Andrew Petcash isn't Afraid to Stray from Sports

The business of sports has become big business for content creators.

But like any niche that feeds a growing class of creators, the lowest common denominator tends to become the norm. The lowest hanging fruit, flashiest headlines, or the plain old unoriginal has a habit of characterizing the majority of content in any industry. It makes sense — if it works, it works... and it's a lot more pleasant to color inside the lines, adhering to a tried and true path in order to find an audience.

Of course, this isn't truly the best way to build a brand, as I wrote about in my piece on Jack Raines, but it is the clearest way forward. Much like Jack, Andrew Petcash has avoided the pitfalls of the dopamine-chasing content flywheel in favor of a more thoughtful approach to covering the business of sports.

In one of my favorite newsletters I've read in a while, Andrew broke down 'The Rise of Sports in India'. This piece felt significant to me for two reasons:

1. The rare fusion of finance and sports in a way few are able to accomplish

2. The choice of subject matter

Let's look at the piece with those two points in mind.

Andrew starts off with what appears to be a pretty funny joke. And it is funny. But this intro serves a second, more important purpose: It informs the reader exactly what they should expect in the coming paragraphs.

This may not always be necessary, but considering the unfamilar subject matter, this is a crucial hook to loop readers into the topic from the jump. Now the readers more-or-less have an idea what they're in for, and, most importantly, they are now invested to see how Andrew proves this thesis.

From here, Andrew drops the data, explaining the explosive growth of smartphone adoption in India in the past decade. Then he quickly interjects with a tie-in to sports — an important strategy considering his sports-oriented audience.

This hits on my first point regarding the marriage of finance and sports. Using data from macro trends like technological adoption and applying it to sports helps Andrew stand out from the crowd. While most would begin with the growth of sports in India, Andrew instead cuts deeper towards its roots, setting up a stronger and more broadly based argument.

By including the above chart to drive home the point regarding Mumbai, the sleeping giant of sports tech, the reader is oriented toward touchstones to help contextualize the raw numbers thrown around.

To my second point of note, the choice of subject matter: The magic of this piece is Andrew's willingness to take on a topic with major barriers to entry for most American readers (who likely know very little about India's economy generally and the global sports industry outside the U.S.).

By continuing to tie the story back to the rapid adoption of tech (after establishing the meaningful connection and correlation to the growth of sports), the piece flows easily into its multiple points.

Ending on this point is an extraordinary punctuation mark on the entire thesis. A bold prediction backed up by a well-reasoned list of contributing factors, it calls back to the start of the piece in a satisfying bookend — cementing the most important ideas in the mind of the reader in the process.