Entrepreneur: Kenny Beecham

Biz: Enjoy Basketball

Tilt: Basketball news

Scene: Newsletter (3x a week; 40K), website, TikTok (92.1K) Twitter (39.4K), Instagram (22.6K), Facebook (181)

Snack Bites: 

  • Kenny operates six YouTube channels around his personality and love for basketball and baseball. His main channel KOTQ4 has over 1.31M subscribers, while his other channels have a similar collective subscriber base.
  • A year ago, Kenny expanded his content business with Enjoy Basketball, a three-times-a-week newsletter with Cody and Cole Hock, the partners of his talent management Up North.
  • Enjoy Basketball boasts over 40K subscribers and a 50% open rate, as Kenny tells tubefilter.

Why We Stan: Kenny’s a hard-core content entrepreneur. He started his YouTube channel as a hobby in his early teens and later saw the potential to turn it into his business. But he also recognized the power to expand his revenue streams beyond video by hosting podcasts and working with partners to publish a traditional newsletter.

The Story of Kenny Beecham

Kenny Beecham and two friends started a YouTube channel around their basketball video gaming. While his friends grew tired of the project, Kenny gained more enthusiasm.

Three years later, a check for $100 arrived. “I was on top of the world when I got it. In retrospect, three years of work for $100 isn’t a good deal, but I was doing it as a hobby – so to see any money was insane to me,” he tells tubefilter.

As his audience grew, so did interest in Kenny. House of Highlights, a creator’s brand purchased by Bleacher Reports, tapped him to grow its YouTube presence. He co-hosts its weekly NBA fan podcast, Through the Wire. In 2020, he hosted their official NBA All-Star game coverage with a live broadcast on Twitter.

But in 2022, Kenny opted to go old school in a new venture with Cody and Cole Hock, the founders of the talent management agency Up North that represents Kenny.

They work with a team of 10 to publish Enjoy Basketball, a newsletter about all things basketball every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. A year later, it earns a 50% open rate from its over 40K subscribers, according to tubefilter. It also offers merch drops that usually sell out and has hosted a pop-up event with a shop, panel discussion, and more.

Why go with a newsletter?

Kenny says they didn’t think once-a-week sports newsletters provided the audience with enough content. “We knew that there was an avenue for people who want to read about games and read about the sports story, so it was a pretty easy decision for us,” he says.

While producing three newsletters along with his half-dozen individual YouTube channels and other partner ventures may sound like a lot, it isn’t as challenging as you might think. Enjoy Basketball is written by other writers with one voice designated for the day-of-the-week issue.

While the newsletter serves as the central content product, the partners see Enjoy Basketball as a community (even though it doesn’t operate a traditional community-gathering platform.)

.@EnjoyBBall uses its three-times-a-week #Newsletter to cultivate a community, says founder #KennyBeecham. #Stan Click To Tweet

“That’s with the newsletter. That’s with us having people who, without us even asking, have ‘Enjoy Basketball’ in their Twitter bio, or instead of having a profile picture of themselves, it’s the Enjoy Basketball logo. That’s the community we’re bringing,” Kenny tells tubefilter.

Oh, and one more thing as far as YouTube’s role in Kenny’s individual and partnered success. “Honestly, other than being a platform for the videos to exist on, YouTube hasn’t done anything to help my brand,” he says in the interview.

About the author

Ann regularly combines words and strategy for B2B, B2C, and nonprofits, continuing to live up to her high school nickname, Editor Ann. An IABC Communicator of the Year and founder of G Force Communication, Ann coaches and trains professionals in all things content. Connect with her on LinkedIn and Twitter.