Pablo Torre: Media Companies are ‘Tech Companies in Which the Math is Kind of Obvious’

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Over the last decade, there have been a variety of seminal changes taking place across the sports media industry amid changes in consumer proclivities and evolutions in technology. Pablo Torre has been involved in several of these alterations, including the cessation of ESPN: The Magazine and recent conclusion of Around the Horn after 23 seasons on the airwaves. Alex Smith, co-host of The Glue Guys podcast and former NFL quarterback, was curious to hear how the business is shifting from the perspective of Torre, who works as a journalist, sportswriter and podcaster with his venture through Meadowlark Media.

Torre discussed similarities between the sports media and technology businesses, articulating that media companies are no longer run by the media people. In essence, he equated these entities to “tech companies in which the math is kind of obvious,” but he emphasized how the audience responds in different ways to tested, formulaic paradigms. While he is not looking to fight the ostensible current, nor did he want to bore everyone with a proverbial dissertation on the industry, he outlined how algorithms have advanced and adapted amid the ecosystem.

“When I say tech, I really mean platforms like YouTube where data and their algorithm is really good,” Torre explained. “What does that mean? It means that it’s really good at sorting stuff, it’s really good at surfacing stuff. It’s not perfect, but it’s a very efficient sorting mechanism that is distributing audience in such a way, and I don’t fight that. Authenticity though seems to be something that somehow amid all of this multivariate, algorithmic stuff is surfacing as something that people still respond to.”

Torre drew a comparison between authenticity and honesty and explained that those on live television are becoming more incentivized to convey the former more regularly. Ravi Gupta, the founder and chief executive officer of The Branch, agreed with Torre’s point that everything is technology and also conveyed how niches are bigger than people think. Working in an incentive structure, as Torre described, he mentioned how the idea of people not knowing what they want is sometimes lost since algorithms are trying to reverse engineer the process to discover the core of such feelings.

“The question of ‘surprise,’ ‘surprise’ as a concept, there is something ineffably human about, ‘I think this other person would enjoy this even if they have given no data-driven indicator that they would,’” Torre said. “That, to me, is part of the secret sauce of human curation, which isn’t the same as, ‘I’m putting all my chips exactly where the computer says I should.’”

As the host of Pablo Torre Finds Out, Torre and his colleagues explore a consortium of topics and produce episodes with varying iterations. For example, some of his recent shows have focused on reporting surrounding the situation between University of North Carolina head football coach Bill Belichick and his relationship with Jordon Hudson. Yet there was also an analysis surrounding cameos on Atlanta and an interview with Tony Reali about the ending of Around the Horn.

Gupta finds it important that Torre is prolific and underscored how successful founders are misinterpreted as being perfectly curated when, in reality, he feels they do a lot, receive feedback and make the necessary adjustments. Torre echoed the sentiment as applicable in content and referred to sports as, perhaps, “the lone monoculture we may have left” with fragmentation abound. Because of this, he views some emerging niches as being wholly self-sustaining and pondered over potentially aspiring to have a bespoke brand fueled by passion supported by an audience.

“My real media hot take is we’re all OnlyFans,” Torre said. “Can we all be supported by an audience that wants to give us money because we show a little bit of our ankle? ‘You guys like this? Would you pay for that?’ In the apocalypse, we’re all OnlyFans. We’re not there yet, but I think about that part because it’s not a matter of, ‘I’m an A-list Hollywood star.’ It’s, ‘I’m a person who gets to do what I love because enough people love what I love,’ and that’s exciting in a weird way.”

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