@ianpowers
Two National-award winning decades in sports journalism. Thousands of sports stories. Now I’m building Write Sports — a space for writers and solopreneurs to grow their audience and business on Substack. 👉 theianpowers.substack.com
The advice telling you to grow first and monetize later is keeping sports creators broke.
Substack takes 0% of your direct sponsorship revenue. Most sports newsletters never touch that stream.
New post: how to build it now.
open.substack.com/pub/theianpo...
#SportsBusiness #Newsletters
A viral sports stat.
No real source.
Just “[USA Network]” in brackets.
That’s becoming normal. It shouldn’t be.
I wrote about credibility and sourcing in the creator economy here:
🔗 open.substack.com/pub/theianpo...
Brutal news about the Washington Post layoffs and the elimination of the sports section.
To anyone affected: you still have an audience. You have leverage. You still have options.
If you’re considering newsletters or independent media, I’m happy to help, no strings.
DMs open.
And as much as we might revere Knight, we can’t rule out that some alumni may have been paying players under the table when hoops won 3 nattys in 11 years. They just chose not to spend it on football until now and 23 years removed from the basketball program’s last trip to the Final Four.
I like this joke.
The % of 4- and 5-star players on Indiana’s roster compared to other major programs is quite small, suggesting they spent more wisely more coachable/developing players. Mendoza was a 2-star prospect.
They found/lucked into the best CFB coach most didn’t know about.
*Killed everyone but Miami, Ohio State, Iowa and Penn State. But you could still make that out to benefit UConn 😉
When he used the tariffs to *threaten* EU countries into better trade deals the last time, many of them explored and heavily considered the alternatives.
I don’t know what made me think of the tariffs and Gaddafi’s Line of Death in the same breath.
This is covering a Trump admin 101 for 5 years now.
Seeing commentary on Al Michaels’ call of the Packers-Bears tonight, some positive, more negative.
As Al turned 81 this season, it is apparent he has lost a little off his fastball. He’s missing calls or delaying description because he can’t see it.
I’ll still take this Al over most others.
Four generations of my family have served our country. Service is in my blood. The President wouldn’t know anything about that.
One night on broadway... you'll know it so well
Rising star in comedy. His story needs to be known.
"has an alcoholic's personality"
I've been saying he's the classic case of a "dry drunk" for close to a decade.
Now, if Menendez and his wife had stashed away some of those gold bars...
Hey who doesn't like seeing how the vomit is made?
Gary Myers was doing multi-platform work before any of us had platforms — TV, radio, books, columns, etc
The real secret?
He promoted his work like no one else was going to do it. Never waited for permission.
Creators: the tools changed, the fundamentals didn’t.
open.substack.com/pub/theianpo...
I feel ya.
I see peers who have spent almost twice as many Thanksgivings with their parents as I had. I wish I had that later time in adulthood, too.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.
Jones this year and Barkley doing what he did last year after the whole "Hard Knocks" scene couldn't be sitting well with Mara at all. Which makes me curious about Schoen's future as well.
Guess this was inevitable. I mean Daboll won a playoff game with Daniel Jones and now he's got the Colts in the No. 1 seed in the AFC. They may have something in Jaxson Dart, but there needs to be a change. The culture of losing is too much.
www.newsday.com/sports/footb...
Heismendoza!
#iupsu
I use em dashes — a lot. If you’re using short sentences instead — which is better than a slew of commas — I am OK with that. But em dashes was a big thing I took from journalism school — from the Elements of Style and beyond.
One of my responsibilities each week is editing celebrity birthdays. Did a Google search of Sammy Hagar and was very interested/disappointed to see Google's suggested playlist for Sammy Hagar. AI overviews.
If this is about Bluesky reaction, then I think that answers the question. I'm sure there's more volatility either way on X.
You have built a strong, important business that many value. I bet if you told your audience that you needed to take a break for x period of time, they would understand. Re-schedule out your proven evergreen content in a best of series for that period. And maybe even offer a pause deal for subs.
IF JFK Jr. told her that, then this Senate hearing took a much stranger, paranormal turn that anything RFK Jr. has uttered.
Messi-anic? Or Kane-ish?
Well let’s not go crazy either way but if gets close to Kane’s production, that will be something.
Reflecting on Darwin Nunez's time at Liverpool, I smh at the "You're just a s--- Andy Carroll" chants.
I used to think, "No, he IS Andy Carroll"
Man bun aside, comparing their LFC eras:
Nunez: 95 apps, 25G, 0.46G/90
Carroll: 44 apps, 6G, 0.21G/90
No, Carroll's just a s--- Darwin Nunez
#LFC
Frimpong!!!! That’s two debutants on the scoresheet. Wirtz is on the clock. #lfc
Every manager and his staff in the Premier League are grumbling at the preparation they’re going to need to do especially with Wirtz in the final half/third. His speed and precision of his work there is going to affect the league. Add to that the speed Ekitike, Frimpong and Kerkez. Yikes. #lfc
