Jomboy’s NLL YouTube videos get over a million views as media brand expands
Challen Rogers, Toronto Rock (Photo: Ryan McCullough)
Known for his hilarious (mostly) baseball YouTube breakdowns (aka: “, a breakdown”), Jomboy Media is expanding their array of sports videos, and the National Lacrosse League is already benefitting from the media brand’s big next steps.
For those unfamiliar with Jomboy:
What started as a bored Yankees fan live-tweeting games from Livermore, California has evolved into a leading sports and pop culture new media company with a monthly reach into the hundreds of millions.
Jomboy has received a really rapid following for their social-media videos reviewing MLB plays in recent years, but the brand is expanding, by a lot.
As reported by Sportico last week:
Jomboy Media, founded by Jimmy O’Brien, announced a $5 million raise Thursday. The WWE, C.C. Sabathia and Dwyane Wade are among new investors in the company, joining a round led by Connect Ventures, an investment partnership between CAA and New Enterprise Associates.
“I think that will lead to bigger things,” O’Brien said of the CAA connection. “There are guys that are part of CAA that… if we have an event or we want to do something or help them, they help us. Hopefully it’s one big family.”
Yep, the same CAA (Creative Artists Agency) that the NLL has recently been reported to have retained to help secure a new commissioner.
Why is that important?
Well, if the benefits of being BFFs with CAA provides opportunities to obtain millions of non-lax peepers per a few funny videos, that continued connection with CAA could help the NLL finally penetrate a more-mainstream market they’ve largely lacked for decades. Proof? See the plentiful pros of the Premier Lacrosse League’s relationship with Barstool Sports, who recently named the company’s CEO, Erika Nardini, to their board of directors.
Bringing a non-NLL individual(s) to a game and banking on them becoming a forever fan because of the sheer excitement & entertainment experienced, is a dated approach to marketing the league, and honestly, never really worked anyways.
As mentioned in the Sportico report, Jomboy “…will soon become a burgeoning media platform spanning all major North American sports.” The untapped NLL, whose videos appear to have done above average on Jomboy this season, seem like a potential perfect content fit here.
Yesterday, Jomboy posted a new NLL video of Challen Rogers’ OT winner in the Toronto Rock’s thrilling post-season victory over the Halifax Thunderbirds. Here’s the vid via Jomboy’s YouTube channel, one which has 1.54 million subscribers and is nearing a billion overall views.
As of publishing this post, around Noon ET on May 10th, here are how all three Jomboy’s NLL “a breakdown” vids have done on social media so far this season…
Ethan Woods (Albany FireWolves) & Ryland Hartley (Rochester Knightahwks)
Lacrosse goalies trade punches, a breakdown
YouTube: 537.6K
Twitter: 55.3K
Instagram: 28.9K
Total: 621,800
Connor Kearnan & Jeff Teat, New York Riptide (Photo: Spencer Kagan)
Lacrosse hidden ball trick, a breakdown
YouTube: 492.9K
Twitter: 104.5K
Instagram: 67.5K
Facebook: 455K
Total: 1,119,900
Phil Mazzuca, Toronto Rock (Photo: Ryan McCullough)
Toronto wins elimination game in overtime, a breakdown
YouTube: 95.9K
Twitter: 19K
Instagram: 12.7K
Facebook: 20K
Total: 147,600
The YouTube views alone add up to 1,126,400, with a totally tally about to touch 2-million total. While the growth clearly subsides soon after the initial post, those numbers will keep slowly going up, a nice little find for NLL newbies.
In comparison, the NLL’s own YouTube channel has 22.8K subscribers, with recent videos getting typically a few hundred or just over a thousand looks. By far the league’s most popular videos are of the fighting variety, many of extremely poor quality, all including players that have long since retired. Their most-viewed video (432K), a decade-old, grainy John Grant goal, is below the very recent Jomboy digital digits highlighted above. Most NLL team channels are far below the league’s impression counts on YouTube too.
Why did Jomboy experience so much success so fast? Well, because MLB stopped trying to constantly control their narrative, and instead allowed & embraced third-party media brands like Jomboy. As O’Brien told Sportico:
The reason we were able to be as successful so early on is because MLB had really tightened the reins on third-party coverage on social media for a long time, and they loosened those or maybe kind of just dropped them all together. And we were, I think, the first people to really bet on that happening and bet that they were going to allow people to create and help them grow and share baseball.