Forget the Big Leagues - The Best Sports Social Content Is Coming From the Underdogs
Lessons in audience growth, storytelling, and platform mastery from the sports you didn’t see coming.
At Disruptive Play, we’re known for calling out what’s broken in sports media and offering ways to fix it. That’s our lane.
But today, we’re flipping the script. This piece is about celebration: spotlighting the innovators who are pushing sports forward with creativity, not just capital.
Sure, it’s easy to praise giants like WWE or F1 - with social teams in the hundreds and SEO dominance to match.
But the real story? Some of the most exciting work in sports is happening in unexpected places, with smaller teams and sharper ideas. Let’s give those under-the-radar heroes the recognition they deserve.
SailGP’s Wing Failure video: When people say “celebrate failure,” no one is doing it better than SailGP.
It was an amazing moment during a SailGP regatta when the Australian team’s wing - what they use in place of sails - completely collapsed onto the boat. Now I’m sure that they firstly checked to ensure that everyone on the boat was safe. But after that, the social team flooded our feeds with the moment.
SailGP didn’t let it rest with that and knew that this was a moment to reach a much larger audience and a chance to highlight the speed, technology and peril at the heart of the competition. They continued to pump out videos over days of the event. Why do one highlight video when you can do a lot? The culmination was the YouTube video that had the wing collapse from every camera angle. Whereas videos from their regattas tend to get an organic viewership of ~10k, within a week they had 500k on this one video. We all know people like a good crash video. SailGp delivered on it and took this moment to create amazing global awareness of their sport to a whole new potential fan base.
VolleyballWorld’s YouTube channel: The global sports fan loves nothing more than a chance to catch-up.
The FIVB has been committed to the brand over a significant period of time and created a channel where you can see entire matches and tournaments on a VOD basis. Everyone is rightly excited about Caitlyn Clark and the WNBA, but in 3 days there has been more than 100k views of a full length rewatch match of team USA’s women’s volleyball team.
VolleyballWorld has other content on the channel but it’s a place where fans can depend on finding the latest matches in their entirety. The organization understands that time zones matter in global sports and that catch-up VOD is much more valuable than has been attributed in the past. And all this traffic is a great place to promote traffic to vbtv - their OTT product with live content. Our question to the FIVB is why haven’t you tried to use the premium options for live on YouTube? You have a large and engaged audience there. This is a real revenue opportunity.
The BWF’s TikTok channel: Creating “un-swipeupable” videos.
There is a disconnect between continents with regards to badminton. In North America, it’s fun to play in the backyard during barbecues. In Asia and parts of Europe, it’s a fast, adrenaline-fueled, must watch sport. And on TikTok, the latter is definitely the story. BWF’s social managers are masters in creating videos that you have to watch until the end to see who wins the point and then loop it again to see what detail you missed the first time around. If you want to master the craft of vertical videos that loop, check out the channel.
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Equally, they are developing personalities from within their world and putting them into social first content that just feels natural. Want to see if you can play badminton with a frying pan?
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The personality-driven content is there and authentic. It just doesn’t get in the way of the action.
BWF isn’t just saying that badminton is one of the most exciting sports out there, they are proving it every day on TikTok.
Stop Hunting. Start Creating.
Content managers waste 3-6 weeks a year just finding the right clip. While you're digging through folders named "misc_highlights_final_v3," competitors are posting your story.
WSC Sports’ Asset Management kills the treasure hunt. AI that actually understands sports - not just “ball detected” - tags every frame with player, play type, and context the second it hits your library. That buzzer-beater? Already cropped for Instagram Stories. That celebration? Ready for TikTok.
Partners get their own portal instead of blowing up your Slack. You can upload from the tunnel on mobile. And everything connects to automated content creation, so finding assets becomes using assets.
Your best content is already shot. Stop losing to people who just find it faster.
Disruptive Play - So what can you learn from these masters ?
It’s a much flatter playing ground on social: the bigger sports will still have the search terms - which gives them an unfair advantage - but the quicker, nimbler and smaller sport can actually outperform the big guys if they are willing to invest, take risks and move quickly. On social, it’s more of a fair fight and David’s doing quite the job on Goliath.
Get the mileage from your highlights: VolleyballWorld is getting value from non-live matches in their entirety. Badminton is playing to its strengths - amazing rallies. SailGP shows one moment can add up to a whole lot of clips. Don’t get stuck with the mentality that there’s only one way to deliver highlights on a VOD platform.
Know the platform, the algorithm and the audience: as BWF has demonstrated, there is a true craft to delivering a TikTok video. Everything from where the edit starts and ends all the way through to the music and title. If you are not paying attention to every detail of every upload on TikTok, you aren’t going to win here. But if you do, the world can be yours.
Final Thoughts
In a world where the biggest sports brands dominate the headlines, it's easy to assume they’re the only ones moving the industry forward. But that’s not true.
As these examples show, creativity, clarity, and craft still win, especially on platforms that reward speed, authenticity, and consistency over budget size.
🏆 SailGP turned a failure into a global moment.
📺 VolleyballWorld built value through full-match VOD that meets fans where they are.
📱 BWF mastered TikTok with native storytelling, looping edits, and creator-driven content that feels like the feed.
These aren’t anomalies - they’re blueprints.