The state of Extra Points

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

This is around the time of the year when I usually write some sort of “state of the business” update for everybody. Those newsletters have generally been upbeat and positive, a chance to reflect on our successes, while signaling to our readers where we want to try to grow.

I want to be as transparent as possible with these updates. There’s an awful lot to be upbeat and positive about with the business this year. But there are also some very real challenges looming. There are problems we haven’t solved yet, and the economic and industry landscape for independent media is getting worse, not better.

I’ve written a fair amount in this newsletter about my mom. She was a shining example of the American Dream, going from Brazilian immigrant to college professor. She gave me my moral compass, my sense of justice, a deep curiosity about the world, an interest in higher education and the good sense to ignore the Cleveland Browns. Extra Points would not exist without her.

I haven’t talked very much about my dad. If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to talk about him for a minute … because I think he can help explain what’s happening with Extra Points right now. 

My dad, Gary Blue Brown, was a genius. I don’t mean that hyperbolically. He was an exceptionally gifted artist who graduated from Cal Arts and even briefly studied at Yale. He could paint, sketch and write poetry, and he even dabbled in installations. I have no doubt that he could have become a celebrated, established figure in the fine arts world.

But after he met my mom and settled down to have kids, he decided to go in a different direction. My dad was also an entrepreneur, starting a painting contracting business in Ohio. He discovered he was able to read blueprints better than his peers, and thanks to his charisma and tireless work ethic, he enjoyed some years of success painting factories and hotels all around the state.

But industrial painting businesses are hard to scale, and my dad struggled to find the right help, delegate tasks and build sustainable systems. Despite his best efforts, he often ended up doing a lot of his jobs himself, which led to him working longer and longer hours.

Here’s the other thing about my old man: He struggled with a bevy of mental illness challenges, from bipolar disorder to borderline personality to a severe case of ADHD. He also struggled, at times, with substance abuse. And as a kid, I got a front-row seat to seeing how the pressures of running a business, coupled with other pressures and challenges, could rip somebody apart.

That painting business went under a long time ago. My dad became functionally disabled for most of my high school years, and he died by suicide when I was 19.

Thankfully, I am not my dad. I do not have bipolar disorder. I do not have any substance abuse problems. I do not have his exact demons or challenges or baggage. But I remember enough high school biology to know there’s just enough of his DNA in here somewhere to give me some concerns.

I swore that when I grew up, I would break some of those cycles. Because I know what it’s like to be around a workaholic small business owner.

And quite frankly, that’s kinda where things are right now.

This will be our best year yet for total revenues (by a significant margin), ad revenues and supplemental product revenues. We have more than 37,000 subscribers, and another 40,000-plus over at NIL Wire. 

While subscription revenue from the Extra Points newsletter is still our largest revenue stream, Extra Points Library has now grown to a solid No. 2 product line. We’ve been running Library for a little over a year, and I believe the product has really hit its stride over the past five months. The software itself has gotten better, we’re getting better customer feedback, and we’re getting better at selling it efficiently. I am legitimately optimistic about Library … both as a product for our company and as a tool to meaningfully help academics, startups, athletic departments and more. 

We’re branching out even more in the software world. Athletic Director Simulator published major updates this year, both in question depth and in new features to make it the cornerstone of our relaunched classroom curriculum product. We recently launched two new completely free games: a trivia game (Who’s That Football Team?) and a Stadium Concessions Simulator. We believe that games, both free and potentially paywalled, can serve as a lead magnet for new subscribers, give a reason to keep folks coming back to our website and maybe even become a revenue item down the line.

This year, 2025, has been the most financially diverse since I founded the business in 2020. 

We’ve been making progress in this department. My business partner, Dennis Alshuler, has taken over much of the product development work. We’ve made investments into our outbound sales team (bringing in KC to help with Steven), our editorial team (Joan and Kyle), operations (Becca) and our social team (Hector). Their work has all been invaluable in moving us towards something bigger and better. 

But we’re not quite where we want to be yet. I’m still involved in many other parts of the business besides writing and reporting for the Extra Points newsletter.

For every newsletter you read about low-major conference realignment, I need to be on the phone for hours with ADs, consultants, commissioners and other industry types. For every FOIA that you read about in a newsletter, I filed eight other requests that didn’t go anywhere. There’s no way to automate or expedite the phone calls, deep research, zoom meetings, travel and everything else that comes from trying to do my homework on the stuff I write about.

What I have been doing since 2020 is trying to solve our business and editorial challenges with extra effort, not unlike the college football coach who believes if he just stays in the office until 2 a.m. enough nights, he’ll finally discover the secret to beating Alabama.

So if the existing stories weren’t generating enough revenue, well, I’d just write more. If one computer game helped grow subscribers, well, why not write three? I can always make more phone calls, send more pitches and take more networking requests.

I can’t keep doing that. It’s taking a toll on my health, both physical and mental. And it’s preventing me from creating the best stuff I possibly can, whether that's newsletters, software, videos or anything else. I don’t want to make similar mistakes with my kids that my dad made with me.

Eventually this won’t be the case, but for right now, we’re relying on revenue from the Extra Points newsletter to carry the day so we can make the right investments elsewhere to help our other products. And revenue from the newsletter isn’t going in the direction we’d like.

Here’s the thing about selling stuff to higher education, newsrooms and startups: The sales cycle is almost always long, inefficient and labor-intensive. We know that eventually, it will get smoother, but we’re just not in a position where we can wake up and discover we have three new paid Library clients and a new academic partnership. We have to invest money, infrastructure and time to help our new products grow.

Revenue from paid Extra Points newsletter subscriptions has actually been flat, or close to flat, for more than 12 months. While the total subscriber base of Extra Points has grown to nearly 40,000, the percentage of paying subscribers has been shrinking. From my informal conversations with other publishers, in sports and in other beats, I don’t think we’re alone in that department.

There are several reasons for this. Traffic from social media and search has been critical for smaller publications to attract new readers. Thanks to the Elon Musk purchase of Twitter (which, among many other things, completely nuked the reach of any shared link), Google’s rollout of Gemini (which crippled publisher search traffic across the board) and algorithmic changes from other massive platforms, traffic from those sources has gone completely in the toilet. Even with growth from other platforms, like Bluesky, the loss of reach has been massive. Even our earned media exposure took a dip in 2025.

It is now much more expensive and time-consuming to distribute stories and to find new readers. And since people lose credit cards, cancel subscriptions, change jobs and go through other transitions, it is critical that every publication constantly look for new readers. We have not yet found an affordable and efficient way to do that.

In the five years I’ve run Extra Points, we’ve also never been able to efficiently and reliably generate meaningful ad revenue. This year was our best yet for ad sales, but we don’t generate anywhere close to as much money via sponsorships as we do via subscriptions. And I’ve been unwilling to open the door to lower-quality ad partners or dramatically increase ad volume in the name of maximizing short-term revenue.

So, as we celebrate Cyber Monday today, I come to you with a request:

Here, you can click on this button. I’ll make it easy for you.

For the next three days, I’ll even knock 15% off the price.  If you are currently on a monthly subscription and want to upgrade to an annual sub at this reduced rate, please email us directly and we can upgrade that for you.

I love it when regular ol’ fans buy EP subscriptions. Many of my favorite emails, phone calls and interactions have been with readers who don’t work in or study college athletics, and I’m so grateful that you love and get value out of Extra Points. I badly want to keep making something you’ll enjoy.

I also know that lots of people who work in college sports regularly read this newsletter. I’m so, so glad you do. But, friend, if you’re an athletic director of a Division I university, and you enjoy this newsletter … please pay for it. I know you’re good for it, because I FOIA’d your contract and know you make $425,000 and have a professional development budget.

If you’re already paying for it, first, thank you very much. But second, I happily offer bulk and institutional subscription packages. If you’re forwarding these newsletters to your staff … and I know some of you do, because I’ve filed FOIAs and seen you do it … drop me a line, and I’ll get you a great deal on an institutional subscription, especially if you throw in Extra Points Library. I’m at [email protected]

Writing this newsletter gives me great joy. Doing stuff like making computer games, helping students better understand this industry, brainstorming ideas to help smaller athletic departments, telling interesting stories … this is why I get out of bed in the morning. I love this stuff. I love my colleagues, and I really believe in the new stuff we’ve launched this year.

But I’m a pragmatist. If doing what I love can’t sustainably pay the bills or keep me from having a nervous breakdown, then I need to pivot and do the things that can. 

The single most important thing for me, Matt Brown, is to be the involved husband and father my wife and daughters deserve. Only once that is in a good place can I throw my mental energies into making good college sports internet.

We have a plan. I want to spend more time perfecting that plan, so we can give you the best Extra Points we possibly can. And with your support, I’m still confident we can get there.