Adam Stocki became president of “Religion of Sports,” which entered the crowded theaters and television rooms and produced his program sheets with ambitious plans. For a year in which sports were discontinued, transformed some of the unforgettable TV moments from March 2020 into the sports icon.
There’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady, who won his seventh Super Bowl; LeBron James led the Los Angeles Lakers to their 17th NBA Bubble Championship at Walt Disney World; and of course, Michael Jordan, who starred in the ESPN documentary The Last Dance at a time when the rest of the sporting world wasn’t moving.
Just as the quota for live sports has increased this year, film and television content related to sports is also in demand. And Tom Brady was among those trying to get a bigger slice of this cake. Brady joins Good Morning America classmate Michael Strahan and director Gotham Chopra as co-founders of media company Religion of Sports.
They can bet there’s been a delay in finding access to the best athletes. Founded in 2018 as a non-academic literature company with titles such as Muse of Kobe Bryant, Chopra’s documentary director, the company is expanding to a new format after starting its script and audio storytelling divisions last year.
And capitalizing on the pandemic to recruit staff after raising more than $10 million. “We’re one of those weird companies that grew a lot during COVID,” Chopra said, adding that “their workforce doubled in 2020.” It’s about pursuing “stronger relationships with the public and consumers,” says Chopra. “I want sporting religion to mean something.”
CEO Ameeth Sankaran’s vision has ambitiously compared to “Pixar for Sports,” where viewers recognize the show as “The Religion of Sports,” regardless of genre, topic, or format.
“Whether you watch movies digitally, in theaters, or short films, everything is obvious. They knew this was a Pixar project,” Sankaran said, adding that they wanted to develop their own “creative nature.”
To help the company establish itself as a consumer-centric brand, it chose its President, Adam Stocky, longtime CEO of NBCUniversal, who recently became President of E! Channel. (Chopra and Stocky met when Stocky ran marketing for Syfy and Chopra ran Virgin Comics. “Marketing is one of her main strengths,” says Sankaran.)