversity are key, and we’re just getting started!”
It will be interesting to see what projects Fox and Main Event do now that they’re with ROS, and how this expansion beyond sports works out for the company.
