Meet the Member: “A thousand things have changed in sports, but it is still sports. The greatest reality TV show on earth”
June 27, 2023
Timm Chiusano started his sports journey working at ESPN, but in his forties he has become a TikTok creator whose day in the life videos have helped him pass 1 million followers on the platform. In this interview we cover AI’s potential impact on sport, what broadcasters can learn from his content and much more…
So Timm, take us through your journey in sport?
I was born and bred a New York sports fan. In New York, you choose Mets or Yankees, Giants or Jets, and then the Knicks and Rangers are straightforward. That goes back generations, so you’re indoctrinated into rooting for these teams at birth.
As a kid, my first job was being a caddy, and I worked at driving ranges for most of high school. I played golf from as early as I can remember, and I had dreams of playing hockey at the highest level possible. I played well in golf at a fairly high level, and then I got drawn into Canada with the delusion I could play junior hockey. It was pretty uncommon for a kid in New York City to drop everything and move to play hockey up there, but I had an amazing year playing junior B hockey.
When I left school, I knew I wanted to do something creative in sports, and those were the only two boxes I wanted to check. So, I took every piece of crap job I could get my hands on. I worked part time at terrible hours as a grip, which is production speak for doing whatever the hell the producer needs you to do. I worked part time at CBS and ABC sports just to get anything underneath my belt I could.
It took three years actually to break into a full time job with ABC sports as a production assistant which wasn’t even guaranteed to last more than 5 months. I was doing college football and PGA tour golf on the live sports production side of things. There was almost a five year journey between leaving school and having a full time job in sports which took patience just waiting for a door to open. I was also very cognizant of the fact that nothing was owed to me once that door opened.
I worked for ABC sports for 5 years and realised that chasing live sports across the globe 36 weeks a year was glorious, but not for my plans of being a married man. So, I reinvented myself as a marketer, and convinced people I was the right person to come up with creative ideas to sell to brands despite no specific marketing background. For example, I did starting lineups brought to you by a brand or halftime sponsored by someone for ESPN and their major sponsors. I did that for seven years and then sold my soul to the cable company, where I’ve been for 10 years.
Looking back on your career in sport, what was your personal highlight?
That is an easy answer. It was the 2005 Open Championship at St. Andrew’s, where Jack Nicklaus played his final major and Tiger smashed the field. We won an Emmy for that broadcast and just the opportunity to be St. Andrew’s soaking it all in was amazing. I did five Open Championships during my time and it was amazing being able to live in the UK for about a month since we had the men’s, women’s, and seniors all in different locations. That was unbelievably fun, but that Open Championship at St. Andrew’s certainly stood out.
I would also say at ESPN being able to bring completely differentiating ideas to the table so brands could exist on something like SportCenter. I was reinventing what the billboard looks like, so it wasn’t just SportCenter brought to you by Verizon, but instead somebody holding a Verizon phone with SportsCenter in the background. It was something that was more endemic to what the consumers were used to rather than just shoving a logo in their face.
How has sport changed since you left ESPN in 2013?
I like that I can say not a lot. I mean, yes, a thousand things have changed but it’s still sports. It will forever be the greatest reality TV show. The technology on billboards, the flashing stuff on the sidelines, who has logos on what, the pieces of equipment do not matter. It’s still a bunch of people who have worked their ass off to get to a single moment, and you don’t know what’ll happen next. There’s storylines, subplots, and all sorts of surrounding things happening. Today, the purity of what the game actually is still remains. The desire to win and what it means to people that accomplish what they set out for is still there. There’s countless things I could point to, but at the same time not a damn thing has changed because it’s still sports.
Talk to us about your journey and growth on TikTok?
I have no idea. It’s been the weirdest thing. It started as, “Oh this interesting let me start doing this” then became oh people are starting to watch. I just love the process, and if I don’t do it, I feel awkward that I haven’t done one for the day. I go out there and do what I like to do, but once I realised my TikToks might be helpful and I started to get feedback I was like “Ok cool there’s things that resonate with people here”. I appreciate that there’s helpfulness in leaning into the 45-year-old narrative because I’m still the same dumbass 25-year-old at the core. People often ask, “what would you tell yourself now ” but I’m still the same person.
In the same sense as sport, when you genuinely love the process, and you do it for the right reasons, amazing things can happen. My God has it wildly exceeded any expectation that I’ve had which was zero. Everyone’s got a story to share, so if you’re authentic about it, willing to keep trying, willing to repeatedly make yourself cringe, and willing to put in the work then completely unexpected things might pop out of the clear blue sky.
What do you think sports broadcasters can learn from the success your content has had?
It’s about repetition and authenticity. When it doesn’t feel real, it doesn’t do well, and when I wear my heart on my sleeve it does well. People want a connective tissue in this digital world. Everyone can post the same highlight or talk about the same stuff. People can be bombastic, over the top, and just yell at the camera, and it doesn’t work. My opinion is, when people are trying too hard to be something they’re not, it flops. However, when it’s who you actually are, people love to see it.
There’s a guy who does Trainspotting videos, Francis Bourgeois, who is one of the greatest examples of authenticity. How many people thought, “how awkward is that” when it has the camera angle stuck right in front of his face. He has unusual content but he communicates pure joy. When people take their own perspective and lean into the authenticity piece that’s when things get magical.
What has worked for me is that people trust me. I think it because they know I dont give a fu*k, and I am just going to be honest and sincere and wont do anything negative or harmful in any capacity. Authenticity allows your joy to shine through, so don’t be afraid of doing the things that other people are afraid to do if it feels right for you. If you mix that together and put it on repeat and really, really cool things can happen.
How do you see AI having an impact on sport?
It can totally destroy everything or it can lead to reinventing the way lineups are created, salary caps, and just the way we look at teams. Part of me doesn’t care. I just want to keep leaning into the purity of sports and why we fell in love with it in the first place.
My gut tells me the biggest impact is going to be in data mining and then the mining of that data. This will tell us how to make cars faster, lineups better, and more. It could help teams analysing combines, saying “it doesn’t matter that this person ran fast because combined with this metric that’s ineffective”. So, it could take the Excel route as just a better way to aggregate and utilise information, or it could go the mischievous path and totally fu*k things up across the board. Hopefully it’s very subtle and helps people make smarter decisions but leaves the rest for human beings to continue to do their thing.
If you could run one sports organisation for a month, which would it be, why and what would you do?
This is a difficult one because it’s so close between the Mets and Rangers, but I’ll pick the Rangers since hockey is what I played most as a kid.
I would take them over and put an incredibly heavy focus on getting fans closer to what it’s like being on the ice. I don’t think that the speed and the ferocity of the game comes across to the people that are not necessarily in and around it on a day to day basis. I mean, dudes do 20 to 25 miles an hour on skates on an enclosed surface. Whether that would be through video communications or online, I would want to give fans the sensation to actually participate. Every other sport has a far easier barrier to cross where you can just pick up a basketball and shoot it or play catch with a baseball.
Yes, there’s street hockey but that’s so grossly different. You can make similar arguments across all sports but professional hockey is a bigger extreme. Through that as well, I would want to build human storylines about the players to build a deeper connection. Where they come from and why they can do certain things will blow peoples’ minds. It’s not like the Rangers are hurting to sell season tickets these days, but I think it would be an interesting way to sell the game to a broader audience.