If you turned on your television this past weekend, you had the chance to catch the US Open Finals, the Tour de France, multiple NBA playoff elimination games, and the kickoff of both the NFL and Premier League seasons. The year 2020 has unleashed upon us a unique kind of hell, but in its waning months comes a sports equinox unlike any we've ever seen. You might argue there's never been a better (or weirder) time to be a sports fan.
 

Playing in near-empty arenas and stadiums, the dramatic decrease in attendance means a dramatic decrease in revenue (not to mention a dramatic decrease in fan-generated content), and as a result many franchises have furloughed non-essential staff, including the digital teams responsible for day-to-day storytelling. Things aren't much better on the media side of things, either. While the Coronavirus has been great for legacy media, it's done little to slow the sports media skid, with publications like Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, SB Nation, NBC Sports, and Fox Sports all laying off or furloughing staff in the last year. At a time at when the sports world is at its most compelling, who is left to tell its most compelling stories?
 

In an environment where both teams' and the media's storytelling abilities are limited, brands are uniquely positioned to take the mantle and deliver compelling stories to a rapt audience. Spotify is using its social platforms to let artists tell the stories of how some of the most popular songs on the platform are made, and the instantly popular NBA Bubble Life social pages offer a window into how a similar approach would work in sports. If four dudes aggregating content in their spare time were able to amass over 100,000 followers in just two weeks, just imagine what brands could do with a sophisticated arsenal of resources at their disposal.