The One-Man Sports Network

This millennial turned his love of watching sports into an Instagram empire.

- Allana Akhtar

THIS 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.