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Launched in 2021, YouTube Shorts, a vertical short-form video feature, has added to the platform’s range of offerings for sports stakeholders. One surprising benefit is its ability to bring in new audiences. Millet pointed to Shorts’ ability to reach a new Warriors audience: 80% of total YouTube views are male users, but Shorts views skew 78% female. 

Lavine said the Chargers’ subscriber growth has “skyrocketed” with the help of Shorts, which the team started to consistently prioritize in December. The short vertical format allows the Chargers to “get reach and get to peoples’ phones quicker than a long-form video,” he said.

The Chargers’ two most popular Shorts feature a young fan, dubbed King Aidan, who initially gained notoriety after ripping his shirt off during a home game on Nov. 27. Both videos have collectively driven over 18 million views and at least 14,000 new subscribers to date.

“If you’re a Charger fan and you want to find any video of a press conference, media availability, a highlight or a feature, you're finding it on YouTube all in one place,” Lavine said. “It’s on a little playlist for you.”

Global fandom and revenue opportunities through YouTube

Aside from its versatility, YouTube offers teams and leagues a major opportunity to reach an untapped global audience ready to consume more football and basketball-related programming. 

Stuchin teased a new original YouTube show, which “will target an international audience,” as well as plans to engage top YouTubers outside the United States to “expose their audiences to NFL and football,” starting with the upcoming season. 

In May, the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons secured international marketing rights to Germany as part of the league’s global markets program due, in part, to noticeable consumption patterns overseas. Across the Falcons’ website, mobile app and YouTube, Germany ranked No. 2 or No. 3 “in terms of audience size and traffic from outside the United States,” said Scott Kegley, vice president of digital strategy for AMB Sports and Entertainment, parent organization of the Falcons. He estimated that 15% of the Falcons’ YouTube audience is international.

Meanwhile, about 70% of the NBA’s YouTube traffic is from outside the United States, with the top international markets including the Philippines, Canada, Brazil and India, according to Bob Carney, the league’s senior vice president of social and digital content. He added that the NBA is deep into an exploratory and testing phase about how artificial intelligence tools can help reach different audiences. For example, the NBA could take a game recap for YouTube and, through artificial intelligence, automatically produce a new script, translate it into 10 different languages and generate a new narration for those languages “to truly localize that for our global audience,” he said.

For the NBA’s Warriors, more than half of their YouTube video views came from outside the United States over the past two seasons. Millet said the team is strategizing ahead of the upcoming campaign about how to maintain the U.S. appeal for its YouTube channel while also reaching a global audience.

“If you’re an out-of-market or out-of-country fan, YouTube is one of the only places where you can watch longer-form content and get more Warriors access,” said Millet, adding that the NBA franchise, like some other sports teams interviewed, are discussing leveraging popular international YouTubers in the future.

The revenue potential on YouTube shouldn’t be ignored either. Millet estimated 70% revenue growth year over year on YouTube, which is the Warriors’ and Chargers’ biggest source of revenue compared with other social media and video platforms, executives said. The Falcons’ saw a 467% spike in year-over-year revenue growth from 2021 to 2022, according to Kegley.

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