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Unlike many media moguls, Nish Patel – founder of Sports Media Company Clutchpoints – remains a fan.
This passion shaped every step of his career. His path to sports media was not driven by fame or fortune, but by a simple desire to annoy his friends. A lifelong Lakers fan, Patel flooded his Facebook feed with play-by-play updates on Kobe Bryant — from highlight reels to shooting ratios.
“As a result, some of my friends who are not sports fans are like, ‘You should probably make a page for this – we’re not interested in this,'” PATEL says. Enterprising.
Little did they know this page would become one of the biggest players in modern sports media.
As Bryant’s career ended, Patel surprisingly began to carry the torch for the next generation. His answer is that it came in the form of Bulls Rookie Derrick Rose. Inspired, he started the “corn with confession” fan page D flower d human. It quickly produced hundreds of thousands of views within a month.
But the basketball gods give and take away. When Rose tore his ACL in 2012, it was a heartbreaking moment for NBA fans and a turning point for Patel.
“I remember thinking, damn, I’ve spent a lot of time building this fan base, but I thought bigger picture,” he says.
Patel launched in February 2012 Nba memesa parody account that shares funny pictures and news from around the league.
“My inspiration came from this UCLA MEMES page, where there were inside jokes about jokes about inside jokes about students,” Patel recalls. “It was fun — but super niche. I thought no one was doing that for basketball.”
NBA Memes was an instant success, reaching one million followers in just six months.
“We’ve created this whole community of memorabilia and content for us,” Patel said. “We would give them credit and they go crazy – share with friends and family,” I’m private! “It was really an early version of the Maker community that was so big.”
After the Derrick rose, Patel learned not to put all his eggs in one basket. It started thinking about its online presence “like a stock portfolio”. Instead of focusing on one player or team, he started building fan pages for each franchise.
“My vision was simple,” Patel said. “As a Lakers fan in a big market, nobody was talking about the team when Kobe got hurt Sportscenter. I thought, if that’s the case here, imagine the fans in smaller markets like charlotte or memphis. I wanted to create content that every fan really cared about. “
Rather than pushing polished narratives, debrch points followed their followers’ lead, often sharing fan feedback and commentary.
“It goes back to my origin story Nba memes“says Patel.” People would send us content, and we’d tell them, “You’re part of clutchpoints—you’re part of the clutch fam. Let’s get the content out there. We see everybody who speaks to us as our version of Stephen Smith or Max Kellerman.”
As Clutchpoints grew, Patel managed it alone.
“I would wake up at 1, 3, 5 and 7 in the morning, just to post, so there was no scheduling option,” he recalls. “That was too much.”
Patel’s first hire, a high school friend from UCLA, helped answer the flood of fan messages.
“We wanted people to know that they cared—we saw what they submitted and appreciated what they shared,” Patel said. “It’s always been about creating something for the fans, for the fans.”
The idea worked. Sports figures such as Maverick Carter began to see that debrchpoints created massive engagement.
“He literally messaged us through Facebook,” Patel recalls. “It was like I’m using talent, I have access to the production, I have access to the brands that want to spend, but I don’t have the impression to get the kids to have a special approach with the team.”
In 2015, Patel launched UCLA, an urban campus incubator where he learned how to build a more professional company.
“In the beginning, one of my employees was just accepting payments on PayPal until we hit a threshold and we had to figure something else out,” Patel recalls.
Through UCLA’s startup network, Patel connected with investors and entrepreneurs in business and technology—two areas he sees as key when building a company. After completing the program, the newly named debrchpoints raised its first round of funding in 2017 – and the rest is history.
When Patel started Nba memeshe was still a middle school student. But his lack of media experience turned out to be his biggest advantage.
“When you raise funding, people will ask, ‘Oh, you’re doing another whitewashing report?’ ” or ‘another sb nation?’ ” Patel recalls. “But I didn’t want to be corporate. I wanted to create something that felt like fans were talking to their friends — because that’s how it started.”
This fan-first mentality has led to Debrchpoints’ evolution into one of the largest independent sports media networks today. Patel now controls more than 300 social pages on X, Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube and Facebook with an audience of over 38 million.
The company has deployed WNBA reporters with more than 5 billion lifetime video views, more than 20 Arenas and WNBA reporters in more than half of the league’s seats, and sponsored content deals with brands such as State Farm and McDonald’s.
“Our goal has never been to be a media company that feels above the fans,” Patel said. “We wanted to be with them.”
Unlike many media moguls, Nish Patel – founder of Sports Media Company Clutchpoints – remains a fan.
This passion shaped every step of his career. His path to sports media was not driven by fame or fortune, but by a simple desire to annoy his friends. A lifelong Lakers fan, Patel flooded his Facebook feed with play-by-play updates on Kobe Bryant — from highlight reels to shooting ratios.
“As a result, some of my friends who are not sports fans are like, ‘You should probably make a page for this – we’re not interested in this,'” PATEL says. Enterprising.
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