Would you send it in the group chat? Sports creator Frank Michael Smith on finding the stories worth telling

Smith: I started making YouTube videos around sports in 2007, when I was in seventh grade. It was a very successful channel — I had a thousand subscribers, which back then was very strong — but I never showed my face [or did] original opinions, commentary, or even storytelling. It was mostly highlights, mix tapes, and trying to tell the story of an athlete’s career through clips and audio.

I grew up hearing tales of my family’s history in sports. My great grandfather [Jimmy Smith] won the 1919 World Series, which is the most famous one because it was fixed. His son-in-law, Billy Conn, went on to become the light heavyweight champion of the world. He’s the subject of [Frank Deford’s famous Sports Illustrated feature] “The Boxer and the Blonde.”

I graduated from [Miami University in Ohio] in 2016 and went out to Los Angeles to work for a company called ClutchPoints. I helped them build a graphics team and a video team and produce all kinds of sports content.

I did that until 2020. During COVID, I was like, now’s the time to be an independent creator. I have these skills, but I need to actually put my face in the videos and write the scripts. That was taboo on TikTok [at the time] — it was still a dancing and lip syncing app. I stood out right away because there wasn’t a lot of high-quality sports content on the app; if there was, it was probably someone stealing a highlight and reposting it. There weren’t people doing things like talking heads, illustrative stories, or commentary.

The idea behind my videos is still the same [today]: I’m not going to waste your time. I’m going to create a very high-quality piece of content, whether that’s a story or an opinion. It’s going to be dense, well-researched, high-quality on the graphics and visuals sides. None of that’s changed, but we’ve refined the process to where my videos are much better. Now, I’m a better writer. My graphics are better, my topic selection is better.

When I started off, [I was mostly doing] evergreen storytelling and now it’s mostly commentary, so I’ve made a major change there. Right now, my niche is not news; by the time the algorithm serves you my stuff, the news has happened. My niche is finding what’s interesting about that news or what’s underreported, and delivering a compelling narrative.

Smith: My videos lean heavily toward American sports, a lot of NBA and NFL, which are more nationally consumed products than the NHL or MLB or any Olympic sport. But that doesn’t always mean [the American sports videos] do better. When the Olympics come around, my videos go crazy. Some of my videos about women’s sports are my highest-performing videos.

One thing I tell [young creators] is that you don’t have to have an opinion on everything, and you probably shouldn’t. If you’re prioritizing volume instead of quality, you’re going to lose trust over time. When I’m served your video on my feed, if I have a feeling that you don’t have a well-thought out opinion, I’m going to skip your videos more often, and then your stats are going to tank. That probably means the video is not going to perform well. You might lose followers. It’s just not a compelling way to do business.

The advice that you need to constantly be posting is not true. You need to build trust with the audience. You also have to be a real consumer. You have to genuinely like consume sports [or whatever your niche is]. If you really love this, then you should be able to put your finger on the pulse of sports fans and [know that] a story is a little bit played out, or maybe this thing is too niche and not enough people will get it.

Smith: It starts the night before, when I’m watching sports. I wake up and read Kendall Baker’s newsletter every morning. He does such a good job of covering a wide variety of sports. Sometimes I’ll get an idea from that. I read a lot on The Athletic as well. I talk to my friends; group chats are a good way to get a taste of what people are talking about. I’ll keep poking around until I find something I feel is worth writing about. Sometimes I don’t have to poke around — I just know that I’m going to wake up and write about this.

I do as much research as I can. Generally, for an 80-second video, I need a couple of hours. I write several drafts, and then as I’m filming I make a few final changes. I have an amazing [eight-person] video editing team. Some of these guys were with me at ClutchPoints, so we have great chemistry. I add in important links for them, but really, I let them be creative. I don’t micromanage them. They send the video back about four hours later and I make my final touches and we post it.

At first, I tried to stick to [posting] one every day. That was a bit easier because I wasn’t doing topical content [then], I was doing more storytelling, and there was always an older story you could tell and illustrate. But now, with being topical, if I don’t think a video is going to work, I don’t make it. I try to never force it.

I think it would be great if I did a video every day. But I just don’t have the time now. I have a gaming company that I work on, too. If I’m not excited to do [a story], I just don’t do it.

Smith: I’m always trying to look at it through the lens of, “If this popped up on my feed, would I share it with my group chat?”

That’s how I think the algorithm [on social media apps] works. I don’t know this to be a fact, but I think it tries to model human behavior. If it sees that real humans are sharing a video, that means they’re watching the video, and that probably means the algorithm should share the video. I try to look at it like that.

Sometimes the answer is, like, “I would share this with my group chat, but this is more of a tweet, not more of a video,” so it’s not worth going through the whole process.

The only thing you can do when a video doesn’t do well is be like, “All right, I’ll make another tomorrow.”

Smith: I try to credit [original sources] as much as I can. Sometimes it’s just not that easy in video. For fact-checking, I go back and look at the articles [I used in my research]. If it’s a credible source like one of the big sports media companies, I treat it as a fact.

I run everything through Claude and [ask it to] find all of the claims I’ve made in the video and fact-check them for me. Then I run that through ChatGPT as well, just to make sure.

I’m not perfect. If I make a mistake, I either remove the video or I’ll pin a comment and be like, “hey, here’s a mistake.” That could be as small as a typo or something more important. I always try to note it. People are never that mad as long as you acknowledge it.

There was a report that [colleges] were getting money based on how often users chose them in [fantasy football] video games that turned out to be completely false, that I made a video on. I remember I was like, “Oh, other people have reported on this, it’s got to be true.” It was not true at all and I took it down.

Smith: I should clarify: I don’t have a lot of access. I don’t request it. If I requested it, I probably could get credentialed, but that’s not really what I do. There are beat reporters and that’s not my job. If I wanted some one-off access, I’m sure I could ask the teams and get that. I still go to games, but I don’t go as a reporter. I go as a fan. I try to approach it from that angle.

Smith: Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to me. I have been in these locker rooms and media scrums before, but it seems like overkill when these videos come out on X now. For example, if I’m doing a video about [former Steelers head coach] Mike Tomlin — I love the Steelers and that’s my team — and if there’s 17 people taking the same video of him saying something after the game, why do I need to be the 18th when I could just pull that video from X and credit the guy who asked him the question?

Smith: I did a video with [professional boxer] Ryan Garcia a long time ago. It was his comeback fight and it was a big moment because he had been injured so he was working his way back to the top. [The arena] gave me the tickets, they gave me access, and I got to sit in the front row in the press room afterward. I got to ask him a question and I worked that into my own video. It was really cool because I got to source myself, and I thought the video turned out great, but like, it wasn’t that much better than the rest of them.

When you’re talking about restricted access and teams having their own production [departments], something that really bums me out is that we’ve lost the profile. I grew up loving those, and they’re so rare now. There was one last year called “Joel Embiid Sees You,” that was such a throwback for me. I forgot how much I missed this [format]. It really is a shame that we’ve lost that.

Smith: I thought it was fantastic. It came about in an email, like any other partnership. They basically said they wanted to make videos and collaborate and that it would be a pilot program.

I had always had this idea [of a creators program] and I had pitched it to a few publications before. It’s not an exact comparison, but I see my videos as the evolution of a Sunday column. The Athletic didn’t know it, but they were basically pitching me my idea.

I jumped on it. I hoped that they were going to be respectful creatively, and they totally were. I worked with [then-video growth manager] Jordan Pun, [who] would basically curate the website for me. He’d be like, “Hey, here’s four articles that you could weave into a video or at least use as subject matter.” They were almost always very strong suggestions.

The numbers were great, and everything’s always more fun when you’re doing great numbers. The audience reaction was fantastic. We did 24 videos and I enjoyed them all.

Smith: I’ve done some [horizontal videos], and they’re some of the videos I’m most proud of. I went to England and made a video about what the NFL could look like in Europe. I went to Nashville and did a story about why the MLS is growing so much. Those are some of the best pieces of content I’ve ever made, but we barely made any money on them.

It’s an ROI thing — not just with dollars, but with time. Some of them might have 250,000 views, so it’s not like they performed poorly. It’s just that if we take a week to make that video, it’s hard for me to make anything else. If we’re only making $1,500 on that video, for example, it’s hard to justify taking that much time to make it. It seems like the market demands vertical video from me.

Smith: I [mostly engage] on Instagram. I respond to so many DMs on Instagram; I have made it a point from day one that I am responding to everyone I can. That’s at least 10 a day. I answer questions there, give people advice, and we talk about my videos there. I have a broadcast channel on there as well. I really use Instagram for that community building.

My audience has grown up with me A lot of people who originally followed me on TikTok were sophomores or juniors in high school when they first followed me, and now a lot of them have graduated college. They’ve grown up with me and I could feel it in person. When I would go to sporting events, it was kids with braces asking to take a photo. Now, it’s grown adults. It’s 95% guys.

Smith: I’m a big podcast listener. I’ve been listening to Bill Simmons for 10 years now; I was a big reader of his back when he was at ESPN. Jeff Pearlman has an amazing podcast, The Ringer’s Fantasy Football Show. I’ll listen to Pablo Torre, 30 for 30. Derek Thompson does some sports episodes too. My guy Chris Carter does a Steelers show.

Smith: Tyler Webb is fantastic. Joe Pompliano. This one’s not that similar to me, but Sportsball is a great guy. We’ve never met in person, but we chat a lot. I think his videos are enlightening. Evan Hand. Michael MacKelvie was in The Athletic’s creators program with me, too. There’s a lot. There’s so many talented sports creators.

Smith: I pay for The New York Times and The Athletic. I pay for a couple of Substacks. I have The Wall Street Journal as well.

Smith: I’ve been a full-time creator since March 2020. I still get questions from people who are like, “Do you do that full time?” At first I almost took it as disrespect. Of course it’s full-time. I’m posting every day. How else do I do this, if not full-time?

I’ve learned that when people are asking, they are just genuinely [uninformed about] social media [and the creator economy]. I’ve done very well and I’ve had amazing brand partners. I’ve gotten billions of views and I have millions of followers. I’m still probably going to get that question again before September ends.

I’m not going to disclose how much money I make per year, but I’ve done very well. I think I’ve done better than most creators and most sports creators. I don’t know how this creator thing is even defined anymore, but I do think there’s a limit. There’s a select few creators who can go into the stratosphere of Logan or Jake Paul or MrBeast or even Emma Chamberlain. These people have launched their own products and built super-successful businesses on top of their distribution.

I feel like that is the next level. Where I am right now, I have a very successful product. I’ve almost tapped out where you can be as a short-form vertical creator. There’s different money to be made in long-form on YouTube, but I don’t do that.

Smith: I have my cat here. He’s my #1 employee. [laughs] I’m from Pittsburgh, moved to L.A., and came back to Pittsburgh, which is the opposite route most people would take if they’re blowing up on social media. But I came back here and bought the house I grew up in. It has a nice basement and I’ve built out my whole studio down here. I usually work alone.

I’m married and I have a son who’s six months old. My family lives really close by, which is one of the reasons I moved back to Pittsburgh. I love it. Pittsburgh is slept on. It’s a great city.

Smith: Platform money, and that would be the same for any creator. TikTok is a great example because there’s aspecialized rewards program, which is fantastic and still not talked about enough. That’s a complete game-changer for any sports creator. I work with TikTok directly sometimes on brand deals. I work with a lot of other platforms or brands with brand deals.

We’ve made a great business on Snapchat that’s funded a lot of projects. I have eight video editors. Four of them can work on anything, but the other four almost always work on Snapchat videos. A lot of people don’t use Snapchat, but it’s always been a good revenue stream for us. We’ve built a roster of about 15 of these Snap Discover shows that have done great revenue over the last five years; it’s allowed us to make some of these games and try other projects. Snap is converting them all to verified profiles now, which is a messy process and I’m not happy about it, but we’ve made a really great business there.

Smith: If you’re paying a W-2, you pay a lot of taxes; anyone who’s a newer entrepreneur might get shocked at that number. If [a video editor] is making $60,000 a year, for example, you’re paying a lot more than that. Then just all the stuff of being an entrepreneur where you have to get insurance, you have to file your registrations on time. If you do really well, you end up paying a ton of money in taxes.

Smith: I wasn’t sure they would ever embrace creators. That obviously has changed, and I’ve been part of it. I’m still a little surprised it’s not more prevalent, but that gives me hope that we’re still very far away from the ceiling.

I still find it weird that sites like Polymarket share news. I’m not against prediction markets, betting, or fantasy sports, but I find it weird that they are [almost like] news companies on social media, because they’ll post news. I might be scrolling X and I see [a Polymarket news post] that comes up before The Athletic puts it out. I didn’t expect to get some of my sports news or general news from prediction markets, but I do.

Smith: Legacy media could do a better job of meeting people where they are. That doesn’t mean you need crazy [good] production quality. You can make a green screen video and it might come off more authentic that way.

On the other side, we could probably do a better job of being a little bit more professional. I think, myself included, it’s a little annoying to source and fact-check everything, but you should do it. Most creators will not even bother. An overall level of professionalism would be nice.

Smith: I think [the space] is becoming more saturated. I think it’s just harder to be in the creator economy now. I think the bar has been lowered — in a good way — so much that you’re competing against a lot more creators, and these views are going to be harder to come by. You’ve got to figure out a way to stand out.