A young boy sits courtside at an Atlanta basketball game. They’re from Upstate New York, and the father wanted to spend some quality time with his son. After receiving good grades and asking countless times throughout the year, the father finally relented and flew down to help his son watch his favorite basketball players.
No, the middle schooler isn’t here to watch Jalen Johnson of the Atlanta Hawks or any other NBA player.
He wanted to go to an Overtime Elite game, a professional developmental basketball league founded in 2021 by Dan Porter and Zack Weiner.
Constructed as an alternate path to the NBA for high schoolers and young adults, it has taken over social media. Instead of kids watching highlights of Anthony Edwards or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, they’re watching their favorite players from teams like FaZe Clan, YNG Dreamerz, and RWE.
To the common NBA fan who has been watching basketball for 30-plus years, those team names look like ancient hieroglyphics that make no sense. For kids, though, they’re the new Los Angeles Lakers or Boston Celtics, the brands that they rep in school when asked who they’re supporting while on their phone.
Porter, who has a background in video games, specifically esports, has brought the authentic, organic excitement of competitive gaming into the world of traditional sports with OTE.
“We have the most-watched basketball team on TikTok of any team in the world,” Porter told Newsweek in an exclusive interview. “The audience we reach is massive. Even though people know what Overtime is, it still flies under the radar. I don’t think people fully understand how big it is. Part of that is because people use words like ‘high school basketball’ or ‘amateur,’ and their minds go to what they remember from school or what their kids play. But this league is as exciting as March Madness.”
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In a day and age when younger fans cheer for players over a specific city or brand, OTE delivers content you’d never get from NBA teams.
Whereas NBA content can come off as having gone through several levels of quality control before being shown to the world, the OTE is raw.
Players talk about their personal lives. They’ll joke about their relationships. OTE players are the ones starting TikTok trends, not NBA teams, who do them three weeks too late with players who look like they’re held up at gunpoint.
For kids watching the league, it’s not like professional sports, where the fan is always looking up to the players on the court as an idol. It’s the opposite. They feel like when they purchase a ticket to watch a game, they see eye-to-eye with the OTE player, like they’re a friend they see every day after school.
“Gen Z makes up about 20 percent of the population,” said Porter. “Roughly 70 million people, and this is something built specifically for them.
“In a way, we add to the NBA, and they add to us. We add to March Madness, and they add to us. There will be multiple former OTE players in the NCAA Tournament. People might watch an Arkansas game even if they are not Arkansas fans because two former OTE players, Karter Knox and Meleek Thomas, will be playing there.”
It’s a league that continues to push the envelope of what is possible in sports today. While major leagues across the board are trying to find ways to reach Gen Z and younger audiences, OTE is dictating the culture.
They’ve continued to expand into the Brazilian and French markets, where players from those countries star on several OTE squads. When they show up in foreign countries, high schoolers are mobbed like they’re LeBron James, signing autographs with kids sometimes older than them.
Porter credits his time working in esports and his understanding of livestreaming culture for laying the foundation of the league. While other executives have tried to do similar things, the former ELeague architect doesn’t need to ask his kids about who is playing Fortnite or what a content creator is.
He was there at the forefront.
“When I was an agent at WME representing YouTubers, The Rock’s agent came into my office and said, ‘I represent The Rock. Why do all these kids care about a 14-year-old in his bedroom?” he said. “I told him, ‘I think you already answered your own question.’ They had never had access to someone who was like them. That’s the key to all of this. It’s always on me to bring in the best talent and make sure the games are competitive.”
That philosophy has brought OTE billions of views over the past few years, and they stand to break more records this weekend with their season finals in Atlanta.
FaZe, the top-seeded team in the league, will take on the Cold Hearts in a final that will capture the imaginations of fans from across the globe.
One member of the OTE brain trust who is continuing to help evolve the league is Landry Fields, a former New York Knick who became one of the youngest general managers in the NBA with the Atlanta Hawks.
Now, as the president of league operations for Overtime Elite, Fields wants to take his experience and help mold the future Porter and company have carefully crafted over this first half-decade.
“Part of why I’m here is building the premier basketball league for this next generation audience,” Fields told Newsweek. “Where elite competition, modern culture, and compelling storytelling all come together.”
Unlike other leagues, where a top team’s fall or a superstar player’s early elimination can leave fans feeling disappointed, OTE has built each team with its own storyline for fans to latch onto.
While you might not be the biggest FaZe or Cold Hearts fan, that doesn’t matter.
When the OTE puts on a show, they always deliver a highlight reel moment, a viral clip between two players, or something that’s going to be talked about in the morning at school.
If you want to be in the know, you have to be there to experience it first.
That’s the draw that has put OTE at the forefront of basketball culture for today’s youths.
Fields, who only came into the job earlier this year, gave his selling point on why the upcoming finals are a must-see appointment for anyone who loves the game of basketball.
“You want players who make people tune in every game because they might see a moment they’ll remember,” he said. “That’s what makes sports special, and that’s what OTE is trying to create.”