Exploring Niche Sports Content on YouTube

I’ve got a lot of surprising skills. You know? Yep. [Laughs] Hey there and welcome to Like & Describe. Each episode, we bring you little known stories behind the biggest YouTube trends. I'm MatPat. And, hey, look. It's that time again. You might have noticed your YouTube homepage filled with highlights and behind the scenes moments from your favorite athletes in Paris. You also might have seen some extra special celebrations for a few sports with a unique home here on YouTube. I'm talking about running golf, wrestling, gymnastics and table tennis. Now, most of these sports get little mainstream coverage, but creators are bringing them to life year round. Today we're speaking with some of the most skilled, innovative, and boundary pushing creators within each of these sports. Together, they're pioneering a whole new kind of sports entertainment. Well, bringing these individual sports center stage. I mean, have you ever seen someone knock out a Jenga piece with a ping pong ball? Or a golfer sink a 50 foot putt wheel blindfolded? Well, YouTube creators are turning these sports into extraordinary spectacles with insane trick shots, hilarious challenges, unexpected crossovers. At the same time, they're giving fans a peek behind the curtain and welcoming new fans in with relatable content. I'm really excited to be joined by these guests from each of these amazing communities who represent their sports. We have Gymnastics Insider Peng Peng Lee, running aficionado Alexis Black, golf expert Grant Horvat, wrestling champion Cayden Henschel, and table tennis master Emil Ran-ta-ta kul-lia–eh, you know what? Instead of me just making a complete embarrassment of myself, can we just bring in his voice? Emil Rantatulkkila. It is going to be a wild ride, my friends. So let's get into it. So first off, a huge welcome to Cayden, Alexis, Grant, Peng and Emil. Thank you guys for being on today. [All] Thanks for having us. Thank you. Okay, so since there are so many of you in the room right now, I would love for you all to just introduce yourself to the camera, talk a little bit about the sport that you're probably most associated with and maybe a favorite video that you've uploaded onto your channel. Hi, I'm Emil and I'm one of the three guys of Pongfinity. There's also Mikka and Otto, and we do all kinds of stuff related to table tennis. So all kinds of trick shots, challenges and comedy stuff. One of my favorite videos that we have done is a video where we've built a raft with a table tennis table on the raft and pushed it in the middle of a lake in Finland. And then we played the whole day in the middle of the lake. Hi, my name is Peng. I was the 2012 Olympic team captain for the sport of gymnastics and I was on the UCLA gymnastics team. One of my favorite videos on my channel. It's a series actually–it's called Behind the Bubble, and it's the vlog series that I did at UCLA. It was such a fun time. I'm Grant Horvat and I do golf content, so we're doing that now for about three years. One of my favorite videos that I filmed is going to Pebble Beach for the first time. That was the number one course in the world, and we kind of documented the entire process and it was mindblowing. Hi, my name is Alexis Black, and I make running content here on YouTube. My favorite video on my channel is called Learning the Hard Way Flying & Ultramarathon Training. And it's just about the beginning of my training block, preparing for my first ultramarathon and balancing my job, which is flying–I'm a flight attendant, with trying to build up enough endurance to be able to complete an ultramarathon. My name is Cayden Henschel. I create wrestling content here on YouTube, and back in my senior year of high school, it was the pinnacle for me to accomplish a high school wrestling state title, and it was the third day of the state series when I ended up winning. It was all these years of training leading to that moment and accomplishing that goal and getting all documented. It's my favorite video. Very cool. Let's start off with Peng and Emil here. Obviously, you both started posting videos a while ago. At this point, I'd be curious to get your input on what did the sports scene on YouTube look like when you first started posting videos? Was there a lot of content out there about sports in general and about your specific sports or was it kind of, you know, on unfounded territory? When I was posting on YouTube in my last year– Back in my day– Back in my day, it was kind of an untouched territory. But for me it was more about vlogging, the behind the scenes of when we were traveling and not necessarily like gymnastics content, but it was more for my memories and for my teammates’ memories to just post vlogs. Luckily, that year it was amazing. We won a championship and so it was so cool to have that memory of what was it like when we're getting ready and parents coming in and the UCLA Bruins fans were like cheering us. But there was not a lot of people in the honestly, in NCAA in general posting on YouTube. It's changed a lot now. How about you, Emil? What was it like for you when you first started? Yeah, that's a good question. Just now, when I think about it, 12 years ago, the sports sector wasn't really that big. And especially table tennis was a niche that there wasn't really made that many videos about. We kind of like, also needed to create that niche in a way so that there's more, more and more people interested on YouTube in table tennis. So what does the table tennis community look like on YouTube here in 2024? There is much more content around table tennis, all kinds of like real matches and challenges. If it's something funny and entertaining, people get inspired and start doing those kind of content. So moving on to Alexis and Cayden, and one of the things that I'd love to hear from both of you about is not just the athletic side of your journey, but how you kind of have opened up your content to explore more of your personal journey. Right. The vulnerabilities or the challenges that you face as you train to become an athlete? I would say based off of me, there was really no one else doing it. No one really sharing their journey from the ground up. And I think that's what first maybe be like, you know what? There needs to be someone creating something of the content that I personally wanted to watch, and I wanted to kind of be that beacon of light to be like a big fan of my videos. And for me to do that, that gives me the accountability to work harder in my training to, you know, do better in competitions. It's just kind of a cool way that works. Yeah, absolutely. How about you, Alexis? During the pandemic, I discovered this athletic side of myself. I had no idea I had an athletic bone in my body and it started with cycling. And then I kind of got a little thought that maybe I want to do a triathlon, but I couldn't swim or run. So I decided to start with running. And then I just became obsessed with running and I wanted to share just that part of my journey. I wanted to slowly transitioned out of making flight attendant content to making the content that I'm making now. One of the things that's interesting, and I'd love anyone's perspective on this, is that the group that we have represented here all represent individual sports in a lot of cases. I'm curious, what do you think it is about those sports in particular that have made them so fitting for YouTube or kind of like why videos about them are so appealing on the platform? I think it's because of the internal drive. Of course, like team sports are great in everything, but for one person I think to really just, you know, everything is up to them, their desires, what they want to accomplish. There's not necessarily a roadmap for each individual person. And of course, with an individual sport, the all–all the blame is on you. You can have the coaches, you can have the partners, but at the end of the day, you're the one who has to, you know, put the foot on the line. When you're in the gymnastic world and when the coaches, you know, coming at you and you're with your teammates, you feel like you're taking all the heat. And we're in a sport of judging. So it's really cool when you're able to put on your journey and really share your journey because they can kind of see that it's not just all medals and not just all pretty leotards. It's like there's a lot that goes into it and a lot of struggle. You fall every single day in the gym, but some people just see, you know, the best of the best and they see that they do great and there's no struggle. For golf yeah, it's always been just, you know, you're the only one to blame. It's just you out there against the course. And what's crazy with the YouTube side of golf is like the productions also increased a ton. So it's gone from, you know, one camera angle holding it to now like a whole production crew. And it's like the tracers where it's showing the golf ball, the graphics. There's a lot that goes into that side as well. But at the end of the day, golf is it's you versus a golf course. There's no one else to blame. Yeah. And I also think that in these sports, it's sort of like easier to also like focus on the personalities on the channel, because if there's only one or two or three people, it's much less than, let's say, ten persons if it's a team sport or something like that. So it's sort of like easier to also connect, I feel like, to the audience probably. Yeah, absolutely. And Grant, I think you brought up something that's particularly interesting, which is the production quality. And I look at a lot of your guys's videos and we're talking multiple angles, we're talking in car documentaries, confessionals. You brought up some of the graphical elements about ball trackers and overlays and all this other stuff. I'm fascinated by that evolution for all of your creative journeys, like how much harder is it today to produce quality sports content versus maybe what it was when you first began? Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, even three years ago, so much has changed. Like the entire landscape has changed because golf got really popular. All the professional athletes are starting to get into it. And I feel like now there's a lot of competition. So you're going to want to separate yourself and people kind of when they click on a video, I feel like they're expecting a certain level of production and they want to see those graphics. They want to see the tracers. It's crazy. Just three years, how much it's changed, three or four years. Yeah, I mean, I was watching some of your videos before this and I mean, they look like I'm watching actual professionally done, you know, stuff that you would see typical of like the Golf Channel, the PGA Tour, things like that on traditional broadcast television. It's incredible. Yeah. No, I just feel like it's it's crazy because, you know, there's a lot going on in the golf world right now with there's two different tours going on and YouTube. Golf is in this like weird middle ground that I, I feel like I'm always talking about. It's kind of in between the PGA Tour and LIV and like, I could go out there and put up really good content and they kind of get their golf fix. You mentioned kind of updating or kind of upgrading your game from a visual standpoint, but I'm also curious from a content standpoint, how has your individual content evolved? Yeah, this is interesting. So I it of course, you know, making more of these YouTube vlogs in high school and in high school wrestling, I was like off also like pretty good. So it was always like highlight after highlight ever video. I was like doing well. But once we got to college, it was like a whole nother mountain. It was like, These guys are so much better. And now it was. It's not necessarily about like doing well or getting the highlights. And of course that would be awesome. That would be ideal. It's my growth from the beginning of the season, let's say, to the end. And by kind of elongating that, that whole journey of being like, you know, let's see how far I can go or let's see how much better I can get, What really have I learned? Because it's easy to just win and win and win, but to really go from something, go from one level all the way and document it. I think that's why people keep coming back. Well, it's a human story, right? At the end of the day. It is. It's a relatable story. Like, you're right, there's only going to be 1, 2, 3 people who, like, dominate everything, win everything, whatever. Like that's a very lucky, very special like athlete right there. I think what the reason why we as humans tune in to videos like yours or to, you know, the sports movies in general, if you look at traditional media and broadcast media, you know, a lot of those are the underdog stories and how they train and how they overcome that adversity. And yeah, a lot of times they're not necessarily winning at the end of the day, but the journey that they took was the reward in and of itself, because it shows the strength of us as individuals and it's inspiring. When I can look at your story and be like, Oh, he's overcoming his challenges, I can find the strength in myself to overcome my own challenges. Absolutely. I couldn't have said it better myself. But I think it also applies to something that you mentioned earlier to Peng, which is, you know, it's it's not all trophies and medals and pretty leotards. There is that's the struggle, too. There's the falls, there's the getting back up again and being willing to try again and continually throwing yourself at that challenge until you have that moment of success and you're able to triumph. Yeah, I think especially with my channel, it's gone through so many changes. I feel like it's been like a baby, a teenager, and like an adult. But when I was doing gymnastics, it was again all about gymnastics. It was all about the team. It was all about vlogging and taking everyone behind the scenes. But as soon as I retired, I can't flip anymore. Like it's just physically impossible. And I've had so many injuries. And I think that's one of the things that I was known for, especially as a gymnast, was coming back after an injury. And I've always said this when I've talked to gymnasts. There's a life outside of gymnastics. And I think especially when you're young, like I was training 25 plus hours a week since I was ten, and I think it was so important for me to show my YouTube channel after I retired. There is so much more out there and there's so much more you can do. And so it's okay if I'm injured. It's okay if I can do other things and still stay motivated. Absolutely. How about you, Emil? How how, how has the table tennis scene kind of evolved over the years? Have there been certain areas of content in your channel history? Yeah. The interesting part is that it's some content that it worked really well, let's say five years ago. You see that if you make the same kind of concept today, you basically probably won't work at all. A good example is trick shots. Some of our most viewed long form videos are like completed, like these creature type of videos where we do like 8 minutes or 5 minutes complete. They only trick shots and they have 40 or 50 million views probably on our channel. But then again, if we make a complete trick shot video today, it won't perform well. So you have to all the time evolve your content, see what's trending either in the sports sector or some other sector, and then try to sort of like come up with something. A fun way to combine table tennis with that specific trend. It's a challenge. But then again, I'd say that's that's one of the best parts with YouTube and being content creator that only the imagination is the limit for what you can do and your own, setting–you’re yourself setting the kind of limit where, where you can take your content on your channel. Yeah. So, okay, so you're saying you've kind of moved beyond just like, hey, here's a compilation of a lot of like really impressive things and you're moving into this era again. It's almost like what Cayden was saying. This era of here is a challenge that I'm setting for myself, and by the end of the video, we'll have either completed it or not completed it. And you get to see my journey and and my friends’ journey as we kind of go forth and try to achieve this difficult task. Exactly. Right. Makes total sense. Alexis, what about you? I've been doing YouTube for nine years. YouTube is a very different place now than it was back then. Back then you could sort of just hold the camera in front of your face and just kind of freestyle off the top of your head. But I think once I realized that I need to provide more value and to give people a reason to stay for 10 to 30 minutes or even more, I started to see more consistent growth. I think people come to YouTube - a combination of wanting to see as people's real journey, but also they want to know how to do something. How do you begin running? They want information, and I think personality can get you a long way, but if you combine personality with sharing value with people, I think that's the winning formula. Yeah. - Yeah, absolutely. Grant and Cayden, both of you have done a fair number of videos that are kind of challenge collabs with other people and specifically other athletes in the space. Could you talk a little bit about any specific examples of videos that you've done in the past? It's been really cool collaborating with some of the best golfers in the world, and I feel like that's what's working. Almost the best is getting to show a different side of these PGA Tour players or LIV players and kind of see them in an environment that they're not so serious and they're just getting to hang out. But I mean, also the coolest thing with golf is I can go film with you know, I was just with an F1 driver. I didn't really know much about F1 driving or any of that. And I was just with him film and then I'll go film with somebody else that's, you know, a football player. So that's also a really cool side of golfer. It's like you can just hang out with the play golf, interview them, but it doesn't matter like what sport they're in. I would say for challenges, it's really cool to like, let's say, do challenges with like the highest level of wrestler. So like one of my videos where I collab with Spencer Lee he's now on the Olympic team is, you know, hopefully going to do amazing their take home goal for USA. And of course I think, you know, those are the videos that the audience loves to see, these guys that they're always seeing like on TV or all these biggest tournaments winning everything. Like they want to see kind of, you know, kind of like Grant was talking about–like behind the scenes there. Yeah. And I think that's that's an important point to call out, right? Is that the style of videos that you're doing and the level of access that you're giving to both the sport and to a lot of the top athletes of those sports, it's not done by traditional media, right? Like if I if I turn on to broadcast television or look at traditional news or sports outlets, I'm not finding this kind of off the cuff, you know, unscripted stuff that is just hanging out, enjoying a sport. You are providing your viewers, your subscribers, a level of authenticity for these people that they love watching or that they really respect in their sport. But now all of a sudden, by watching your content, I'm able to engage with them as humans and get a more well-rounded perspective of who they are, which is really exciting. Who is the audience for your channels? Are they other athletes who are looking for tips or points of inspiration or looking to engage with their favorite sport in a different way? Or are they, you know, casual fans or viewers looking to be exposed to you or found you through, say, like a trick shot or something? And we're like, whoa, I really like their content. What do you see the division in your audience like? Yeah, a definitely vast majority is other wrestlers in high school and of course now in college, as I got more to, let's say, collabing with those now older wrestlers on the higher levels, Olympic scenes, more parents and like older people, you know, who aren't necessarily still wrestling, but past wrestlers, that's who a lot of my audience is as well and it's definitely a lot in, you know, the act of wrestling community. Alexis, what about you? Because I know running is is so universal, right? Do you see a similar sort of mix of like mostly runners coming to you or do you think it is a little bit more of a a casual viewer who's looking to be kind of inspired by you? My audience is this is interesting because it's still a lot of people who are following me from the old days when I was a flight attendant. They're just kind of curious about what I'm doing now. But for the most part, I think as casual viewers wanting to be inspired, I've been getting a lot of messages about people looking for other black runners on YouTube. I think there's a lot of people who are kind of like me who maybe discovered themselves a little bit later in life and are trying to start a new hobby like running. And people are curious and they want to see the struggle and the challenges that I'm facing along the way. Yeah, I just think that's really entertaining. Yeah. No, absolutely. So one thing that I know from watching other content on YouTube, right, is that a lot of times there's ripple effects of the video world on real life. And so I'm curious, in the sports world, have you seen a transition or an impact on like your real life experiences or the sport itself from how YouTube videos have impacted things? Personally, for me, I'll start off basically there's there's I think it's the most popular video on my channel. It's Top 5 Pins. One of the last moves I showed is something called the surfboard. And basically it's like no one was going to hit this in a match. No way. And unbeknownst to me, it's like five years after posting it, I still get pictures and videos of people getting this move and it's like, how are you getting guys this? I personally have never done that in a match. And for me to kind of see that like, holy cow, this is something that actually worked and something that, you know, no coach is going to teach us. You're not going to go to like, you know, a high level of camp to learn this really good move because it's probably not I don't know how it works, but that's kind of one thing that I saw that's like, this is really like impacting. That's awesome. How about you, Grant? What about in the game of golf? Firsthand, I see pros starting their own YouTube channels and I feel like they've seen the YouTube landscape, whether it's the PGA Tour or pros, and they're kind of taking bits and pieces from YouTube and utilizing into those platforms. So yeah, I feel like that's the coolest part is seeing a pro golfer start his own YouTube channel just because of like they're seeing that, you know, a lot of views are happening on YouTube right now and they're like, I want to get on board. You know, you're doing something right if that's happening. So all of you should have received a package that we sent you. Do you all have it available right now? [All] Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Well, if you could please open those now. Okay. So everyone's opening up their packages. Ooh! Nice little red boxes that we sent to everyone. I'm seeing some cards with the YouTube logo on the front. Like & Describe - Got a medal! Look at that. That is so cool. - Oh, wow! - Aw that’s cute. That's cool. Everyone gets their own little gold medal with a YouTube logo. - We’re wieners! You're all–you’re all gold medalists in our hearts. - We’re all winners. Thank you, guys. Thank you. - Awwww. Wait, I get one too? - Yeah. Are you kidding me!? Oh. - For you. Oh, my gosh. I'm a Like & Describe gold medalist too. Haha. Let's go. We’re all winners. - Woo. Yay! There's only. What? How many of these? One, two, three, four, five, six. Six of these in existence now. Awesome. Well, guys, thank you once again for joining me. Peng, Grant, Cayden, Emil, Alexis–it has been awesome having you on today. Good luck in your endeavors. And I can't wait to see what you have up next on YouTube. Thank you. - Thank you. - Thank you. I think one of the things that's been so exciting about having all of these athletes here on today's episode is that it really showcases the drive that comes with being an athlete, right? They want to run an ultramarathon. They want to challenge the hardest golf courses in the world. But that lesson applies no matter what you do, whether you're an athlete, a creator, or just living your daily life. Right. The other incredible thing about all of this, right, is that all of them started as amateur athletes, right? And through their journeys, through showing you the warts and all of their processes, not only are they inspiring the next generation of athletes, they're affecting the professional scene at this point. Right. We heard about how professional athletes are starting their own YouTube channels. We heard about how wrestling training across the country is changing and evolving. Based on a top five list of best pins right? One person with a passion can put themselves out there and have this ripple effect that changes whole professional industries. That's pretty darn awesome. Thanks for joining us for episode seven of Like & Describe YouTube's Official Trends podcast. I'm MatPat. You can find out more about liking describe at white dot B, E slash like describe that's white B, E slash like describe. You can find links to all of the creators and videos that we referenced today in the episodes description Like & Describe is produced by Joe Sabia, Greg Gordon, Emily Shaw, Sam Weiser, Grace Lauson, Allie Schwartz Balbes, Jake Wright, Ernest Pettie and Maddy Buxton. Video Editing by Karen Rivas. Graphics by Louis Hanwey. I'll see you next time. [All laugh] That was good. That was good.

I’ve got a lot of surprising skills. You know? Yep. [Laughs] Hey there and welcome to Like & Describe. Each episode, we bring you little known stories
behind the biggest YouTube trends. I'm MatPat. And, hey, look. It's that time again. You might have noticed your YouTube
homepage filled with highlights and behind the scenes
moments from your favorite athletes in Paris. You also might have seen
some extra special celebrations for a few sports with a unique home here on YouTube. I'm talking about running golf, wrestling,
gymnastics and table tennis. Now, most of these sports
get little mainstream coverage, but creators are bringing them to life year round. Today we're speaking with some of the most skilled, innovative, and boundary pushing creators
within each of these sports. Together, they're pioneering
a whole new kind of sports entertainment. Well, bringing these individual sports center stage. I mean, have you ever seen
someone knock out a Jenga piece with a ping pong ball? Or a golfer sink a 50 foot putt wheel blindfolded? Well, YouTube creators are turning these sports
into extraordinary spectacles with insane trick shots,
hilarious challenges, unexpected crossovers. At the same time, they're giving fans a peek behind the curtain
and welcoming new fans in with relatable content. I'm really excited to be joined by these guests
from each of these amazing communities who represent their sports. We have Gymnastics Insider Peng Peng Lee, running
aficionado Alexis Black, golf expert Grant Horvat, wrestling champion Cayden Henschel, and table
tennis master Emil Ran-ta-ta kul-lia–eh, you know what? Instead of me just making a complete embarrassment
of myself, can we just bring in his voice? Emil Rantatulkkila. It is going to be a wild ride, my friends. So let's get into it. So first off, a huge
welcome to Cayden, Alexis, Grant, Peng and Emil. Thank you guys for being on today. [All] Thanks for having us. Thank you.  Okay, so since there are so many of you in the room right now, I would love for you all
to just introduce yourself to the camera, talk a little bit about the sport
that you're probably most associated with and maybe a favorite video
that you've uploaded onto your channel. Hi, I'm Emil and I'm one of the three guys of Pongfinity. There's also Mikka and Otto,
and we do all kinds of stuff related to table tennis. So all kinds of trick shots, challenges
and comedy stuff. One of my favorite videos that we have
done is a video where we've built a raft with a table tennis table on the raft
and pushed it in the middle of a lake in Finland. And then we played the whole day
in the middle of the lake. Hi, my name is Peng. I was the 2012 Olympic team captain for the sport
of gymnastics and I was on the UCLA gymnastics team. One of my favorite videos on my channel. It's a series actually–it's called Behind the Bubble,
and it's the vlog series that I did at UCLA. It was such a fun time. I'm Grant Horvat and I do golf content,
so we're doing that now for about three years. One of my favorite videos that I filmed
is going to Pebble Beach for the first time. That was the number one course in the world,
and we kind of documented the entire process and it was mindblowing. Hi, my name is Alexis Black,
and I make running content here on YouTube. My favorite video on my channel is called
Learning the Hard Way Flying & Ultramarathon Training. And it's just about the beginning of my training block,
preparing for my first ultramarathon and balancing my job, which is flying–I'm
a flight attendant, with trying to build up enough endurance
to be able to complete an ultramarathon. My name is Cayden Henschel. I create wrestling content here on YouTube,
and back in my senior year of high school, it was the pinnacle for me to accomplish a high school
wrestling state title, and it was the third day of the state series
when I ended up winning. It was all these years of training leading to that moment and accomplishing that goal
and getting all documented. It's my favorite video. Very cool. Let's start off with Peng and Emil here. Obviously, you both started posting videos a while ago. At this point, I'd be curious to get your input on what did the sports scene on YouTube
look like when you first started posting videos? Was there a lot of content out there
about sports in general and about your specific sports or was it kind of, you know, on unfounded territory? When I was posting on YouTube
in my last year–  Back in my day– Back in my day, it was kind of an untouched territory. But for me it was more about vlogging,
the behind the scenes of when we were traveling and not necessarily like gymnastics content,
but it was more for my memories and for my teammates’ memories to just post vlogs. Luckily, that year it was amazing. We won a championship
and so it was so cool to have that memory of what was it like when we're getting ready
and parents coming in and the UCLA Bruins fans were like cheering us. But there was not a lot of people in the honestly,
in NCAA in general posting on YouTube. It's changed a lot now. How about you, Emil?
What was it like for you when you first started? Yeah, that's a good question. Just now, when I think about it, 12 years ago,
the sports sector wasn't really that big. And especially table tennis was a niche
that there wasn't really made that many videos about. We kind of like,
also needed to create that niche in a way so that there's more, more
and more people interested on YouTube in table tennis. So what does the table tennis community
look like on YouTube here in 2024? There is much more content around table
tennis, all kinds of like real matches and challenges. If it's something funny and entertaining, people
get inspired and start doing those kind of content. So moving on to Alexis and Cayden,
and one of the things that I'd love to hear from both of you about
is not just the athletic side of your journey, but how you kind of have opened up your content
to explore more of your personal journey. Right. The vulnerabilities or the challenges that you face
as you train to become an athlete? I would say based off of me,
there was really no one else doing it. No one really sharing their journey from the ground up. And I think that's what first maybe be like,
you know what? There needs to be someone creating
something of the content that I personally wanted to watch, and I wanted to kind of be that beacon of light
to be like a big fan of my videos. And for me to do that, that gives me the accountability to work harder
in my training to, you know, do better in competitions. It's just kind of a cool way
that works. Yeah, absolutely. How about you, Alexis? During the pandemic,
I discovered this athletic side of myself. I had no idea I had an athletic bone in my body
and it started with cycling. And then I kind of got a little thought that maybe
I want to do a triathlon, but I couldn't swim or run. So I decided to start with running. And then I just became obsessed with running
and I wanted to share just that part of my journey. I wanted to slowly transitioned out of making flight
attendant content to making the content that I'm making now. One of the things that's interesting,
and I'd love anyone's perspective on this, is that the group that we have represented here
all represent individual sports in a lot of cases. I'm curious, what do you think it is
about those sports in particular that have made them so fitting for YouTube or kind of like
why videos about them are so appealing on the platform? I think it's because of the internal drive. Of course, like team sports are great in everything,
but for one person I think to really just, you know, everything is up to them, their desires,
what they want to accomplish. There's not necessarily a roadmap
for each individual person. And of course, with an individual sport,
the all–all the blame is on you. You can have the coaches, you can have the partners,
but at the end of the day, you're the one who has to, you know, put the foot on the line. When you're in the gymnastic world
and when the coaches, you know, coming at you and you're with your teammates,
you feel like you're taking all the heat. And we're in a sport of judging. So it's really cool when you're able
to put on your journey and really share your journey because they can kind of see that it's
not just all medals and not just all pretty leotards. It's like there's a lot that goes into it
and a lot of struggle. You fall every single day in the gym,
but some people just see, you know, the best of the best and they see that they do great
and there's no struggle. For golf yeah, it's always been just, you know,
you're the only one to blame. It's just you out there against the course. And what's crazy with the YouTube side of golf
is like the productions also increased a ton. So it's gone from, you know, one camera angle
holding it to now like a whole production crew. And it's like the tracers
where it's showing the golf ball, the graphics. There's a lot that goes into that side as well. But at the end of the day, golf is it's
you versus a golf course. There's no one else to blame.  Yeah. And I also think that in these sports, it's sort of like easier to also like focus on the personalities on the channel,
because if there's only one or two or three people, it's much less than, let's say, ten persons
if it's a team sport or something like that. So it's sort of like easier to also connect,
I feel like, to the audience probably. Yeah, absolutely. And Grant,
I think you brought up something that's particularly interesting,
which is the production quality. And I look at a lot of your guys's videos
and we're talking multiple angles, we're talking in
car documentaries, confessionals. You brought up some of the graphical elements about
ball trackers and overlays and all this other stuff. I'm fascinated by that evolution
for all of your creative journeys, like how much harder is it today to produce quality sports content versus
maybe what it was when you first began? Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, even three years ago, so much has changed. Like the entire landscape has changed
because golf got really popular. All the professional athletes
are starting to get into it. And I feel like now there's a lot of competition. So you're going to want to separate yourself
and people kind of when they click on a video, I feel like they're expecting a certain level
of production and they want to see those graphics. They want to see the tracers. It's crazy. Just three years,
how much it's changed, three or four years. Yeah, I mean, I was watching some of your videos
before this and I mean, they look like I'm watching actual
professionally done, you know, stuff that you would see typical of like the Golf Channel, the PGA Tour, things
like that on traditional broadcast television. It's incredible. Yeah. No, I just feel like it's it's crazy because, you know,
there's a lot going on in the golf world right now with there's two different tours going on and YouTube. Golf is in this like weird middle ground that I,
I feel like I'm always talking about. It's kind of in between the PGA Tour and LIV and like,
I could go out there and put up really good content
and they kind of get their golf fix. You mentioned kind of updating or kind of upgrading
your game from a visual standpoint, but I'm also curious from a content standpoint,
how has your individual content evolved? Yeah, this is interesting. So I it of course, you know,
making more of these YouTube vlogs in high school and in high school wrestling,
I was like off also like pretty good. So it was always like highlight
after highlight ever video. I was like doing well. But once we got to college,
it was like a whole nother mountain. It was like, These guys are so much better. And now it was. It's not necessarily about like doing well
or getting the highlights. And of course that would be awesome.
That would be ideal. It's my growth from the beginning of the season,
let's say, to the end. And by kind of elongating that,
that whole journey of being like, you know, let's see how far I can go or let's see
how much better I can get, What really have I learned? Because it's easy to just win and win and win, but to really go from something, go from one level
all the way and document it. I think that's why people keep coming back. Well, it's a human story, right? At the end of the day. It is. It's a relatable story. Like, you're right,
there's only going to be 1, 2, 3 people who, like, dominate everything, win everything, whatever. Like that's a very lucky, very special like athlete
right there. I think what the reason
why we as humans tune in to videos like yours or to, you know, the sports movies in general,
if you look at traditional media and broadcast media, you know, a lot of those are the underdog stories and
how they train and how they overcome that adversity. And yeah, a lot of times
they're not necessarily winning at the end of the day, but the journey that they took
was the reward in and of itself, because it shows the strength of us as individuals and it's inspiring. When I can look at your story and be like,
Oh, he's overcoming his challenges, I can find the strength in myself
to overcome my own challenges. Absolutely. I couldn't have said it better myself. But I think it also applies to something
that you mentioned earlier to Peng, which is, you know, it's it's not all trophies and medals
and pretty leotards. There is that's the struggle, too. There's the falls, there's the getting back up again
and being willing to try again and continually throwing yourself at that challenge until you have
that moment of success and you're able to triumph. Yeah, I think especially with my channel, it's gone
through so many changes. I feel like it's been like a baby, a teenager,
and like an adult. But when I was doing gymnastics,
it was again all about gymnastics. It was all about the team. It was all about vlogging
and taking everyone behind the scenes. But as soon as I retired, I can't flip anymore. Like it's just physically impossible.
And I've had so many injuries. And I think that's one of the things that I was known for, especially as a gymnast,
was coming back after an injury. And I've always said this when I've talked to gymnasts. There's a life outside of gymnastics. And I think especially when you're young, like
I was training 25 plus hours a week since I was ten, and I think it was so important for me
to show my YouTube channel after I retired. There is so much more out there
and there's so much more you can do. And so it's okay if I'm injured. It's okay
if I can do other things and still stay motivated. Absolutely. How about you, Emil? How how, how has the table tennis scene
kind of evolved over the years? Have there been certain areas of content
in your channel history? Yeah. The interesting part is that it's some content
that it worked really well, let's say five years ago. You see that if you make the same kind of concept
today, you basically probably won't work at all. A good example is trick shots. Some of our most viewed long form
videos are like completed, like these creature type of videos
where we do like 8 minutes or 5 minutes complete. They only trick shots and they have 40
or 50 million views probably on our channel. But then again, if we make a complete trick shot
video today, it won't perform well. So you have to all the time evolve your content,
see what's trending either in the sports sector or some other sector,
and then try to sort of like come up with something. A fun
way to combine table tennis with that specific trend. It's a challenge. But then again, I'd say that's that's one of the best
parts with YouTube and being content creator that  only the imagination is the limit for what you can do
and your own, setting–you’re yourself setting the kind of limit where, where
you can take your content on your channel. Yeah. So, okay, so you're saying you've kind of moved beyond
just like, hey, here's a compilation of a lot of like really impressive things
and you're moving into this era again. It's almost like what Cayden was saying. This era of here is a challenge
that I'm setting for myself, and by the end of the video,
we'll have either completed it or not completed it. And you get to see my journey and
and my friends’ journey as we kind of go forth
and try to achieve this difficult task. Exactly. Right. Makes total sense. Alexis, what about you? I've been doing YouTube for nine years. YouTube is a very different place now than it was back then.  Back then you could sort of just hold the camera in front of your face and just kind of freestyle off the top of your head. But I think once I realized that I need to provide more value and to give people a reason to stay for 10 to 30 minutes or even more, I started to see more consistent growth. I think people come to YouTube - a combination of wanting to see as people's real journey, but also they want to know how to do something. How do you begin running? They want information,
and I think personality can get you a long way, but if you combine personality with sharing value with people, I think that's the winning formula.  Yeah.
- Yeah, absolutely. Grant and Cayden,
both of you have done a fair number of videos that are kind of challenge collabs with other people
and specifically other athletes in the space. Could you talk a little bit about any specific examples
of videos that you've done in the past? It's been really cool collaborating with some of the best golfers in the world,
and I feel like that's what's working. Almost the best is getting to show a different side of these PGA
Tour players or LIV players and kind of see them in an environment that they're not so serious
and they're just getting to hang out. But I mean, also the coolest thing with golf is I can go film with you know,
I was just with an F1 driver. I didn't really know much about F1
driving or any of that. And I was just with him film and then I'll go film
with somebody else that's, you know, a football player. So that's also a really cool side of golfer. It's like you can just hang out
with the play golf, interview them, but it doesn't matter like what sport they're in. I would say for challenges, it's really cool to like,
let's say, do challenges with like the highest level of wrestler. So like one of my videos
where I collab with Spencer Lee he's now on the Olympic team is, you know, hopefully
going to do amazing their take home goal for USA. And of course I think, you know, those are the videos
that the audience loves to see, these guys that they're always seeing like on TV
or all these biggest tournaments winning everything. Like they want to see kind of, you know, kind of like
Grant was talking about–like behind the scenes there. Yeah. And I think that's
that's an important point to call out, right? Is that the style of videos that you're doing and the
level of access that you're giving to both the sport and to a lot of the top athletes of those sports,
it's not done by traditional media, right? Like if I if I turn on to broadcast television
or look at traditional news or sports outlets, I'm not finding this kind of off
the cuff, you know, unscripted stuff
that is just hanging out, enjoying a sport. You are providing your viewers,
your subscribers, a level of authenticity for these people that they love watching
or that they really respect in their sport. But now all of a sudden, by watching your content,
I'm able to engage with them as humans and get a more well-rounded
perspective of who they are, which is really exciting. Who is the audience for your channels? Are they other athletes who are looking for tips or points of inspiration or looking to engage
with their favorite sport in a different way? Or are they, you know, casual fans or viewers looking to be exposed to you or found you through, say,
like a trick shot or something? And we're like, whoa, I really like their content. What do you see the division in your audience like? Yeah, a definitely vast majority is other wrestlers
in high school and of course now in college, as I got more to, let's say, collabing with those now
older wrestlers on the higher levels, Olympic scenes, more parents and like older people,
you know, who aren't necessarily still wrestling, but past wrestlers,
that's who a lot of my audience is as well and it's definitely a lot in, you know,
the act of wrestling community. Alexis, what about you? Because I know running is is so universal, right? Do you see a similar sort of mix of like mostly runners
coming to you or do you think it is a little bit more of a a casual viewer
who's looking to be kind of inspired by you? My audience is this is interesting because it's still a lot of people who are following me from the old days
when I was a flight attendant. They're just kind of curious about what I'm doing now. But for the most part,
I think as casual viewers wanting to be inspired, I've been getting a lot of messages about people
looking for other black runners on YouTube. I think there's a lot of people who are kind of like me
who maybe discovered themselves a little bit later in life
and are trying to start a new hobby like running. And people are curious
and they want to see the struggle and the challenges that I'm facing along the way. Yeah, I just think that's really entertaining. Yeah. No, absolutely. So one thing that I know
from watching other content on YouTube, right, is that a lot of times
there's ripple effects of the video world on real life. And so I'm curious, in the sports world,
have you seen a transition or an impact on like your real life experiences or the sport itself
from how YouTube videos have impacted things? Personally, for me, I'll start off basically there's there's
I think it's the most popular video on my channel. It's Top 5 Pins. One of the last moves I showed
is something called the surfboard. And basically it's like
no one was going to hit this in a match. No way. And unbeknownst to me, it's like five years
after posting it, I still get pictures and videos of people getting this move and it's like,
how are you getting guys this? I personally have never done that in a match. And for me to kind of see that like, holy cow,
this is something that actually worked and something that, you know, no coach is going to teach us. You're not going to go to like, you know, a high level of camp to learn this really good move
because it's probably not I don't know how it works, but that's kind of one thing that I saw that's like,
this is really like impacting. That's awesome. How about you, Grant?
What about in the game of golf?  Firsthand, I see pros starting their own YouTube channels and I feel like they've seen the
YouTube landscape, whether it's the PGA Tour or pros, and they're kind of taking bits and pieces from YouTube
and utilizing into those platforms. So yeah, I feel like that's the coolest part
is seeing a pro golfer start his own YouTube channel just because of like they're seeing that, you know,
a lot of views are happening on YouTube right now and they're like, I want to get on board. You know, you're doing something right
if that's happening. So all of you should have received a package
that we sent you. Do you all have it available right now? [All] Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Well, if you could please open those now. Okay. So everyone's opening up their packages. Ooh! Nice little red boxes that we sent to everyone. I'm seeing some cards
with the YouTube logo on the front. Like & Describe
- Got a medal! Look at that.  That is so cool.
- Oh, wow! - Aw that’s cute. That's cool. Everyone gets their own little gold medal with a YouTube logo.
- We’re wieners! You're all–you’re all gold medalists in our hearts.
- We’re all winners. Thank you, guys. Thank you.
- Awwww.  Wait, I get one too?
- Yeah.  Are you kidding me!? Oh. 
- For you.  Oh, my gosh. I'm a Like & Describe gold medalist too. Haha. Let's go. We’re all winners. 
- Woo. Yay! There's only. What? How many of these? One, two, three, four, five, six. Six of these in existence now. Awesome. Well, guys, thank you once again for joining me. Peng, Grant, Cayden, Emil, Alexis–it has been awesome having you on today. Good luck in your endeavors. And I can't
wait to see what you have up next on YouTube. Thank you. - Thank you. 
- Thank you. I think one of the things that's been so exciting about having all of these athletes here on today's episode is that it really showcases
the drive that comes with being an athlete, right? They want to run an ultramarathon. They want to challenge
the hardest golf courses in the world. But that lesson applies no matter what you do,
whether you're an athlete, a creator, or just living your daily life. Right. The other incredible thing about all of this, right,
is that all of them started as amateur athletes, right? And through their journeys, through showing you
the warts and all of their processes, not only are they inspiring the next generation of athletes,
they're affecting the professional scene at this point. Right. We heard about how professional athletes
are starting their own YouTube channels. We heard about how wrestling training across
the country is changing and evolving. Based on a top five list of best pins right? One person with a passion can put themselves out there and have this ripple effect
that changes whole professional industries. That's pretty darn awesome. Thanks for joining us for episode seven of Like & Describe
YouTube's Official Trends podcast. I'm MatPat. You can find out more
about liking describe at white dot B, E slash like describe that's white B, E slash like describe. You can find links to all of the creators and videos
that we referenced today in the episodes description Like & Describe is produced by Joe Sabia, Greg Gordon,
Emily Shaw, Sam Weiser, Grace Lauson, Allie Schwartz Balbes,
Jake Wright, Ernest Pettie and Maddy Buxton. Video Editing by Karen Rivas. Graphics by Louis Hanwey. I'll see you next time. [All laugh] That was good. That was good.

Transcript for:Exploring Niche Sports Content on YouTube

Transcript for:
Exploring Niche Sports Content on YouTube