Every starter on the Washington Wizards spent 10 to 15 minutes with the hosts of Enjoy Basketball, a creator-led media company, in a dedicated area at team media day. Enjoy’s co-founders, Cody and Cole Hock, believe that access comes down to trust. It arrives as younger fans, in their account, follow the NBA through clips and recaps rather than full games.

Enjoy aims to reach those younger fans. “The reason why we started this was just that the NBA and basketball media in general had a negativity problem,” says Cole.

Cole and Cody founded the company in 2022 with Kenny Beecham, the basketball creator at its center. “A young audience really wants to connect with someone they can relate to,” Cole says. Kenny and Enjoy’s other talent are doing that by breaking the game down in a digestible way.

Enjoy’s previous partners have included the NBA, ESPN, and NBC, and the co-founders give two reasons teams agree to work with it. Fans watch the sport differently, and Enjoy has spent years showing it can be trusted.

Fans Are Following the NBA Through Clips and Recaps

Cody believes that getting the younger demographic to watch a two-and-a-half-hour game is “just almost impossible at this point.” Fans want to watch on different devices and platforms, he adds, and holding them on one platform at a set time is hard.

A fan can take a 10-minute clip breakdown or a 60-second recap, Cody says, or listen to Enjoy’s hosts, read its newsletter, or see an Instagram story. “We’re just trying to be prepared for that shift and to give people optionality when it comes to the consuming of the content,” he says.

Cole says the same habits explain why leagues and teams are working with independent outlets. “A lot of the time it’s just highlights and clips rather than sitting down and watching a full game,” he says. Teams are finding new ways to reach Gen Z and younger audiences, he adds.

Younger Fans and Players Favor Voices They Relate To

Many broadcast personalities, including former athletes, can feel out of touch, according to Cole. “They’re older. I think their opinions don’t really resonate with younger viewers,” he says.

Some younger players, especially rookies who grew up watching Kenny, prefer Enjoy’s podcast to ESPN interviews, Cole says. “Hey, I don’t really want to go do an interview on ESPN. I would way rather come here and do your podcast and talk to you,” he says they tell Kenny and the other hosts.

“I think that just speaks to the current state of sports media, especially with Gen Z and the appetite for new personalities, diverse opinions and voices,” Cole says. Enjoy’s role, as he describes it, is to find and develop new talent and use the platform to grow the sport.

Enjoy’s Community and Past Work Earned the League’s Trust

“Adam Silver [NBA Commissioner] is not coming on our podcast if the NBA doesn’t trust us,” Cody says, noting that Silver rarely goes on podcasts. He points to past work with the Chicago Bulls and Jimmy Butler, and to dealings with ESPN and NBC, as validators built over the years. That took a long time, he adds.

“We’ve kind of checked the box that we’re brand safe; we put out positive content,” Cody says. Enjoy also tells stories that do not have to center on the star player, he adds. “I think they can trust us by seeing our community, and then we have a catalog of content that we’ve done with past teams or the league,” he says.

Cody describes that community as both online and in person. “We see the same people in the comments across all of our platforms,” he says, and Enjoy’s live shows draw hundreds of attendees several times a year. After a recent show in Chicago, Enjoy gave merchandise to two fans who had driven roughly 10 hours from West Virginia. He contrasts that with an audience that, he says, shows up and goes away.

Full Creative Control Let Media Day Interviews Draw on Players’ Familiarity With Hosts

The Wizards had been talking with Enjoy for months about a project, Cody says, before inviting it to cover media day. Enjoy has covered media days here and there before, he says, but never in a setting this intimate. The Heat relationship recurs, since Maddie, an Enjoy host, has covered Heat media day for two or three years, and Cole says the players there know her, which makes them comfortable doing different kinds of interviews and social content. The Kings invitation came through Ben, a member of Enjoy’s social team who once interned for the club and heard from former colleagues. Enjoy is in talks with other teams but can attend only so many, Cody says.

“We had full creative control, and I think that goes back to that trusting relationship,” Cody says. He credits that freedom for the unplanned moments that followed. Players Trae Young and Anthony Davis already knew Enjoy’s hosts, Cole says, including inside jokes from the podcast. Trae referenced a bet between Kenny and Mike over whether he would score above a set points-per-game mark this season, with the loser shaving a Mohawk. Cody believes Anthony relaxed once he learned that Enjoy’s hosts were also from Chicago.

Cole estimates that social clips from the Wizards session generated more than 10 million impressions in their first 24 hours, and says the Wizards’ media team praised the work. “The impressions are really nice from a numbers perspective, but that doesn’t matter compared to the reception from the players,” Cody says.

A YouTube-First Pipeline Lets Enjoy Fit Content to Each Partner

Enjoy’s first product was a newsletter, because Kenny was still working with House of Highlights at Bleacher Report and could not appear in the company’s content. Podcasts began in January 2024 through a partnership with ESPN and Omaha Productions. “Everything starts on YouTube. That’s first. That’s our biggest platform,” Cody says, and content moves out from there.

Rankings in the newsletter feed the podcast network, podcast clips are cut for social, and written content becomes carousel posts. X is also a major platform for Enjoy, where it posts video when it has it and written content otherwise. “We try to be everywhere all at once if we can, as best we can,” Cody says.

Partners receive different pieces. The podcast network was the main part of the work with NBC and ESPN, along with some social content. The NBA partnership last year centered on Enjoy’s YouTube channel and social accounts, which the league co-distributes, and did not include podcasts.

Enjoy Expects Trust to Compound as Its NBA Work Expands

The NBA partnership is expanding this season, Cody says. “It went so well last year that we’re doing even more of it this year,” he says of “Enjoy the NBA,” the umbrella program. The plan includes more episodes of its trivia series, co-distribution of Enjoy’s podcast on the NBA app and in-person activations at All-Star weekend.

Cody credits the league with embracing the new ways fans consume content. The league has a more global reach than most other sports leagues, he says, and it works creators, musicians, actors, and athletes from other sports into its content. “Their NBA app is really designed to be almost like a TikTok dupe in a way with some of the content there,” he says. “I think the storytelling they’re doing there and some of the original programs are really, really good,” he adds.

Cody expects access to widen as Enjoy’s record grows. “I think that will only get easier, hopefully, over time, as we create better content and better relationships,” he says. “But I think it sort of all comes down to that word – trust.”

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Check Out Our Podcast