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Unlike many media moguls, Nish Patel — founder of sports media company ClutchPoints — remains a fan first.
That passion has shaped every step of his career. His path into sports media wasn’t driven by fame or fortune, but by a simple desire to stop annoying his friends. A lifelong Lakers fan, Patel would flood his Facebook feed with play-by-play updates about Kobe Bryant — from highlight reels to shooting percentages.
“Eventually, some of my friends who weren’t sports fans were like, ‘You should probably just make a page for this — most of us don’t care about that stuff,’” Patel tells Entrepreneur.
Little did they know that page would evolve into one of the biggest players in modern sports media.
As Bryant’s career neared its end, Patel started wondering who would carry the torch for the next generation. His answer came in the form of then-Bulls rookie Derrick Rose. Inspired, he launched an “admittedly corny” fan page titled D Rose is D Man. It quickly took off, racking up hundreds of thousands of views within months.
But the basketball gods giveth and taketh away. When Rose tore his ACL in 2012, it was a heartbreaking moment for NBA fans — and a turning point for Patel.
“I remember thinking, damn, I spent so much time building this fan base, but I should’ve been thinking bigger picture,” he says.
In February 2012, Patel launched NBA Memes, a parody account sharing funny images and news from around the league.
“My inspiration came from this UCLA memes page where students posted inside jokes about campus life,” Patel recalls. “It was hilarious — but super niche. And I thought, no one’s doing this for basketball.”
NBA memes was an instant success, reaching a million followers in just six months.
“We had this whole community of people submitting memes and creating content for us,” Patel says. “We’d credit them, and they’d go crazy — sharing it with their friends and family, saying, ‘I got featured!’ That was really the early version of the creator community that’s so huge now.”
After the Derrick Rose experience, Patel learned not to put all his eggs in one basket. He started thinking about his online presence “like a stock portfolio.” Instead of focusing on one player or team, he began building fan pages for every franchise.
“My vision was simple,” Patel says. “As a Lakers fan in a big market, when Kobe was out with injuries, no one was talking about the team on SportsCenter. I thought, if that’s the case here, imagine fans in smaller markets like Charlotte or Memphis. I wanted to create content that every fan actually cared about.”
Rather than pushing polished narratives, ClutchPoints followed the lead of its audience, frequently sharing fan opinions and comments.
“It goes back to our origin story with NBA Memes,” Patel says. “People would send us content, and we’d tell them, ‘You’re part of ClutchPoints — you’re part of the Clutch fam. Let’s get your content out there. We see everyone who talks to us as our version of Stephen A Smith or Max Kellerman.”
As ClutchPoints grew, Patel found himself overwhelmed managing it alone.
“I’d wake up at 1 a.m., 3 a.m., 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. just to post — there wasn’t even a scheduling option back then,” he recalls. “It was just too much.”
Patel’s first hire, a high school friend from UCLA, helped respond to the flood of fan messages.
“We wanted people to know we cared — that we saw their submissions and appreciated what they shared,” Patel says. “It was always about creating something for fans, by fans.”
The idea worked. Sports figures like Maverick Carter began reaching out, noticing that ClutchPoints was generating massive engagement.
“He literally messaged us through Facebook,” Patel recalls. “He was like I have access to talent, I have access to production, I have access to brands willing to spend, but I don’t have the impressions that you guys have for the team-specific approach.”
In 2015, Patel joined Startup UCLA, an on-campus incubator, where he learned how to build a more professional company.
“At the beginning, one of my employees was just accepting payments on PayPal until we hit a limit and realized we needed to figure something else out,” Patel recalls.
Through UCLA’s startup network, Patel connected with investors and entrepreneurs across business and tech — two areas he sees as fundamental when building a company. After completing the program, the newly named ClutchPoints raised its first funding round in 2017 — and the rest is history.
When Patel launched NBA Memes, he was still a pre-med student studying for midterms. But his lack of media experience turned out to be his biggest advantage.
“When I was raising funding, people would ask, ‘Oh, you’re building another Bleacher Report?’ or ‘Another SB Nation?’” Patel recalls. “But I didn’t want to be corporate. I wanted to create something that felt like fans talking to their friends — because that’s how it started.”
That fan-first mentality has fueled ClutchPoints’ evolution into one of the largest independent sports media networks today. Patel now oversees more than 300 social pages across X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook, with a combined audience of over 38 million.
The company has generated more than 5 billion lifetime video views, placed NBA reporters in over 20 arenas and WNBA reporters in more than half the league’s venues, and landed sponsored content deals with brands like State Farm and McDonald’s.
“Our goal was never to be a media company that felt above the fans,” Patel says. “We wanted to be right there with them.”
Unlike many media moguls, Nish Patel — founder of sports media company ClutchPoints — remains a fan first.
That passion has shaped every step of his career. His path into sports media wasn’t driven by fame or fortune, but by a simple desire to stop annoying his friends. A lifelong Lakers fan, Patel would flood his Facebook feed with play-by-play updates about Kobe Bryant — from highlight reels to shooting percentages.
“Eventually, some of my friends who weren’t sports fans were like, ‘You should probably just make a page for this — most of us don’t care about that stuff,’” Patel tells Entrepreneur.
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