How Brendan Hall is Building Esports Fans, Players, and a College Program

On episode 292 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Brendan Hall, Esports Coordinator for Endicott College

What follows is a collection of snippets from the podcast. To hear the full interview and more, check out the podcast on all podcast platforms and at www.dsmsports.net.

1. @njh287; www.dsmsports.net
On episode 292 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil
chatted with Brendan Hall, Esports Coordinator and facult at
Endicott College.
What follows is a collection of snippets from the podcast. To hear the
full interview and more, check out the podcast on all podcast
platforms and at www.dsmsports.net.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

2. Brendan’s Career Path
“Esports is something I've jumped in the last couple of years. I've
been here two years at Endicott. Prior to that, I was Director of
Integrated Marketing at Oxygen Esports, which was at the time the
largest multi-title org in New England,with some investments from
Kraft Sports Group, the Gronkowski family, several others. [Winding]
it back a little bit, I’ll start from the beginning. Born and raised in
Massachusetts, you've had enough people on this podcast that can
probably can tell you about what it was like back in the day, the the
Boston sports writing scene. It's a magical place for sportswriters to
get their start.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

3. “You know, the Boston Globe, in my dad's era, it was just the Yankees of
sportswriting, and growing up stealing my dad's Globe sports section at
lunchtime, at breakfast time, and then stealing the Boston Herald from my
second period business class and reading the Herald at lunchtime. I wanted to
be the next great one and I had a pretty good run, I'm not going to lie. I ended
up getting a co-op at The Globe in college. I did a couple other internships. I
actually did one where I went down to Jacksonville, Florida, and I didn't do any
sports writing, I was actually covering crime. I don't have a great Florida man
story, by the way. But I will say the public records laws in Florida are very nice
to deal with. So if you're wondering why Florida man crime is [so prominent], I
don't think it's any different from Montana man crime. But you don't hear
about Montana, but Florida, it's all there. It ended up being the best experience
of my three internships because I learned how to be a real reporter and how to
develop a writing style through my reporting.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

4. “But, you know, I bounced around a little bit. I freelanced for The
Globe for four years, doing high school notebooks and also covering a
lot of Bruins. Then in 2010 — so if you recall, ESPN started building
these hyperlocal websites. They had ESPN Chicago, ESPN New York,
and they had a unique problem with Boston in that there was no radio
station in the market. So they had to get creative with how they did
the marketing and promotions and…When they were purging The
Globe of of ESPN guys, knowing I was like option 19 if they wanted to
hire a Bruins writer, but I knew I had done some really good work on
the high school beat. I had beaten The Herald on a couple big
breaking news stories.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

5. “I kind of thought, well, you know, if they ever need a high school
writer; so Dave Lefort, my boss, who edited some of my stuff at The
Globe, had been hired as the Boston editor and I said, Hey, do you
ever think about doing high school? Let me know. And he said, Yeah,
absolutely. And nothing happened for six months. Then I got called
out of the blue from from Kraft Sports Group [and they said], We're
looking to hire a high school writer; four rounds of interviews later, I
started this thing from scratch for ESPN.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

6. “The best thing I can say about it is, so up here in Boston pro sports
dominates. This is a world class city, but probably not a very good
college sports city. And high school sports, it's tough to get on the
radar because you get a century's worth of history with four pro sports
teams. And talent-wise, I mean, the way I always couch this is, like
Texas, let's say Kyler Murray in Allen, Texas, I think he had 28
teammates [that] signed FBS scholarships in high school. We're lucky
to get half that for the entire state of Massachusetts.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

7. “But the difference between us and Texas…So I live in Framingham,
right? We hate Natick, home of Doug Flutie, which hates Walpole,
which hates Foxborough, which hates Mansfield, which hates
Franklin, which hates Milford, which hates Marlboro — like, you just
go on and on; the town-border tribalism and people are very proud of
their little place in the world up here and the fabric that high school
sports plays and all these little towns. Throw the talent out, it's
bragging rights. It's townie tribalism. And we really leaned into it that
way, really kind of tried to make the fans the center of attention
because we couldn’t just follow recruiting.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

8. “High school coverage is very recruiting intensive, right? College fans
are nuts, right? They love reading recruiting stuff, but we don't have
that luxury. We had to kind of go the other direction. Again, in an
area that's dominated by pro sports, even when Boston College was
really good with Matt Ryan a couple decades ago, it was hard for them
to get on the radar. So to make high school sports coverage on ESPN
Boston the third most trafficked thing after Red Sox and Patriots
coverage with the Celtics and Bruins in deep playoff runs, and that’s
just stupendous. And we kind of did it differently, you know?
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

9. “My wife grew up in Indiana. The biggest honor in Indiana after being
the governor is probably being Indiana. Mr. Basketball. right? There's
no Mr. Football, or there was no Mr. Football in Massachusetts. So we
just started making those awards. And having access to Gillette
Stadium, getting to bring in a kid on the sideline before a Patriots
game, getting to meet Mr. [Robert] Kraft and whoever else is hanging
around — one year we had Mark Wahlberg jump into the photo op,
that was pretty cool.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

10. “We just did things differently, did it from a more macro perspective.
Massachusetts is a pretty small state, and yet in six years, I put in 175,000
miles in my car. I knew if I was going to beat The Globe and Herald with a
fraction of their staff power, I was going to have to be face to face. And
I'm super old school. We'll get into this with fan relations stuff, but I'm
super old school. Nothing beats face to face [and] that paid off. But the
people truly felt like it was their own thing. The best piece [of advice] I
ever got from one of my best bosses of my career, Fred Kirsch, who's now
the Chief Content Officer at the Patriots, he always said that this thing
won't take off until the fans feel like it's their own thing. And look, I did
some other cool stuff for ESPN. I covered a couple Stanley Cups. I
covered the Boston Marathon bombing, I did a story once where I walked
18 [holes] with Tiger, that was cool.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

11. “But all along the way, I kind of got this bug of, like, what I was doing
was, yeah it was sports, but it was also really like marketing, right? I
was really like brand building, community building. So I kind of had
this inkling of like, if I have a shot to do this, marketing, I don't care if
it's sports or plumbing, I'm going to take a shot, because I just fell in
love with the art and science of it, you know? Because, like, we sold
sponsorships for ESPN Boston's high school coverage; I don't know
how the heck I [did it], I never took a class on sponsorship sales in
college and here I am closing like six figures worth of deals, so I really
wanted to take a shot at it.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

12. “I had a chance to hitch a ride with a company called Hudl. I was
there for four years…At its core, Hudl is a hosting platform for game
film. That's what it was always built on. I think what really allowed
Hudl to scale very quickly, it seemed like within a year they went from
little market share to 99%, was the highlight creation tool. When I
played high school football, if we wanted to get scout film from our
opponent, somebody had to go meet somebody at a diner parking lot
at, like, 11:00 at night, right? And then you trade the film out the back
of somebody's trunk there, and then you go back and you watch the
tape, and you pray that it's not the Blair Witch Project, right? Like,
you pray that it’s not shaky camera.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

13. “Hudl’s disruption was digitizing all that. And they weren't the first to
digitize, but they were the best at the time. So now when coaches
exchange film, they basically hit a couple buttons. The highlight
creation tool, part of it was critical and it completely democratized
recruiting here in Massachusetts, because a student could just create
their own reel. They made it really intuitive to create and then send it
out to college coaches. So it used to be recruiting around here, you
know, Boston College always got the first pick of the litter of who they
wanted, and then a couple other local schools were fighting for
leftovers. UConn, UMass, whatever, occasionally some kid goes to
Michigan or Syracuse or something like that, Penn State. But that's
kind of how the pecking order was.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

14. “And I'll never forget this, one year early in Hudl’s entry to the Boston
market there was a very talented tight end from a high school south of
Boston who was 6’5” 230 lbs. and in the state championship game at
Gillette Stadium, he had a one handed [Rob] Gronkowski-like catch
down the seam. It was incredible. I think at the time he was
committed to BC, or at least very close to it, and that was the first
highlight on his reel. I want to say two months after that, somehow
Alabama got a hold of that and they literally flew out [assistant coach]
Mario Cristobal just to make sure the kid was actually 6’5” 230 like it
said on his profile, and sure enough, he was.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

15. “So suddenly, overnight, I think two dozen offers came in…like Nick
Saban, Ed Orgeron, guys like that coming up here to look at recruits
because they saw the film. That completely changed the game up
here, and the effects of that are still ongoing. So that was a
democratization of all that. I think USC a couple years ago had a kid
from Alaska starting on defense. That probably doesn't happen 20
years ago. But now with the distribution of film, it really just
democratized how high school athletes are recruited.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

16. “So, I did a lot of the football marketing for them. We used to run
these events every year called Hudl Blitz during Covid, taking the
coaches clinics online, and we got some big names. One year we got
Deion Sanders, another year, John Harbaugh, Jon Gruden. Man,
there were so many amazing projects I worked on. There were some
amazing creators I worked with, coaching influencers. Then a couple
of years ago, a great mentor of mine from the Patriots days, JJ
Alberts, he had been recruited into the world of esports and had
convinced me to take a shot, and I'm glad he did. He's a guy I've been
close with for 15 years now. And, you know, the thing about esports I
just fell in love with instantly was the branding.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

17. “Like, if you look at the Boston Breach, and they're still competing in
the Call of Duty League, their color scheme, like the black and the
neon green, very bright popping green. You know, they have this logo
that's like a mask with an X over one eye. It just looked badass, right?
And I'm looking at them like, if I was working at the Pats, I could
never take a shot like this branding-wise, but in in esports, taking
shots, taking risks is kind of the expectation, right? At least it is in
America, it's a kind of a infantile industry still. It's ascending. It was
one of the coolest brands I've ever worked on. The way I always
described it is like, you ever watch the show, Mr. Robot? Rami Malek,
it kind of gave off that kind of vibes. You know, the Mr. Robot hacker
vibes.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

18. “And here I am today on the college esports scene at Endicott. I teach
esports marketing here at Endicott. I approached the growth of this
place from sort of a content standpoint, marketing, let's work on our
students here, trying to learn how to develop their own brands,
because that's the one edge that I think esports has over other
industries is the entrepreneurial spirit, right? If you want to thrive in
this industry, you got to learn how to brand yourself, how to sell
yourself. We have a sport management major here and an esports
minor, so curriculum-based…I've had to reinvent myself a hundred
times over, man. But I found that the rules that allowed me to ascend
15 years ago, it might be a different coat of paint, but it's still the same
fundamentals.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

19. On how Brendan navigated social media and fan engagement during
his time as a journalist with ESPN and The Globe
“One thing right off the bat, we owned Twitter at ESPN Boston. Like,
we made it a point to really own social media. It's where the audience
was. You know, when you're covering high school sports, your general
demographic is 14 to 24. That's where they were. When I got the job, I
think I had 400 Twitter followers. By halfway through year two, I had
15,000. So many people out there will tell you these little hacks and
visibility and blah, blah, blah. Man, the secret to growth is just tweet
your ass off. I swear to you, too many people put too much science
into this stuff.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

20. “Like, be everywhere, be present and do it in a way that invites your
followers to feel like they're part of the action. So live tweeting from
games, showcasing the fans, just interacting with everybody that
comments on us, going back and forth. Don't sling it. You know, don't
sling mud. Stay out of the mud. Be a place of positivity. But yeah,
making people who follow me on social media feel like they were
there at the game. That's the biggest thing you can do, give that slice
of life.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

21. On where the fans were when Brendan was starting offw ith ESPN Boston
“I'll say, even getting back with social media. This was also at a time when
message boards were [big], and I know they still are. Message boards were
very much a thing in web 2.0, so I made sure all of our stuff was getting
promoted on the message boards, even with social media, like, because
those are where the hardcores are, right? And if you get the hardcores,
they're going to be the ones that are going to be doing the quote unquote
free marketing for you. They're going to be doing the word of mouth. I
mean, think about it, right? I mean, think about how many billions of
dollars are spent in this country to get people to talk about things and if
you can get these hardcore loyalists, these high school football fanatics to
talk about you for free without any sort of urging at you.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

22. “We also did it from a statewide lens, where the Boston media
typically would cover only eastern Massachusetts, and that's how they
ranked everything. So [we said] let's rank the Springfield teams up
against the Boston teams and get people talking about it. Every week,
even if we were wrong, some guy from Brockton [would say] How can
you say Springfield Central is better than Brockton? Who do they play
out there? Longmeadow? Like, that gets people talking. It was a
different perspective, right? We had all state teams instead of all
district teams. Because again, people are tribal. They think their little
spot on Earth is better than everyone else's spot on Earth.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

23. “And when you scale that a little bit more to the entire state, where
two thirds of the population is in the metro Boston area — so they
don't always have great perspective on what's going on out in
Worcester and Springfield and the Berkshires — so here I am driving
out there with my own two eyes and taking my shot at it and
understanding that, Hey, look, safe is the riskiest position of all, so
let's go for it. And again, I had a great boss, Fred Kirsch, we had a
shared vision about this [to] do it from a statewide lens. Get people
talking.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

24. On discovering and activating the fan bases and tribes in esports
“I'm kind of old school, but at Oxygen [Esports], we owned two
esports facilities, one in North Bergen, New Jersey, and then one right
at Patriot Place, right across from the front end of Gillette Stadium. It
used to be a concert hall and it was re-outfitted for gaming PCs, but it
still kept the stage, still had the bar, still had the snack bar, which had
the best rated wings in Foxborough. So I always thought that was a
great challenge, right? Like, what do you mean the best wings in
Foxborough are in some freaking gaming center? Yeah they are. It
had a 4.6 on Yelp, yeah they are…
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

25. “Any fan that showed up at these watch parties that we'd have…we
were one of the few teams in the Call of Duty league that the players
actually trained at the facility. So every month or so, we'd have watch
parties, free to attend, just show up. And any fan that showed up, I
would just give him my cell phone number and say, Hey, text me
anytime. And sometimes they'd text me at 1:00 in the morning,
[relating] to roster movement. Why did you drop this guy? What'd
you think? Oh, I'll ask Murph when I get in in the morning, but I don't
know. I think they thought it was so cool that, like, a director-level
guy was willing to open the book for them and be transparent with
them, and let them feel like they have a seat at the table, let them feel
like this was their home.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

26. “The way I teach marketing here at Endicott, I call it Grateful Dead marketing.
There's been whole case studies, guys with PhDs who have written books about
this stuff, about the brilliance of what they did. At the time that they were
ascending, you know, you went on tour to sell an album, and these guys flipped
the script and they made albums to sell tours. They invited fans to show up and
record the shows at a time when, and obviously still the case [today], where
people are like Hey, don't record. No, they invited the fans to show up and
record. And from that what emerged was this tape trading culture in the
parking lots. Oh, Hey, I got the ‘77 show in Boston, you got the ‘78 show in
Denver? Cool. And then allowing fans, not like big time corporate entities, but
small-time independent artists to take that very iconic Dead branding and put
their own artistic twist on it, like selling their own merch. Like, knowing that
every single collaboration is going to strengthen their own branding.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

27. “You even see that now. One of my favorite t-shirt companies out
there, Homage, they did this NBA Grateful Dead mashup last year.
The Celtics one is literally the leprechaun that's a Grateful Dead bear.
They empowered their most hardcore followers to feel like they had a
stake in the growth of it. So I think when you're building any
community, any size, I'm bullish on micro communities, by the way,
to your point, I do think as people start to understand how easy it is to
just flood the social media channels with hacky AI content that people
like you and I are going to seek out small private communities more
and more.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

28. “So yeah, I do see a lot of opportunity on that end. But I think the
reality is you have to be willing to meet your community where they
are, and for me that includes face to face, text me anytime, you might
piss off my wife, but so be it. Because it makes them feel like they
have a place where they can be themselves and they have a place
where they really actually have an outcome in a thing.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

29. On the rise and regression of the esports investment bubble
“We call it esports winter, and I hear about it every week. But I think also if you
talk to people over in South Korea and ask [about] esports winter they might
say, Well, we're already out of it, right? But they have a 30-year head start on
on us. I think there were a couple factors in play. One, live events are expensive,
right? You think about the setup of a live esports event…it's not like basketball
[where] you can just roll out the ball and have fun. Like, you can't have the
WiFi crap the bed, right? You can't have any sort of server errors, right? You
can't skimp on electricians. You can't skimp on on the unions that set these
things up. Sometimes it can take out many as five days to set up the whole
thing. So that's expensive to put on, and you see a lot of companies putting
these on and they don't always break even.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

30. “I think you alluded to this, like when Overwatch League first formed,
for instance, and you were talking about doing true home and homes.
The infrastructure is not there to do something like that. But where I
do think there is opportunities is, like, a couple years ago, Minnesota
Rokkr, one of the Call of Duty league teams would do these home
series events where they would invite their opponents to come out
and they'd play a bunch of games over the weekend at, like, a 2000-
seat theater, and they'd invite all their fans to come out, and it was a
super cool experience.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

31. “Let me tell you something, man, live esports. I tell people, I'm only
going to have to ask you once, because once you go, I'll never ask you
to go again, right? We just had an awesome event here last month, the
Six Invitational, which is one of the big R6 Siege [events] every year.
First time they've ever done it in Boston, and that was the best crowd
I've ever seen for an esports event in Boston, bar none. So, live events
are freaking special. It's where the casual fan becomes the loyalist.
But they're also expensive to put on, and I don't think the the model
should be totally predicated on selling a bunch of sponsorships either.
So I think it's hard to make money.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

32. “I think, for whatever reason, you sometimes see, orgs leaning, I don't
know if I’d say too heavily or too early into the merch thing, like, Oh,
let's be 100 Thieves and we'll do random drops around Southern
California. We'll do these FOMO events, when you show up and when
they're gone, they're gone. They've been working, like, two decades on
building that. And they thought, we want to be Optic [Gaming].
[They’ve been] doing content since 2006. So, it takes a long time to
build that kind of community. The one thing that this industry could
use more of probably is patience with seeing things out.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

33. “But to your point, right, Covid, everyone's indoors, there's a bubble, you
have some impatient investors looking for a return that that isn't
materializing as quickly as they thought it would or what they were led to
believe it would, and so people start asking questions. It's a complicated
mess. But here's the thing — I have a hard time proselytizing doom about
this whole thing. Let's be honest, whenever Grand Theft Auto VI decides
to come out, that is going to break every single sales record in the history
of gaming. I've said this to 100 people, I've yet to hear someone disagree
that that [game] is going to shatter every sales record in the history of
gaming when it comes out. [EA] College Football ‘25, one of the best
selling sports video games of all time. The first month I think they
onboarded 5 million unique users to their server. They made close to a
half billion dollars within like that first month, I think.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

34. “Like, I have a hard time looking at those numbers and saying this
thing’s in a doom loop. I just think new ideas, and this is a relatively
new idea in America, they take a while to catch on, right? They never
arrive cleanly. But I think if you play the long game — look, these
communities are absolutely amazing. I've worked in the NFL. I've
worked in sports media. I've worked in tech. I've never met a
community like esports that's been as inclusive and open sourced. It's
incredible. So I just think if you believe in that community, you're
going to thrive in the long term because the numbers are pointing
away.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

35. “My friend Chris Postell, esports founder, does a lot of really good
research on the college scene. 90%, or close to it, of students entering
college are are gamers, whether they want to admit it out loud or not.
77% of of millennial parents, I forget where I pulled this data from,
play with their kids at least once a week. II play Super Smash Bros
with my daughters every night, and it's it's awesome. Like, this stuff is
not going away. But one of the other problems I see, go back to the
basketball logic. No one owns basketball, right? Somebody owns
Fortnite, and they can change the rules, pull the plug, whatever,
whenever they want, and that's terrifying for a lot of third parties
trying to work within the esports ecosystem.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

36. On the nature of esports fandom across titles
“One of the difficulties with this is you cannot, if you own multiple different title
orgs, you can't treat the fans with the same behavior. Overwatch fans are different
from Call of Duty fans, right? R6 Siege [Rainbow Six] fans are different from
Fortnite fans, right? Different age demographics, different behaviors. You know,
one of the real revelations — I'm a big email marketing guy, and email marketing
should be mobile first, just out of safety, right? You should always assume that two
thirds of your audience is just going to open on their phone instead of on a desktop.
Well, the Overwatch fans we marketed to overwhelmingly opened on their desktop.
That's probably because they're gaming, right? That's probably where they're
active, right? So I think for traditional marketing, that's kind of a hard concept to
understand that they might not always be mobile-first. You should always still treat
it as mobile-first with the orientation, but you know what I'm saying.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

37. “So, yes, they're definitely different behaviors, and this is why I think
the franchise model runs into problems. Even at Boston Breach, like
the amount of fans we had from all over the country, not just Boston,
so to say we’re Boston's team, well, this guy's a fan of the Breach
because they signed a certain player, right? With the Uprising, we had
fans in Omaha, Nebraska, because of players that we signed that they
had followed when they played Overwatch. That's also difficult to
understand. That's why I'm not so bullish on the franchise scene.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

38. “Like, I ask my esports students here what orgs they like and they’re
like, ‘Oh I like Red Bull OG because I like their League of Legends
team. Nothing to do with where they're based out of. I love watching
live Rainbow Six, by the way, because you asked me my favorite sport,
I'm a football guy through and through, and I love watching the
interaction with the coaches and the players because the guy's got a
headset and a clipboard, he’s treating it like the way Josh McDaniels,
the offensive coordinator, would talk to his quarterbacks. You know,
he's got the big dinner menu like Andy Reid. I just love that.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

39. “We had a Rainbow Six team here last month, boot camp in our lab at
Endicott, Team Secret, and they're studying 200 different plays that
they may execute when it comes time to the tournament. They might
use 20% of the playbook, similar to the NFL. But yeah, there's a lot of
thinking that goes in there, so I love watching that because of how
much strategy there is in it. It feels like the ultimate chess game.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

40. On strategies to make fans of a team fans of their other team’s other titles
“It's not like college sports, right? I'm a UMass grad. I get fired up if the
women's lacrosse team makes a run in the NCAA tournament. Like, our
hockey team won the national title a couple years ago. I'm fired up about
that. We're rejoining the MAC in football and they just released a
schedule. We have four games of MACtion, the midweek games. I'm fired
up about that. It's different in esports, and I think where you see the most
successful orgs in North America, they really only pick a couple titles.
They're not spraying 7 or 8 titles and seeing which one sticks. They're
very intentional, very deliberate about which titles they pick and
understanding those audiences. Like I always say in my classes here,
don't spray and pray, point and shoot.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

41. “Going back to the Grateful Dead marketing, I love this concept that
Kevin Kelly, the great entrepreneur, wrote years ago about 1000 true
fans. One of his all-time most read blog posts is about this idea that if
you have 1000 fans that spend $100 a year on your work, that's six
figures in your pocket. So it's more worth it to focus in on those
loyalists because they're going to end up spending more money with
you over the long run. So, similar concept, right? Again, you talk
about micro communities. So I think you're better off really focusing
on a couple titles, and that's where they have a lot of success. 100
Thieves focuses on on a couple titles.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

42. “You might see their Call of Duty team, their Valorant team, but
they're not going after every flavor of the month. Marvel Rivals is a
big talk right now. Is this something that's gonna fizzle out, or is it
going to stay consistent because you're seeing usage drop off? I'm
bullish long term, I just think the IP behind Marvel is such a monster
that you can financially sustain that, but who knows? Does that mean
we should start a Marvel Rivals team tomorrow? I don't know. Like,
we're trying to figure that out here at Endicott. Like, what are we
going to do about Marvel Rivals in the fall? Because it's coming like a
hurricane.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

43. “From the college lens, I think if you talk to the directors at the most
sustainable college esports programs, they are equal parts casual
versus competitive. Some of these bigger schools, like you look at an
Oklahoma or a Michigan State or something like that, they may have
a couple hundred thousand members of their Discord community and
only a couple dozen scholarship athletes, and those scholarships
might be like a partial, like a $2500, $5000. Here at Endicott, we're
really trying to grow the women's side. But a big part of my success
here is measured by our events, are we getting casual fans to come in
here? Are we getting people to sign up for our memberships to the
lab?
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

44. “I'll tell you an example here because he's sitting directly to my left
here. So our lab that you're looking at right here, we're in the center of
the student union, which is the most heavily-trafficked area on
campus. Right above the lab here is a Starbucks, and our Fortnite
team went from three members in the fall, we had a very talented —
he's a captain of our Fortnite team president resource management
club. He's unreal, ranked, he's good enough to win cash cups. It was
him and we really struggled to find bodies, so it was a co-ed team, a
female player who was not ranked as highly as him and then another
one of his buddies.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

45. “He basically carried [the team], he accounted for 85% of the damage,
we ended up finishing top 15 ECAC out of like 150 some-odd schools.
All the Starbucks kids are on our Fortnite team now, because they
were working at Starbucks. I'd come by every day, get a coffee, they’d
come down here to their lunch break and they're playing on the PCs
between classes, and one of them, Sam, just got a Victory Royale last
night for the first time all season. Six months ago I was just bumping
into him every day, buying a coffee from him at Starbucks. So the
casuals, as they enjoy this place more, they're going to want to learn
how they can take the next step, right?”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

46. On whether participation in gaming leads to esports fandom and
“I'll just say it from our lens. I've just kind of looked at it like I don't have the
luxury of just offering kids scholarships to build teams. I have to adjust based
on what people are feverish about here. We didn't have this lab last year, it was
only opened in September and we were competing collegiately despite not
having our own lab and no on-campus facility and no gaming PCs here. So we
had seven kids on the Overwatch team lugging their own PCs from home,
catching it on the Wi-Fi and hoping it doesn't crap out in the middle of a match.
We made the round of 16 of the ECAC playoffs. We had players of the month.
We had a finalist for player of the season. We beat a team in our first playoff
game, we took a team that hadn't gone to map five all season to their first map
five and they were just going by the seat of their pants. It was like a labor of love
for them.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

47. On whether participation in gaming leads to esports fandom and
“I'll just say it from our lens. I've just kind of looked at it like I don't have the
luxury of just offering kids scholarships to build teams. I have to adjust based
on what people are feverish about here. We didn't have this lab last year, it was
only opened in September and we were competing collegiately despite not
having our own lab and no on-campus facility and no gaming PCs here. So we
had seven kids on the Overwatch team lugging their own PCs from home,
catching it on the Wi-Fi and hoping it doesn't crap out in the middle of a match.
We made the round of 16 of the ECAC playoffs. We had players of the month.
We had a finalist for player of the season. We beat a team in our first playoff
game, we took a team that hadn't gone to map five all season to their first map
five and they were just going by the seat of their pants. It was like a labor of love
for them.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

48. How pro esports teams think about developing fans
“I think the rules are evergreen. So let me give you my manifesto here. I live by six
rules. We'll go one by one here. Brand makes demand. So what is brand? It's a lot
of things. A lot of sentiments out there. It literally boils down to what are people
saying about you when you're not in the room, what is that reputation? Rule two:
community makes commerce. I mean, that's what we've been talking about. That's
where you're going to make your bones. Story is supreme. I used to say story is
king, I want to be more gender-inclusive. But like, the most consistent stocks on
Wall Street are the best storytelling companies, right? Who's done it better than
Apple, right? I mean, Nike took a little bit of lumps last year, but like goodness, as a
Celtics fan I just love the Jayson Tatum ‘Don't stop disbelieving’ storyline. As an
aside, the fact that like the Celtics revenge tour is not the dominating storyline in
the NBA this year, you can't complain about the ratings and then not really
acknowledge that.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

49. “So then I say don't spray and pray, point and shoot, like we've been
talking about. Immersions over impressions. And I think when you get
into sponsors and partners, I think they're getting smarter about where
they're spending their marketing and I think impressions aren't enough.
They want to actually see how this is contributing to the to the ROI. I
think just putting awareness plays out there without no actual goals —
let's just raise awareness, I don't know, man, that can get you fired. But if
you can actually point — and how you and that's why you take it a layer
deeper, and that's where I think Fortnite is really brilliant with this
immersive experience stuff we can get in a second, like the more of an
immersive experience you can create, the more they're going to convert.
Immersion is conversion. So let's say immersions over impressions,
right? How can you take that one step further?
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

50. “And the final thing is: sell visions, not delusions. And again, this is where
I think the Overwatch League fumbled the bag is this idea of home and
homes, and we're going to blow it out, it's going to be bigger than the NFL
— it's good. That's a delusion. But where Overwatch Championship Series
I think has a chance, it feels more holistic, like it's going to feel like a
almost a Premier League relegation-promotion kind of system. Like,
anybody can kind of come from the top. That's a system that feels like you
can get behind, it comes from a place of more common sense, more
aligned with how esports fans behave. So those are kind of my six rules
and I think you understand why I think that applies to anything, whether
you're in esports marketing, whether you're in traditional sports
marketing, whether you're selling this chair behind me. You know, I think
that there's some rules that are kind of evergreen here.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

51. On making fans of teams vs. players with the nature of frequent roster
turnover in esports
“I don't have a great solution to the mercenary issue. Like that's a
matter of how they're classified. Are these guys on 1099 or what? But
what you can control is what your leadership is doing. And I like I
think part of the reason why 100 Thieves is one of the most desired
esports brands here in this country is, you know, when their CEO
‘Nadeshot’ (Matthew Haag) streams, he's answering actual questions
in the chat, like giving people a peek behind how the business of
esports works, and people think that's really cool.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

52. “Another great example of a great org is NRG. They have an awesome
newsletter, they also sunshine a lot of their fan data. If you go to NRG
insights, it's on their website, so they’ll put out infographics every
month about some stuff they found about their fans. One of the most
interesting ones I think they put out in the last couple of years was
about League of Legends, and 40% of their League of Legends fans
who've become fans in the last two years, were first introduced to it
not through playing the game itself, but the content, including that
awesome Netflix show that they have, Arcane, about League of
Legends.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

53. “So, you know, there's a similar vein with F1, right? One of the most
popular channels for new fan adoption in this country is the Drive to
Survive series on Netflix. But NRG sunshines a lot of their fan data,
and I think that builds a lot of trust with their audience that that's the
way they're thinking about this. So I think you should be having
someone in your leadership being public-facing, talking to the fans,
giving them a seat at the table,making them feel like they're a part of
it. That should just be a given. So that helps against you being at the
mercy of some big name player. Like, that helps the brand be
consistent, so you're not hanging on a whim based on who's signing
where. You have an established brand that's going to stand for some
things.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

54. “You know we're a couple days away from free agency in the NFL and you
hear people around here already being miserable. Well, nobody wants to
come play in Foxboro because it's where the heck is Foxboro? It's cold
here and the taxes suck and all that stuff. But man, the taxes suck in New
York, too. And I mean why are the Buffalo Bills able to attract big names?
Why are the Green Bay Packers you know why. Why do they have a 30-
year season ticket waiting list? It's not like Green Bay is freaking Miami.
And I think, well, you look at their brand, look at the Bills Mafia. Those
fans, they feel like it's their own thing. And you see the love from the
players. You know Josh Allen gets engaged to an A-list Hollywood actress
and someone puts a billboard up in Buffalo congratulating them on their
engagement. Like, they don't do that in Boston.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

55. “So that Bills mafia thing, and full disclosure my in-laws are from
Western New York so I've been hearing about this whole mystique
since I started dating my wife 12 years ago. The first five years of my
marriage was great, then they drafted Josh Allen, now it sucks. But
yes, don't you look at the Bills Mafia, don't you look at the
cheeseheads in Green Bay and think despite the terrible weather and I
don't know if it's a great tax haven, they're going to thrive long term
because of that community.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

56. On the pathway for esports vis-à-vis social media
“You mentioned Discord. That is a core element of any strategy in
esports. When you talk about the message boards, we talk about the
hardcore, like that's where I think you're going to find your highest
percentage of hardcore fans. I'm in way too many Discord
communities as it is. Like, this is where they are. And when we talk
about private communities and seeking out micro communities…So
one thing, I think I'll borrow our analogy, I was told years ago from
one of my mentors about the Celtics. For instance, okay, 99% of
Celtics fans are never actually going to see a game at the Garden,
right?
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

57. “Their fan base is global. It's massive. Almost half their fans are
outside of the United States, and that tracks with the Lakers, but —
and this is where the Celtics were geniuses, way ahead of their time is
because they really loaded up on content early and social media
managers, because they know that every single piece of every slice of
life they capture of a Jayson Tatum, of a Jaylen Brown — that is going
to strengthen someone's relationship para-socially halfway across the
world. And they may not buy a ticket to the Garden, but they'll buy
merch, they'll buy other things, they'll feel like they have a vicarious
relationship with these players that they may never meet in real life.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

58. “So a very similar thing follows with esports, with the creators. When
I would ask people at our watch parties like, Dude, you could watch
this from your home on Twitch, why'd you drive three hours from
Maine to come to Foxborough? And [they’d] say, Well, yeah, but you
guys have Methodz (Anthony Zinni) here and I like watching him play
Call of Duty on Twitch. Like that's a real thing. So the more you can
establish relationships with those fans who might not meet you in
person, through content, through the storytelling, that's going to go a
long ways. And again, I pull up the stats of people adopting F1 fandom
through the Netflix show. People wanting to play League of Legends
because they like watching Arcane. Like, it's a real thing.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

59. “So that's where I'd start. Whether the answer is TikTok, Instagram,
whatever. Here's the thing: whether a TikTok or whatever survives,
thrives, whatever, what people are missing is the idea of why it was
good in the first place. It's this idea that you can learn a lot in a 15
second video, and today's consumers get a lot out of what you would
call micro-bite content, right? So whether the answer is going on
LinkedIn, going on TikTok, whatever, it's just the idea that the more
of a relationship you can establish with these people through your
content, and I think it's easier than ever to establish that with the For
You feeds now, where it's not so much predicated on who you follow. I
just think that's going to be the way to go.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

60. Brendan’s favorite story he worked on for the Boston Globe and also the favorite
story he worked on with ESPN Boston
“I still go back to this one story at The Globe. I followed the local high school
basketball team the entire day of the state final, Watertown High School. I got to be
in the locker room with them, and it was just kind of one of those day in the life
stories. I got to learn some really awesome backstories with these guys and how
much something like a little high school basketball state title actually meant to
their lives. The point guard, I learned, was an adopted orphan from Ethiopia; at
five years old, [he] was selling gum off the street car to support his family, and then
he was adopted by a couple. Then another player on the team, his dad had been in
prison for ten years and basketball was how he coped with everything growing up
in kind of a rough home. The great thing about high school sports is there's a story
like that in every community, some really encapsulating human interest. So I go to
the human interest pieces I did for The Globe like that were just amazing.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

61. “ESPN, how can you not go — I covered two Stanley Cups; in 2013,
just absolutely amazing. Just covering any sort of final: NBA Finals,
Super Bowl, World Series, Stanley Cup, the pageantry, the everything,
it's just an unbelievable experience. I think probably the best, my
most memorable Bruins game I can think of from my time, it was the
first game after the Marathon bombing when Rene Rancourt, the
anthem singer, dropped the mic and 18,000 fans on their feet sang
the anthem. I think I actually put my head down and cried a little bit
standing in the Zamboni entrance trying to get a picture of the ice.
Those are the ones you remember most closely.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

62. The most impressive high school football player Brendan saw in person
“I always think of AJ Dillon at Lawrence Academy, who's a monster for
the Packers, but I'm going to go with the highest paid offensive guard
in the NFL right now, Chris Lindstrom. Shepard Hill High School,
Dudley, Massachusetts, this guy, the reason I say he's most impressive,
this guy was 230 lbs. in high school ragdolling guys that were 100
pounds heavier than him. He was what you would call country-strong.
And, you know, his dad is in the Hall of Fame at BU, his uncle played
for the Chiefs for a decade. He had some pedigree, but he was faster
than his own running backs and his running backs ended up running
track in college.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

63. “There's literally plays [where] he's sprinting downfield faster than
his running backs, kicking out somebody 30 yards downfield. He had
an after-the-whistle mean streak to him, like, choirboy take home to
meet your parents, but boy he was going to he was going to chip, get
into you after the whistle. He only had one offer coming out of high
school and it was BC [Boston College]. I just think people were
nervous about the size, which is ridiculous because in his first month
at BC, I think he put on 20 lbs. of muscle and he started as a true
freshman from day one, 50 straight games or whatever. And he's the
highest paid offensive guard in the NFL now, he's a back to back All-
Pro for the Falcons. He also played tennis in high school, so his
footwork was phenomenal.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

64. The video game that Brendan was best at growing up and the one he’s
best at now
“As much as I loved to say GoldenEye, I was unbeatable as Captain
Falcon in Super Smash Brothers, the original one for Nintendo 64.
Now, when I have time, I like to think I've gotten pretty good at
Fortnite. I'll never win a tournament or anything like that, but it's
definitely the game I have most fun with, and I've gotten best at in
recent years.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

65. The number one tip Brendan would give today to an aspiring journalist
“Lean in. The one great thing about Covid for me is it completely
eradicated any irrational fears I might have about reaching out to
somebody cold and just saying, Hey, I heard you're the guy behind this
cool project I saw, wondering if I can ask some questions? You would be
surprised what you get just by asking, honestly. I couch this as [Covid-
driven], because that's when all these networking events started going
virtual and and it became easier for me to just message people like, Hey, I
saw you speak, I want to ask you some questions. Like, if I had met these
people in person, I'm boxing somebody out at the end of the stage trying
to get their attention, whereas if I can reach out to them virtually, I can
get an hour of their time. So lean in. Don't be afraid.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

66. “I'd also say this: get your reps and don't really care about who it's for,
what it's for. And I'm not saying work for free, right? Everybody needs to
get paid. But think about it from the lens of of you're getting reps because
you need reps, right? Everybody starts small somewhere. I started as a 17
year old answering the phones at my local newspaper, The Gardner News,
and they let me write a couple stories every now and then. Everybody
starts somewhere small. Just get your reps and really also focus on
getting good mentorship, whatever your first stop is. There's a lot of great
mentors, a lot of great editors. When you take the credential out of where
you're working, a lot of great mentors and places you might least expect
it. And when you get to my age and you've got bad habits, they're harder
to unlearn than if you were in your 20s. So those are the three things I
would say.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

67. The gaming title with the most die-hard fans
“I might start a war with this one. I know, Oh, League of Legends, they
did this, they did that. They got Lil Nas X playing their championship
game. Those Rainbow Six Siege fans that I saw last month in Boston
are something — and if you're familiar with the game, Rainbow Six is
the whole franchise is based off a Tom Clancy novel, The Rainbow Six,
about a group of counterterrorism experts. It's a tactical military game.
So I guess what I'm saying is, imagine the cosplaying that goes on at a
Rainbow Six event. It's something, but they're fun. I feel like that's a
fan base that's edgy without being totally toxic, and that's a difficult
line to toe sometimes in gaming. But yeah those guys are awesome.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

68. “One example I can think of is, right before the championship game at
the Six Invitational, they did a state of the union-like unveiling, like
the next iteration of Siege, and they’re sunshining their data, like,
here's how many perma-bans we've done, here's how much we're
cutting down on cheaters. And you start hearing chants, fans chanting
‘F you cheaters,’ clap clap clap clap. They're awesome. I love those
fans and I don't even play the game, I just love watching it. So that
would be my case.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

69. The college with the best esports program in the country
“There's a couple directions I'm going to go. I think you look at
Syracuse, just built their facility that opened in January, that just
reset the game. I'm going to make a shout to my guy Doc Haskell over
at Boise State University, they have a really impressive program, and
that's a guy who, man, every conversation with him, it’s like going to
Planet Dagobah to talk to Yoda. He's just so wise, he's such full of
wisdom. And he's got a great philosophy with recruiting. That's a
program that really does it the right way.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

70. “I'm going to give a shout to the University of Akron, I think they do
some really unique stuff there that's great. I'm going to give a shout
out to my guys at Shenandoah. We just hired one of their grad
assistants to be an analyst for us on our Overwatch team, and my
team has consistently said it's unlike any vod review they've ever done
in their life. So that's a program that really equips kids to to
contribute beyond just gaming in so many ways. So I got to give a
major shout out to my guys at Shenandoah University down in
Virginia.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

71. The esports team and esports player whose social media we should go check
out now and why
“I like what 100 Thieves does on socials. There's so many directions I could go
with this one. I know we've been talking about those guys a lot, but they really
do great stuff. I think, not agnostic of gaming specific, but Red Bull, just
everything Red Bull does with their Instagram, all their different channels. It's
so next level. Just the stunts they do and Red Bull is unique in that it kind of
runs what I was talking about, impressions and immersions. They're really
about impressions and what's going to get eyeballs. They're Red Bull, they can
get away with that, but that's really what they're going for. What that does and
how it fuels creativity with the content they put out, I think really says a lot. So
I would lean into anything Red Bull with what they do. They're one of the
standard bearers in this industry.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

72. The best meal to get in the greater Boston area and where
to get it
“First things first, I'm going to say something that's going
to get me smoked here, but I actually think Connecticut's
got better food than Boston. And that will get you like
beat up six ways to Sunday around here. But we're here in
the North Shore. Food Network is always in Beverly at
some different shops somewhere. I'm going to give two
quick shout outs to two places down the road from here
at Endicott. One is Nick's Roast Beef, the original North
Shore roast beef. If you go to North Shore in
Massachusetts, there's all these amazing little roast beef
sandwich chains, but Nick's is the standard bearer, in my
opinion. And you got to do it three ways. So a three way
roast beef is mayo, cheese, and barbecue sauce.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

73. “Then the other one I'm gonna give a
shout out is a sub shop in downtown
Beverly. It's absolutely amazing called
Super Sub. think they're steak bomb is
better than anything you can find in
Philadelphia, I swear to you. And then
I'm going to give one more shout out to
my old stomping grounds at UMass,
Antonio's Pizza. What I just said about
Connecticut, this might actually be the
best slice in New England.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

74. The most compelling or important esports story or narrative that
doesn't get enough visibility
“I think people need to start paying more attention to just the growth
of the women's side of gaming. And there's a lot of us. Look, our
student body here at Endicott is more than two thirds female. You
know, we have a very robust nursing program here, so that fuels a lot
of that, but women game too, and they have great, amazing stories.
One of my biggest focuses here is growing the women's side of
esports, and we don't talk about the women's side enough. There's a
lot of women in this industry doing amazing things.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

75. Brendan’s Mount Rushmore of video games
“Number one is GoldenEye. It's the reason we're all here. Then I'll go —
the first game I ever fell in love with as a kid is Sonic the Hedgehog, and
we talk about storytelling, and my kids now are in love with Sonic the
way I was years ago and it's because of those movies with Jim Carrey.
I'm going to go Tony Hawk Pro Skater. Look, that single handedly
rocket shipped the whole skateboarding industry. No joke. Same with
GoldenEye. If it weren't for GoldenEye, I don't think the James Bond
franchise would be what it is today. Case in point, that game comes out,
and then two months later Tomorrow Never Dies is the number one
selling movie in the country. And it's a very stupid, terrible movie.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

76. “The fourth one, I think historians are going to be very kind to
Fortnite. I really think that the model is a great example for the
future, and I could go on a two hour tangent about that, but I think
that game flipped the script on what a first person shooter could be.
When you think about the perceptions of first person shooters, the
violence and stuff — and just completely flip the script on that and
really open a lot of eyes to why it's not just products that win, but it's
product ecosystems that win. And I think Fortnite has probably the
best ecosystem out there for gaming.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

77. Brendan’s Social/Digital Media All-Star to Follow
“I'm going to give a couple shout outs. One, if you're in marketing and
you're not subscribing to Seth Godin's daily newsletter, you're missing
out. That should be a no brainer. I love what my guys at Front Office
Sports do with their daily newsletter. That's what a great newsletter
should look like. I'm going to give a shout out, again if you're in
marketing, you're not following this guy Dave Gearhart on LinkedIn I
think you're missing out on great conversations. He's mostly focused on
B2B, but let me tell you, B2B is the best baptism in marketing if you're
just getting into marketing because it's so relationship intensive, and he's
dropping truth bombs all the time there that I screenshot and capture
and put in my swipe file.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

78. Where to find Brendan and Endicott on digital/social media
Brendan is @BHallWrites across social
And follow @EndicottESports, including their podcast, Gullcast,
across podcast platforms and YouTube, Twitch (live every Tuesday
nights) and Substack
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall

79. @njh287; www.dsmsports.net
Thanks again to Brendan for being so generous with his time to share
his knowledge, experience, and expertise with me!
For more content and episodes, subscribe to the podcast, follow me
on LinkedIn and on Twitter @njh287, and visit www.dsmsports.net.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 292: Brendan Hall