Live
10 MONEY.COM MARCH^2019
PASSION PROJECTSTHIS PAST NOVEMBER,Omar
Raja posted a video on
Instagram of the Philadelphia
76ers’ Joel Embiid missing a slam
dunk—and his teammate Ben
Simmons’s amused reaction. The
post got 2 million views, and
Embiid and Simmons themselves
joined in on the comments.
But attention from athletes is
nothing new for 24-year-old Raja,
who founded the Instagram page
House of Highlights at age 20 and
turned it into one of the biggest
sports platforms in the world.
With about a dozen new posts a
day typically racking up a million
views each, the HOH account
averages 526 million video views
a month and has inspired a
dedicated fan base.
Raja’s youthful perspective
seems to have contributed to the
platform’s success. While ESPN is
losing millions of subscribers a
year to cord cutting, and the NFL,
NHL, and NBA struggle to attract
younger viewers to live sports
events, nearly half of House of
Highlights’ viewers are under age
24, according to parent company
Bleacher Report, which bought
HOH from Raja three years ago.
And since sports teams are now
relying more on streaming and TV
views than selling out stadiums
to make money, cultivating an
audience of young sports viewers
can translate into serious cash.
But Raja wasn’t thinking about
shaking up sports media when heJust 24,
Omar Raja is
giving ESPN
a run for
its money.The One-Man Sports Network
This millennial turned his love of watching sports into an Instagram empire. BY ALLANA AKHTAR
PHOTOGRAPH BYKYLE DOROSZ