SendtoNews
SendtoNews owns and operates North America’s largest sports video distribution platform serving 650 million monthly video views on more than 1600 publishers with content from all of North America’s major sports leagues including MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLS, PGA Tour...
Finalist for:
Technology Company of the Year (11-29 Employees), Product of the Year
Interviewee: Courtney Gringras
What’s your company’s story?
SendtoNews was founded by a traditional sports broadcaster with the idea of simplifying the process of how newsrooms get digital video content. Since 2015, SendtoNews has taken a partnerfific approach to building a three-sided video distribution platform by allowing leagues to reach new fans and publishers to get new content plus revenue, all using SendtoNews’ innovative technology. SendtoNews has become an indispensable partner to publishers, content providers, and advertisers and is consistently ranked at the top in the Comscore sports video category above sports behemoths like ESPN, NBC and Yahoo. Since 2015, SendtoNews revenue had grown by 8388%.
Who do you work with? What are some interesting projects you’re involved in?
SendtoNews is a key partner to publishers like Gannett, Tribune, McClatchy, USA Today, and more than 1600 other newspaper.coms, broadcast.coms, radio.coms and native digital sites. We are also the video distribution platform for 75+ sports content creators and leagues, including the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, MLS, NASCAR and the PGA TOUR. We’re really excited about finding new ways to support our partners, such as our recent live stream project we did with the PGA TOUR and Tribune Publishing that saw featured holes from THE PLAYERS Championship (the PGA TOUR’s biggest tournament) live streamed by SendtoNews across five Tribune Publishing websites. We are also adding other content categories to our platform beyond sports including entertainment, business, tech, lifestyle video content.
What are you most proud of in the work that you do?
One of the most rewarding aspects of our work is our partnerrific approach, meaning our growth is intimately tied with that of our partners. We hear time and time again that because SendtoNews provides publishers with premium content, technology and monetization that not only engages their readers but becomes a significant source of revenue, they are able to thrive in a digital environment. It’s exciting to share our success with our partners and help them deliver the best possible product to their users.
If your team had a theme song, what would it be and why?
It would be ‘Started from the Bottom’ by Drake because we grew from a small startup to be the top sports video distribution platform in North America, consistently beating heavy hitters like ESPN, CBS Sports and Sports Illustrated. Plus, like Drake, it’s exciting to represent Canada and use our local knowledge to grow into much bigger markets like the US. There’s no Drake curse at SendtoNews.
What are some hopes and dreams for your company?
The future for SendtoNews is bright, and we’re aiming high. We’re currently launching something we’re calling ‘Beyond Sports’ as we recently started providing content from categories like News, Entertainment, Travel, Food, Business, and Technology to our publishers. With this new initiative, we see us growing from a leader in sports to a leader in digital video, a goal that’s quickly becoming a reality. Our aim is to deliver over 6 billion video views a month putting us alongside companies like Google and Facebook.
Why is Victoria a great spot for your organization?
Victoria is an amazing city for any tech company to do business and the vibrant culture of innovation, enthusiasm and excellence among the industry is second to none. The Victoria tech community is one of the best in North America and has allowed us to find energetic, motivated and high-achieving staff. The atmosphere that has been cultivated around Victoria’s tech community has very much played a part in our success. Pairing this with beautiful weather, mountains, beaches and some of the best restaurants in the county we wouldn’t want to do business anywhere else. As a completely digital company, we can do business from anywhere and 99.99% of our revenue comes from elsewhere. Our biggest partners are based in NYC and as we’ve now established ourselves with them, bringing their staff to Victoria for our strategic sessions has become a much sought after invite.