Brandon Deyo, Bradley Deyo, 27
COFOUNDERS, MARS REEL
AS HIGH SCHOOL SOPHOMORES, Brandon and Bradley Deyo dreamed about playing college basketball. The identical twins, raised by a single mother, couldn’t afford pricey scouting camps, so they bought a $100 pocket-size video camera from Best Buy and sent highlight reels to 300 schools.
They didn’t land athletic scholarships, but friends and other players loved the highlight videos they had created. The duo realized there wasn’t much coverage of high school sports out there, so they launched Mars Reel in 2010. Its video clips and photos of high school sports attract more than 30 million monthly viewers across Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube and Twitter. “Did we intend to be entrepreneurs? I think it would’ve happened either way,” Bradley says. “Before this we would mow lawns and shovel snow.”
Traditional sports media outlets, like ESPN, don’t focus on high school sports at great length. If they do, they focus on a single superstar. “They find one athlete in a generation and anoint him,” says Brandon. “LeBron [James] was the next Michael Jordan.” By contrast, Mars covers dozens of schools—and thousands of players—across the country, employing hundreds of freelance professional videographers to film up to 30 games a week.
Mars Reel has $4.7 million from investors, including James himself and the rapper Drake, and has deals with James’ digital media company, Uninterrupted, to develop projects like documentaries and with USA Today to license videos and stories.