WAVE.tv is a sports entertainment company for today’s fan, with a guiding mission to champion fandom. Today’s sports fans are vastly different than previous generations. They seek out highlights first, prefer athletes and creators over teams and leagues, and live entirely on social. This simple insight pushed WAVE.tv to create a portfolio of media brands, catering to a wide array of genres and fandoms.
WAVE.tv’s programming is distributed across the digital platforms where these fans spend the most time: Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube. Using a simple formula of Fandoms + Formats + IP, they are able to create and monetize hit programming via relationships with rights holders, professional leagues, and various IP holders.
At the core of their strategy, WAVE.tv had the following goals:
WAVE.tv was founded on the insight that young sports fans watch sports differently, and they need programming that appeals to their tastes. This distinct perspective and strategy showed that younger audiences care as deeply about sports as generations prior, and this was seen through WAVE.tv’s growth, especially during the pandemic.
During the height of the stay-at-home orders (March-June), WAVE.tv saw roughly double their typical monthly viewership across their entire portfolio. During the same time-frame, they built upon their relationship with Snapchat, developing Snap-specific sports programming for their Discover network. This has allowed WAVE.tv’s network to grow from 5 shows to 14 shows in 2020 alone, with a total, unduplicated network reach in November 2020 of 62.9M.
WAVE.tv also became a refuge for rights holders looking to offset the loss of live sports, and has since leveraged relationships with over 110 sports leagues and rights holders around the world to cover both traditional and non-traditional sports including basketball, soccer, football, baseball, combat, extreme sports, amateur athletics, fitness/weightlifting, and eSports.
WAVE.tv’s entire portfolio now reaches over 400M sports fans globally and receives over 5B monthly video views across its network of 24 media brands, which is double the 2.3B views last June. They also have 72M+ followers and subscribers, who are highly engaged with all content.
WAVE.tv raised $32M in Series A funding led by CoVenture and GPS Partners, with participation from existing investors Golden Ventures and Sweet Capital in the midst of the pandemic.
The company also made prominent hires to bolster their team including: David Goffin, award-winning TV and digital producer/studio executive, formerly of VIMBY, to run WAVE.tv’s Studio Originals; Greg Wacks, former US Head of Creative Strategy for Snapchat who is leading marketing; and Kevin Senet, former Strategic Analytics Lead at Hulu who is currently heading up Finance and Analytics at the company.
Since early last year, WAVE.tv has seen steady MoM growth across their entire portfolio. Additionally, the company was able to ink a blanket deal with sports media powerhouse, IMG, in July, validating further the overall health of their business.
Here are some highlights of what WAVE.tv has accomplished since the start of the year:
Overall Stats:
5B+ monthly content video views, a 2x increase overall in 2020.
72M+ followers and subscribers across all media brands.
400M monthly global reach.
WAVE.tv secured $32M in a Series A Funding Round.
Media Brands and Partnerships:
24 media brands within the current portfolio.
Has leveraged relationships with over 110 sports leagues and rights holders around the world to cover both traditional and non-traditional sports.
In 2020, over 75 new partners were added to WAVE.tv's roster.
Some top partners include IMG, FIBA, ONE Championship, ACC, Bellator, and more.
Snapchat:
In 2020, WAVE.tv original shows running on Snapchat Discover have grown from 5 to 14. Three of these shows were just greenlit and launched in December, proving how their shows have resonated with the Snapchat Discover community.
The WAVE.tv Discover network reached 62.9M monthly active viewers in November 2020.
WAVE.tv was featured in Snapchat’s Q2 earnings report as a top publisher on the platform.
WAVE.tv was featured at the 2020 Snap Partner Summit as one of a few companies truly innovating on their platform.
