YouTube used to be an alternative to television. Today, for many individuals, it has effectively replaced traditional television.
Happy 20th anniversary to YouTube. It didn’t just change the way we watch TV. It changed the way we consume sports. This evolution began modestly when the first video, “Me at the zoo,” was uploaded on April 23, 2005.
From there, YouTube has evolved into a Google-owned media giant, generating revenues of $54.2 billion in 2022. According to the most recent ratings gauge from Nielsen, YouTube achieved a platform record of 12% of total TV watch time, surpassing all other major platforms.
The impact of YouTube cannot be overstated, especially when it comes to sports. Many of us watch games on the streaming service YouTube TV. Some of us catch all the professional football action on NFL Sunday Ticket, available exclusively on YouTube TV. In 1993, Fox TV won the broadcast rights for NFC games, helping to solidify it as a network. In December 2022, YouTube secured the rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket, elevating the streamer to a new level.
However, even if you don’t subscribe, chances are you have gone to YouTube to access footage, view your favorite sports personality, or stream a live event, such as a press conference. YouTube was one of the first places we got athlete highlights outside of traditional TV clips.
Yes, it’s a crowded landscape these days with TikTok, X, Instagram, Facebook, and other forms of social media. YouTube is the OG. None of those other properties exist or have the same resonance without YouTube. Every major professional sports league and team has a channel on the platform. Numerous prominent sports personalities and broadcasters first got noticed by creating content on YouTube, such as Katie Nolan.
It remains relevant for youngsters and veterans. Kid reporter Jeremiah Fennell started his YouTube channel in 2020. Last year, the then-11-year-old famously interviewed Patrick Mahomes at the Super Bowl. For veteran scribes, it’s another way to reach your audience and gain additional followers. Jeff Pearlman’s channel is “Press Box Chronicles with Jeff Pearlman.” He describes it as a place where “a cranky middle-aged sports writer who has seen it all takes you behind the scenes and into the stories.”
Pearlman isn’t just ranting. YouTube is also a platform for authors to promote themselves and their books.
“For so many of us, YouTube started as a place to post family videos and watch Doug Williams’ 1980 Tampa Bay Buccaneers highlights,” Pearlman told Awful Announcing via text message. “It was a destination, not a content generation outlet. But over the years, sports media has reimagined its power, and now most of us in the biz don’t merely use it to watch plays, interviews, etc, but to expand our own brands.”
Before YouTube, becoming a professional broadcaster was a dream for the lucky few. You had to go the old-school route. That usually meant extensive training in college and experience at a small-market TV station or time on public access television. How quaint. That’s no longer the case. Broadcasting has been democratized. No matter your experience. No matter who you are, you can create content, become a star, and be your own boss.
ESPN NFL analyst Kevin Clark has seen this transformation happen in real-time.
“YouTube has changed everything about our industry and almost all of it is for the better,” he told Awful Announcing via text message. “The best advice I ever got in this industry is ‘any job in this era can be the best job in the world,’ and YouTube is a huge part of that. The advice means that 20, 30 years ago, you had to be associated with a huge newspaper or a major network in order for people to care what you thought. Now, the barrier for entry is so low, and the audience is so huge that anyone with something interesting to say can pop.”
Being a professional YouTuber is a legitimate job. If you’re popular enough, you can earn millions.
Sometimes, you can use YouTube as a springboard to bigger and better things. It has helped give regular people a chance. If you’re an athlete, a former athlete, or a wannabe athlete, you have another way to monetize content and reach the public without the filter of traditional media.
YouTube has adapted to an ever-shifting media terrain because it’s not just about the video. It’s about getting your podcast on YouTube. One of the more successful ones is The New Heights podcast with Travis and Jason Kelce, which has 2.65 million YouTube subscribers. YouTube’s influence and impact on sports continue to grow, despite increased competition from other streamers, such as Amazon and Apple TV+, as well as social media and video sites.
In July 2024, according to Sports Business Journal, CEO Neal Mohan said that more than 35 billion hours of sports content “was viewed on YouTube in the past year.” That, he said, was a 45-percent increase from 2023. Mohan added that YouTube’s presence in sports is “likely to grow considerably in the near future.”
Much of our world is changing, and the pace of that change can be staggering. What is popular now can be obsolete sooner than you think. Will YouTube eventually be replaced by something else? Maybe. Maybe not. However, YouTube’s impact on sports is here to stay.
