Bleacher Report and House of Highlights, the digital arm of Warner Bros. Discovery's TNT Sports, are betting that the way to win young sports fans is longer highlights on YouTube, not shorter
Bleacher Report and House of Highlights, the digital arm of Warner Bros. Discovery's TNT Sports, are betting that the way to win young sports fans is longer highlights on YouTube, not shorter clips on social feeds.
Adam Davidson, vice president of sales and strategy for the two brands, laid out the approach in an interview with TheStreet Roundtable's publisher James Heckman at the Cannes Lions festival. He described Bleacher Report and House of Highlights as "the leading digital sports publisher for young fans in the United States," with 190 million followers, part of a TNT Sports portfolio of just under 300 million.
▶ Watch the full interview on RoundtableSports
The pitch, Davidson said, is "to create sports TV for the next generation of fans." After a decade distributing short clips on X, Meta and TikTok, the company is shifting to longer formats on YouTube.
"Instead of twenty to thirty seconds of a highlight, we'll do full game recaps that are five to twelve minutes," he said. "We'll see Gen Z sit through a seven minute highlight compilation of Big Twelve Football from the last night."
Davidson pushed back on the idea that younger viewers won't sit still.
"I want to dispel this myth that Gen Z does not have attention span. They do. They spend over two hours a day on YouTube," he said.
He added that "over forty percent of our long form views on our content on YouTube are coming from connected TV," with 80% of that audience under 34, watching on a television rather than a phone.
For context, YouTube is now the single largest destination for U.S. television viewing, at roughly 12% to 13% of all TV time, according to Nielsen. It also comes as TNT Sports absorbs the loss of the NBA, which moved to NBCUniversal, Amazon and Disney after nearly 40 years on the network, pushing Warner Bros. Discovery to lean harder on digital reach and newer properties.
▶ Watch the full interview on RoundtableSports
Davidson said Bleacher Report's advantage is its position between two camps. On one side are major rights holders such as CBS, Fox, Amazon, Netflix and Disney's ESPN, which hold broadcast rights and reach; on the other are digital publishers like Barstool Sports, Overtime and The Athletic, which have audiences but no league IP.
"The major sports rights holders have not invested in a solution to reach young audiences, and the digital publishers do not have access to the IP that the broadcast rights holders [have]," he said. "So Bleacher Report and House of Highlights are uniquely positioned to sit really right in the middle."
Asked what he wants to accomplish over the next year, Davidson pointed to Unrivaled, the 3-on-3 women's basketball league co-founded by Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, which TNT Sports broadcasts and which expanded to four nights of coverage this year.
"Have another successful Unrivaled season," he said, adding that he also wants to keep "growing further connection with Gen Z on our long form content on YouTube."
