Closing the Raptors Republic chapter of my life
Raptors Republic was acquired by Better Collective last week marking an end to my involvement with the company I founded in 2008 alongside Sam Holako, Brandon Larabie, Scott Phillips (rest in peace) and Josh Budd.
The decision to sell the company was a culmination of a few things:
Our expenses (primarily salary) were too high and we simply didn't have the capital and revenue to sustain it. It would require an investment at a medium-term loss for us to continue producing the level of quality that readers were accustomed to seeing. The paywall did keep us afloat for the last two years without which we would have folded two years ago. However, it doesn't do enough to cover the plans we had for growth.
There was very little desire to dive into gambling products to make up for the lost revenue due to the industry-wide decline in display ad rates. We experimented with The Score and Fan Duel for short-term lucrative partnerships and are thankful to those companies for trusting RR to represent their brand. However, for us to truly make money using that approach we would need to have pushed gambling products/betting much more than we did, and I alongside others did not feel comfortable with that. I am a Muslim, and gambling is explicitly prohibited for all the obvious reasons.
I started a new company, jumpcomedy.com and this has taken up all my "free" time. I simply can't do justice to two major things in my life. Though I haven't created much content for RR over the last couple years (I did nail the Dick pick), the maintenance and management of the site still took up time that I didn't have. Something had to give.
Sports, for me, just didn't feel important enough of a thing in my life at this point. The Gaza genocide has left me disgusted with the world we live in. The media's complicity in the dehumanization of Muslims and brown people is alarming. Step 1: label as terrorists, Step 2: kill. The media's responsibility is to prosecute the people in power, and that's not happening. I hate to draw a parallel here, but the reason I started RR was to prosecute the Raptors power brass who were not being critiqued at the time. What I see right now is the media trying to sell a genocide. It's gross.
The "management team" of myself, Sam and Nils, collectively didn't have the time to dedicate to this project anymore. We are all in our mid-40s now and things change as time passes. New priorities pop up and you start becoming more critical of where you spend your time and what you get out of it. RR just wasn't giving back enough as much as it was taking, and we're not talking finances.
We want the brand to thrive and though we've had at least three offers to buy the company, this one felt right because Better Collective shared some of the same principles as us: focus on quality and editorial autonomy. This coupled with the investment they'll put into the brand made us feel right about this move. We don't need to possess something to love it.
Raptors Republic was my baby. The name was something I came up with after looking at a few other options like Raptorium and Raptorhollica (I love Metallica), but Josh liked the alliteration of RR and that was it. Brandon Larabie designed the logo which I loved from day one and never changed despite a few "experts" telling me it was a bad design. I liked the Bulls logo because it has never changed, I wanted the same for RR. The name raptorsrepublic also perfectly fit the maximum Twitter length allowed at the time which sealed the deal.
We had started the company because we weren't happy with what the media was offering, and felt like they were infantilizing basketball fans, who were ready for more nuanced analysis than knowing what the score at the end of each quarter was. Our focus was always on telling the truth, produce quality analysis and do it in clear language that speaks to the fans. That can be seen in our early work when I was the de facto editor, onward to Blake Murphy and then to Louis Zatzman. Even when we were under considerable financial pressure to produce clickbait, we resisted and I'm glad we did, because if we had gone down the route of si.com, we'd have been dead a long time ago.
I will let the readers decide on the legacy of Raptors Republic, but here are some things I truly enjoyed and learned a lot from:
Starting the Raptors Weekly podcast, which myself, William Lou, and Andrew Thompson and carried on for a number of years. This was by far the most fun I had. I used to record these podcasts in an unfinished basement while hiding from my kids as they were both very young and prone to outbursts. I became an expert at Adobe Audition and learned a ton about podcasts.
Organizing the 3-on-3 tournament for about 11 years while meeting people I never would have otherwise crossed paths with. Just dealing with the venues, refs, insurance etc. was a lot of work, but it was all worth it when people used to come up to me and say how much the tournament meant to them. We had people coming from far away places to play. It made me feel really good.
Hosting the watch parties and draft at Philthy McNasty's on King St., Sports Center Cafe on St. Clair, Three Brewers at Dundas Square, Sportsnet Bar and Grill etc. Those were always a blast, especially in the late 2000s. Brandon, Colin and Trevor where the main guys behind this, and this is a time of my life that I'll never forget. I remember challenging the chef at Philthy's to deathstar wings and regretting it instantly.
Producing the amount of talent that we did, both camera-facing and behind the scened (which most people don't know about). This is especially true for working with the interns who then went onto have FT jobs in the industry. I didn't really like being called the "905 of media" but it was true. We couldn't afford to pay people once they became really good, but I'm glad we were able to make a difference in so many people's lives.
Writing all the technology tooling which fuelled the site; the server maintenance, the early stats tooling, Quick Reaction generator, Morning Coffee generator, even dealing with those damn malware attacks was a great learning. I'm a technologist by profession and do this for a living, but RR exposed me to a whole underbelly of website maintenance that I wouldn't have been exposed to otherwise. Just managing those dedicated servers in Germany during peak times was an experience worth remembering.
Writing comprehensive game reports till 3am in the morning because I wanted our recap to be unquestionably the best one out there. I refused to be outdone here by the mainstream media here, and firmly believe that that early work of investing in quality and timely recaps built our early brand.
Starting the YouTube channel which is now flourishing; we were late to video but have done well to catch up in that space, and now have one of the best Raptors YT channels. One of my big regrets is not jumping on YT much earlier than we did, but at the time we just didn't have the capacity to do all the podcast stuff and also do video. If I had to do it all over again, I'd invest more in video.
Hosting the RR staff parties and hanging out with Louis Zatzman when everyone had gone home. Dong shrooms with Barry Taylor pretty much every time we had one. The Christmas Parties were a blast and one of the few chances all year to see the staff in full colour. Everyone was invited, past staff, current staff and even stragglers. Those were nights on College St. that won't be replicated again.
Seeing RR staff be at the press conference and always ask intelligent questions. Though we never got first tier access, I feel we deserved it because we covered the Raptors better than anyone else. Unfortunately, MLSE always had a hostile relationship with everyone but a few media people and, expectedly, we were not amongst the inner circle.
Doing the Rap Up post-game show with Sahal Abdi and Oren Weisfeld. This was our first live stream show and learned a lot about YouTube streaming and OBS Studio. The show was a blast until we kept getting copyright striked for playing clips.
Getting an email from the Raptors VP of Media Relations about me referencing Leo Rautins and Matt Devlin doing lines before the game, because that's what they sounded like. That was the reason they gave for not giving us a press pass early.
Reading the comment section in Quick Reaction posts is the cathartic release we all seek after painful losses. Watching a huge Raptors community speak openly and emotionally made me feel like I wasn't alone in how I felt and that my frustration had a home.
Attending All-Star weekend with Blake and watching him writing three posts in draft mode for all the possible outcomes, knowing full well that two would be discarded. That man's work ethic is something else.
I loved giving people autonomy to do their best work. Never did I insert myself into editorial or content decisions, and that proved to be the best decision. People usually know more than me, and the best I can do is to support them in their pursuits, not direct them towards mine.
I love how the brand was always associated with quality. We never produced click-bait even though it would have been lucrative because I knew as soon as we go down that path, we're not different than anyone else.
The actual sale process was a big learning experience for me as well. How often do you get to sell a company in life? What I learned is that Sharktank is bullshit and that due diligence is painful. For me, there were two parts: 1) Are your finances what you say they are?, 2) Are you website metrics what you say they are?
There's many more but I think that's a good enough place to stop.
All in all, I can honestly say that running this company through thick and thin has taught more more than any school or job. I will miss it but it's time to move on.