How EssentiallySports’ creator program benefits both sides of the equation

As creators rise, publishers are finding that they can partner with creators to produce original content and generate value for both sides of the equation.

Over the past year, the sports news publication EssentiallySports has employed creators to make in-house video and editorial content around major tentpole sporting events — and thus far, the experiment has paid off, according to numbers shared by EssentiallySports co-founder and head of audience growth Suryansh Tibarewal during a talk at this week’s Digiday Publishing Summit in Miami. 

In July, for example, EssentiallySports hired a top women’s basketball player, Natasha Howard, to create editorial content around the WNBA All-Star Game, including a letter to Howard’s younger self that Tibarewal said went viral among older readers. During the game, EssentiallySports’ newsletter open rate spiked from roughly 38 percent to 49 percent, with click-through rates increasing by over 50 percent and CPMs rising accordingly, per Tibarewal. Search traffic to Natasha-Howard-related articles on EssentiallySports spiked by 72 percent before and after the event, with EssentiallySports recording a 25 percent increase in average clicks per user across its women’s-sports-focused “She Got Game” newsletters during the campaign week. 

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