OffBall launches as new sports culture brand | Semafor

A new brand is hoping to provide a hub for the booming conversation around the culture of sports.

OffBall launched Sunday as a website, newsletter, and social feed that seeks to apply a human touch to curate the flood of conversations about sports in popular culture.

OffBall’s co-founders are Michaela Hammond, who was part of the founding team of The Players’ Tribune; former Sports Illustrated editor-in-chief Chris Stone; and Adam Mendelsohn, whose comms firm Upland Workshop played a role in starting new media outlets Puck and LeBron James’ SpringHill Company.

The new outlet’s homepage directs users to posts on X and Instagram and to other websites, rather than its own pages — which its founders see as an alternative to ubiquitous, low-quality aggregation. They said the goal is to help users navigate the sprawling online conversation, and to combat what they see as a cheapening of sports culture online.

“There is nothing more compelling than sports. The characters and narratives in sports [are] one of the last shared experiences. But the internet isn’t designed for the way people want to enjoy sports. When you take out algorithms and aggregation, have real people curating the best stuff, and prioritize creators and journalism, it’s very different. Sports is the perfect place to try something unapologetically optimistic,” said Mendelsohn.

On Sunday, the OffBall homepage linked to a New York Times story on Yankees fashion, a YouTube ad teasing Kendrick Lamar’s 2025 Super Bowl performance, a ranking of links to top NFL “hype videos,” and a link to fashion site Highsnobriety proclaiming that “Willy Chavarria’s Adidas Collab Is Literally on Point.”

The project has a team of six, Mendelsohn said, including former Business Insider and TMZ Sports writers and a former Athletic staffer, Taylor Patterson, who will lead brand partnerships.

OffBall is “a reflection of where we are in culture,” said Hammond, whose sister, Madison, is a forward on the Los Angeles soccer club Angel City FC. It’s directed at “more mainstream, casual sports fans — who, increasingly, are women.”