ABOUT THIS ENTRY

The House of Highlights Showdown is first of its kind event series combining the internet's biggest creators in a wildly engaging live competition format, redefining appointment viewing for sport fans.

The Showdown is a competition series that has proven its value by not only engaging the House of Highlights fanbase of over 45 million, but extending this reach to additional tens of millions of new fans through the networks nurtured by the creator participants.

Since the first edition of the franchise in 2020, the HoH Showdown has currently held five exciting competitions centered around golf, basketball, dodgeball, and go-kart racing and now looks forward to raising the bar higher for the franchise moving forward.

How does this represent “Excellence in Engagement”?

With each new edition of The Showdown, House of Highlights steps closer to achieving the ambitious goal of revolutionizing the way fans interact with and consume live sports entertainment.

The franchise has led the way in combining the excitement of traditional live sports competitions with the current medium of the creator economy to produce something completely unique.

For a live sports competition that doesn’t feature multi-million dollar athletes or traditional sporting events, the HoH Showdown has shown that rethinking competitions and the way they're produced is raising the bar on excellence and engagement in digital media.

Objective: House of Highlights was constantly searching for new ways to engage and captivate a young audience’s attention. With Gen-Z showing shifting consumption patterns of traditional sports media coverage, HoH outlined the objective and goal to redefine live sports competition in a way that speaks directly to this audience.

Since November of 2020, (HoH) has set the tone and delivered live competition that caters directly to the next generation of sport fans through the House of Highlights Showdown live competition series. The “HoH Showdown” brings together the internet's biggest creators in engaging live formats that have revolutionized appointment viewing for Gen-Z fans. High stakes and fast-paced competition paired with the loyal followings of participating creators has become a staple in House of Highlights' quest to speak to a young, digitally native audience.

Strategy & Execution: House of Highlights chose different approaches for each edition of The Showdown to get the most out of each event.

One of the primary tactics HoH utilized in promoting The Showdown franchise was tapping into the connections it has within the WarnerMedia family to promote each event in the days leading up to the competition. From legendary athletes such as Shaq, Charles Barkley, Phil Mickelson, and Kyler Murray; all contributed to the promotion of The Showdown franchise and set each event up for success. HoH also tapped on the participating creators to create shoulder content, broadcasting promotional content to millions via their platforms.

For the event itself, HoH was able to utilize multiple platforms to broadcast the live competitions including the B/R app and House of Highlights' YouTube channel. The first Showdown proved to be a massive success for HoH’s parent company, Bleacher Report, by posting one of the highest in-app live viewership audiences the company has ever experienced. On YouTube, the third edition of HoH Showdown was the No. 1 trending video worldwide during the weekend it was broadcasted. All of these considerations created a premium, live-viewing experience.

Results: Since beginning The Showdown franchise in 2020, it has performed well across multiple events helping to build its case for the Best Use of Live Video for sports. The numbers that jump off the screen the most are total views and total engagements during each broadcast.

Showdown No. 1 brought in 25 million video views on social and 1.2 million total engagements for. Showdown No. 2 saw 76 million video views on social and 3.5 million total engagements. Showdown No. 3 had a whopping 90 million video views across social and 8.5 million total engagements.

Production

• House of Highlights
• Bleacher Report
• Turner Sports

Credits

Drew Muller
VP of Strategy, House of Highlights
Bleacher Report

Sam Gilbert
Director of Content, House of Highlights
Bleacher Report

Katie Thorpe
Producer, House of Highlights
Bleacher Report