The Successor To Legacy Media Is Youth & College Sports
Youth and college sports are a gateway to the identity graph.
Introducing Echo Group Holdings
Youth & College Sports — Global TAM & Adjacent Markets
Today the world produces the same amount of data in roughly 15 minutes as it did in all of human history until 2003. And since 2003, the average attention span has shrunk by 70%. The biggest legacy media companies, whose lifeblood is attention, lost $7 billion combined on streaming in 2023. As the Internet swings the supply and demand of content toward shorter forms for fickler audiences, the ascendant social vibe is “Dopamine Culture” — where “compulsive activity” replaces “Culture (with a capital C).”
Yet some traditional-looking entertainment still thrives. Kids’ content is growing faster than overall viewership across the major streaming platforms and YouTube. The NFL remains responsible for more than 90% of the Nielsen Top 100 telecasts. And live experiential events are collectively “the brightest star in the broader media and entertainment universe” — Taylor Swift shining brightest with the first ever $1 billion tour.
These media success stories hail from different genres and demographic groups. They all, however, connect deeply to Culture (with a capital C). Cartoons, concerts, and pro football all serve longstanding communities by leveraging rituals and relationships that span generations. (“Taylor Swift unites mothers and daughters at SoFi Stadium,” explained the Los Angeles Times last summer.) Accordingly, they do more than compete for people’s attention — they enhance people’s core identity.
We swipe what we like and dislike. We churn what we use and disuse. But we stick with who we are and who we intend to be. The universe of interests that support people’s durable identity is comparatively small. In Internet parlance, it forms an identity graph:
The Identity Graph
The identity economy dwarfs the attention economy. The average American family spends more annually just on back-to-school items than on streaming services. And core identity roles — caregiver, alumnus, parishioner; not fan, stan, sub — may be the one thing that digital media cannot abbreviate. The average Netflix subscriber churns off after 25 months; the average parent won’t see her child move out of the house for at least 24 years. Whereas content seeks attention paid in seconds, identity runs on participation that may never expire.
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Few sectors encapsulate the social power and overlooked potential of the identity graph better than youth and college sports. Athletics are a fixture of growing up in America, the oldest municipal leagues dating back 120 years. 60 million children in the US play organized sports, with another 500,000 student athletes in college. And the importance of athletics to young people’s mental and physical well being is the rare public health consensus that Joe Rogan has not yet ruined.
Remarkably, youth and college sports has grown into a $40B+ global TAM in spite of scant professional investment and chronically fragmented development. The income gap in youth sports is worsening. And virtually every aspect of major college sports is beset by commercial and regulatory upheaval. On its current path, youth and college sports will lean deeper into a top-heavy existence headed by a costly elite ecosystem alienated from a neglected but enormous community base.
Today we announce the creation of Echo Group Holdings to chart a better path. Our ambition is to develop durable commercial and cultural infrastructure enabling the best possible future for youth and college sports. We believe sports uniquely enriches the identity graph’s core dimensions, embedded in over a century of near-universal Culture (again with a capital C).
The Echo vision builds atop three foundational convictions about youth and college sports:
Academic affiliation is a differentiating strength, not an onerous constraint.
The best opportunities unlock access for the biggest communities.
Cultural fixtures are a more compelling source of long-term value than is novel IP.
These convictions, obvious to us, remain chronically underdeveloped. Alumni organizations are functionally dormant, yet college football grows as the second most popular American spectator sport and an unmatched pillar of thriving town-and-gown relationships. Mixed-use retail development projects covet youth sports complexes more than any other anchor, yet participation outside the elite traveling-team circuit has lagged for almost 20 years. Promising opportunities to scale great solutions across sports, family, education, and wellness abound. But operators and investors are as yet slow to connect the most meaningful dots.
Over the last few months, we have laid the groundwork for Echo’s initial ventures with leading properties, including the Big Ten Conference. We are excited to share specific announcements in the coming weeks.
At launch, we are grateful for the support of Echo’s seed investors, who lead some of the world’s most important communities at the intersection of sports and the identity graph. They include Mark Attanasio, Elysian Park Ventures, Scrum Ventures, and Alignment Growth.
Follow our progress and get in touch here.