I wanted to write a quick article about what the first year of Bettor in Green meant to me. This isn’t going to be a typical sports related article so feel free to click off if you aren’t interested and enjoy my EFL article that came out today or my free agent article coming out tomorrow. If you have been following BIG for awhile or enjoy notes about content creation, enjoy.
The first episode of Bettor in Green aired on November 18th, 2022. It can be a tough watch as it’s really only the second time we had ever been on camera and talking to each other outside of the group chat. Zachs video file corrupted and had to be covered with a static picture. We would have another issue two episodes later as my audio would not record at all and we would have to record the entire video recapping the NFL slate from the beginning around midnight. That was a looong night of editing. My solo outro is jarring to put it nicely and seeing the BIG intro with the initial BIG song makes you feel like you’re in a parallel universe. It was one of the first shows to premiere for Cooper Sports. It quickly became the flagship program for the company but other shows were coming along as well. Ethan had another show he was on that covered College Football called the Cover 2 Podcast which Wyatt hosted. Ethan and Wyatt would go on to appear in the Roundtable Rundown that would be discontinued after 5 episodes.
We would get our first 100 subs two weeks after the Superbowl. Green Live started the following week and there have been 4+ Lives every week since then. Over the first year we haven’t missed a single weekly episode or Live. Zach would appear in one more episode after the 100 sub special before letting us know that he needed to step away as he wanted to focus his energy elsewhere. Ethan reached out to Wyatt who he had worked with on previous projects and invited him to fill in. Wyatt was on BIG the very next episode and hasn’t missed a beat since. Wyatt has filmed with the guys from two separate apartments, his car, and his parents home. It doesn’t matter what state he’s in. He was even writing articles for the website from Hawaii on his honeymoon.
The first video that received over 1K views was a Short on YouTube “Guessing the Player” video between Ethan and Ben. The next 5 would all gain over 1K as well starting to roll the ball for BIG. The guys were sitting around that area until they reached the 5K mark with a meme of Cam Newton working at McDonalds. The following month, the first round of expansion videos would be released. The Shiners video would reach 10K views on Facebook becoming the first video to get views outside of YouTube. When football season came back around, the channel really started to explode. Wyatt created a fantasy football meme that exploded on TikTok for over 400k views and it was the first video to ever reach 6 digits. Instagram remained mostly stagnant over the first year with about 80 followers. With the combination of Wyatt’s Week 1 Match-Up videos and Ben's Weekly Meme recaps, our Instagram content would start to reach a larger audience. In our 11th month, we released two memes on Instagram that would go viral reaching a couple million views and skyrocketing to nearly 2k followers.
While it has been a great upward ride so far, it has had its disheartening moments along the way. The first big let down was the Blandino and Blandino short flopping. With the effort and thought that was put in we expected it to be the viral video that launched us onto the for you page for fantasy football fans everywhere. Instead it failed to reach even 200 views. We attempted to coordinate it with other members of the company at the time to help promote it but our attempts fell flat. This was one of the reasons for our eventual split from Cooper Sports as our ideologies were not aligning. The feedback we received from our draft guide was outstanding and we put together a Guide I would feel comfortable going up against any guide/magazine out there. It has the soul of Bettor in Green. High quality, custom graphics with a twist from us that you can’t get anywhere else. The Owner of Draft Kits loved it and gave us some high praise and feedback which was excellent from someone who is currently making it in the fantasy industry. It was disappointing that we didn’t sell more copies after all the hours of hard work and research put in. It wasn’t disappointing from a financial standpoint but from the aspect of it wasn’t used and appreciated nearly as much as it should have been.
Bettor in Green has become my life. If I’m not working on something for BIG I feel like I’m letting the team and the brand down. With Wyatt and Ethans help, we’ve posted 420 YouTube Videos, 530+ Instagram/Facebook posts, and nearly 150 articles (not including the ones on Cooper Sports) in the first 365 days. We’ve recently started adding more segments to our main show as well as starting Getting Technical, Power 5, Tapping Vegas, and more currently in development. We have also had 3 St. Jude fundraisers so far and are getting set for our 2nd Annual Christmas Fundraiser. We fell just short of $1,000 to charity this year through all of our events but it is a fantastic start for a podcast that isn’t monetized in any form yet. I don’t have a degree in content creation but Indeed can kiss my ass with what I’ve put out this year as a person working a full time job. I made content for 9 years in a private FB group and eventually decided I wanted to share it with a larger audience. I started the GMReport and made content for a few months publicly before turning my focus to Bettor in Green and putting my personal brand on the backburner. I feel like we have accomplished so much and I’ve learned and done things this year that I never knew I would be able to do. I have to also mention that Ethan's girlfriend Ali has been integral in growing the brand, as she took a step out of her comfort zone to run our merch store. With Thanksgiving this week, I’m thankful to have another year of Bettor in Green. I’m even more thankful for having loyal guys like Ethan and Wyatt who show up every week and put in the work beside me to help continue to grow this awesome brand.
My goals for this upcoming year are to really build on the foundation we have set. With multiple shows, the year outside of football season should be much different. It will be more segmented to fans of particular sports than a weekly umbrella show. I would love to and we should reach the monetization levels on all our platforms to help us grow and offset the cost of everything we have put in to make BIG what it is today. I would love for us to continue to publish articles and even publish more as we start to really get into a rhythm and a routine.
Thank you for being a part of the first year as we TRULY appreciate every single person who watches, reads, and follows our content. Thank you to our guests Katlynn, Noel, Bobby, and Aaron. Those are personally some of our favorite videos, after getting to hang out with you all. Thank you to our families and friends who have supported us and had words of encouragement for us over this past year. And finally, thank you to the women behind the scenes who sacrifice time for us and help us, so we can make this all possible. Ali, Erin, and my wonderful wife Kathryn, Thank You.
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