When most sports organisations talk about ‘monetising their audience,’ they’re usually referring to sponsorships, media rights, or ticket sales. At a push, they might throw in a line of branded hoodies. But at Overtime, the Gen Z-focused sports media brand, audience monetisation looks more like a modern brand incubator than a traditional sports property.

That use of ‘comments per second’ isn’t simply a vanity metric. It is the foundation of Overtime’s entire business model - a model that turns attention into identity, and identity into IP. Instead of relying on legacy licensing structures, Overtime is creating its own playbook and owning the entire stack.

Porter, the 50th guest to appear on the Sports Pundit Podcast, is clear that Overtime sees itself more as a creator brand than a traditional rights-holder. He draws direct comparisons to MrBeast’s Feastables, Hailey Bieber’s Rhode, and Prime - the beverage brand launched by Logan Paul and KSI.

What Overtime is doing is much bigger than selling merch. They’s building a full-scale brand ecosystem that generates tens of millions in revenue.

Increasingly, those products are becoming cultural artefacts in their own right.

In February, Overtime Elite announced a partnership with The Pokémon Company, a crossover that might raise eyebrows in traditional sports circles but made perfect sense to Overtime’s audience. The collaboration included special edition jerseys for all eight OTE teams, debuted during the Pokémon Playoffs, and a lifestyle capsule that dropped on Pokémon Day, a celebration of one of the most successful franchises in the world.

This wasn’t a gimmick. It is a strategy that they have continually used to great effect. And is also part of a broader pattern: Overtime has collaborated with the likes of 7-Eleven, Spongebob Squarepants, Rolling Loud, Dreamville, Utopia, Courtside, And1 - and just a few days ago, launched a limited edition Harden Vol. 9 OTE RWE shoe in partnership with adidas and James Harden.

These are deliberate cultural alignments, designed to keep Overtime relevant where it matters: at the intersection of sports, music, gaming, and youth identity.

The same thinking applies to how Overtime works with its athletes. In an era of NIL, most sports properties see athletes as distribution channels. Overtime sees them as co-creators.

This approach is both authentic and scalable. Overtime’s athletes power the brand and grow with it. The flywheel turns: content drives attention, attention builds identity, identity fuels product, and product sustains culture.

“We can partner with advertisers who wanna reach [our community],” says Porter. “But we can also create our own IP.”

Where traditional sports leagues license rights and broker media, Overtime is doing something different. They’re building leagues from scratch, designing products in-house, and cultivating an audience that feels more like a fandom than a fanbase.

They didn’t wait for a broadcast deal or federation approval. They built from community up, and now they’re scaling across verticals most sports organisations can’t even access.

Overtime represents a new archetype in sports: part league, part lifestyle brand, part cultural engine. And unlike most legacy organisations, it didn’t inherit an audience, it earned one and made them participatory.

When you build with that kind of an audience, not just for it, the opportunities go far beyond merchandise.

So, while a lot of the industry is still licensing logos, Overtime is busy licensing meaning.