ROB PEREZ AND SCOTT ROGOWSKY AND…
If Bob Ley likes Rob Perez, so do I.
Ley must like Scott Rogowsky too. Then so do I.
Who?
Rob Perez and Scott Rogowsky.
Your age may be a determining factor as to your level of familiarity with these two young men.
Perez?
You know @World_Wide_Wob on Twitter.
Host of BUCKETS, the production courtesy of media and content engine Cycle which made its live stream debut on Facebook and Twitter/Periscope in May 2017.
Perez, a 30-year-old Westchester, NY native joined Cycle from FOXSports.com and hoops is his passion.
But this business of “getting buckets” is bigger than basketball for him.
“Buckets is a lifestyle,” Perez asserts. “It’s not just about basketball. Getting an extra scoop of chicken at Chipotle for free is buckets. That’s the mantra we’re trying to get at. It’s not just basketball. It’s the way you live your life. You’re trying to get buckets everyday, whether it’s at work or whether it’s on the court.”
C’mon man…come on. This ain’t nuthin’ new; just callin’ it sumpthin’ different.
Perez is a 2009 graduate of the University of North Carolina and that grind-it-out mentality — getting buckets as he prefers to describe it — has accompanied him always.
He took this mind-set with him to New Orleans a week after turning the tassel where he snagged an entry-level sales position with the then-Hornets of the NBA.
Ticket sales “was the equivalent of, ‘Here’s a phone book, start calling and bring us business,’” he recalled.
He was adept enough to receive a promotion to account executive but it didn’t take long for him to recognize that the world of ticket sales could offer more.
Much more. ‘Way’ more.
Learning the business and growing his account-base allowed him to see how much ticket brokers were raking in after buying tickets wholesale and reselling them on the open market.
That was for him. Plain and simple.
He was on the wrong side of the fence and hopped over.
“Getting buckets.”
Perez was conjuring images of and engendering comparisons to World Wide Wes (William Wesley), a power broker nonpareil and one of the most influential figures in the business of basketball over the last three decades.
As Wes deftly hooked up coaches, agents, scouts and players Perez was playing the middleman in the ticketing industry.
“I was always the power broker between accounts and brokers and stuff,” he explained in his millennial manner. “People were like, ‘You’re like World Wide Wes dude.’”
So with a modest mid-five-figure private investment in early 2011, Perez’ HiLo Tickets was launched. He bought and sold tickets like a madman, outsourcing the back-end technology.
And business was brisk.
At a Las Vegas ticketing conference in April 2012 he fortuitously met Justin Cener the founder of Crowd Seats, a Groupon-templated sports ticketing enterprise.
They eventually joined forces; Perez had the relationships and Cener had the cyber savvy.
“[Justin] had the technology, I had the brokers,” Perez reasoned. “I had the business. Why weren’t we working together?”
“Getting buckets” ensured a very large payday.
Perez moved to LA and in the fall of 2013 Crowd Seats was acquired by ScoreBig, Inc., now an affiliate of TicketMaster.
He and Cener sold whatever CS assets ScoreBig targeted and inked a two-year deal to work for the company.
They had dough and company shares but the thrill — the excitement — was soon gone.
Thank goodness basketball and Twitter were around to fill the void.
Producing content and writing for Twitter and freelancing for sports and pop culture site The Big Lead catalyzed Perez to immerse himself fully upon the July 2015 expiration of his SB contract.
Goodbye ticketing.
Hello FOXSports.com and Cycle.
Spectacular dunks, killer crossover dribbles, Kiss Cam spoofs, catchy commentary and weirdly disconnected coverage of Los Angeles police chases — inextricably linked to the daily culture — create a unique brand of online (specifically Twitter) content and have engineered steady follower growth.
A cult “born.”
“#NBATwitter is like locusts — we consume everything…There’s something about the NBA that’s especially intimate and makes it incredibly engaging for content,” Perez remarked.
He hastened to add that at the same time he wants to provide the casual observer enough content outside of basketball “to keep them on the line,” for fear that they might miss something.
“I like making fun of things in a playful way and bringing light to the game in a way that helps draw in the not-so-passionate basketball fan who is looking for entertainment…I love pettiness,” he said.
Hence #PettyWarz, a moniker coined by Perez which highlights some of the inanity exhibited by the league’s rotating cast of performing arts players.
Exhibit A?
“I enjoy [Cleveland Cavs forward] J.R. Smith dapping up [Milwaukee Bucks guard] Jason Terry and messing up while the play is going on much more than anything else,” he concedes.(Two veterans, btw).
That particular Tweet chain-reacted more than 13,000 Retweets.
Periscope. Cycle. BUCKETS. #NBATwitter.
Perez laments, “I have the mentality that if I’m on vacation, there’s some kid out there who just graduated college and living in his mom’s basement and is just as passionate about doing this as I am, that’s writing something great and is making me look bad. Whenever I’m on vacation or away for a second, I’m getting itchy because I’m falling behind in the race.”
The race to get buckets.
The race is never over. Certainly the digital race is still ramping up.
“[Well] that’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into…”
Rogowsky?
You know.
The thirty-three-year-old comedian and game show host from Harrison, NY known for the daily live app and trivia game HQ Trivia and Running Late with Scott Rogowsky, a live talk show streamed from venues throughout the city and also from LA.
Rogowsky put himself on the map by creating several viral videos, including 10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Jew and Taking Fake Book Covers on the Subway.
In 2017, he hosted a “pop-up” talk show Start T@lkin, which streamed on Verizon-owned go90 for one season. Millennials, generation Z-ers and gamers comprise the bulk of his significant following.
Rogowsky recently moved to TriBeCa where he conceded that he shares space with the dozens of Bed Bath & Beyond coupons his mother has gifted him.
“There could be 200 people watching or two million — but from my point of view, I’m always talking to the same one camera, so there’s nothing to get nervous about. Sometimes I forget how special it is to be commanding such a large audience, so for the games that attract millions of players, I’ll tape a photo of Obama’s inauguration below the camera to give me perspective. For the smaller turnouts, I’ll use a photo of Trump’s inauguration.”
Well put.
HQ Trivia, debuting about a year ago, broadcasts live shows to iPhones and iPads twice a day. It attracts tens of thousands of people who log in for each 15-minute segment hoping to win money by correctly answering a dozen trivia questions. Its success with live-streaming video on phones rocked both the technology and media worlds.
The creators and founders Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll, both 33 (and the architects of the six-second video app Vine which Twitter bought in 2012 and shuttered this year) have been working to develop video apps for the past two years with “a few million dollars” in funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Snapchat’s first investor. Lightspeed also supplies the dough for HQ’s daily cash prizes until the company moves forward with an advertising model.
The game — now available on Android devices — features a ticking counter in the corner of the screen as people log on to play at 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. ET on weekdays and 9 p.m. on weekends.
The energetic comedian Rogowsky typically hosts, cracking jokes as he asks a dozen multiple-choice questions of increasing difficulty. Players must respond via touch screen within ten seconds and the app records and shows how many are eliminated after each round. Reactions can be shared through a rapid-fire chat function at the bottom of the screen.
Those who answer all the questions correctly share in prize money which has fluctuated between hundreds and thousands of dollars and is distributed through PayPal.
HQ’s format inspires people to play with co-workers in the afternoon and with family and friends in the evening, making it roughly akin to a broadcast television program.
Jeremy Liew, a partner at Lightspeed assesses, [Trite to say, but] “things grow because they’re fun. This is way more fun than playing a quiz game on your phone and way more fun than watching ‘Jeopardy!’ on TV.”
Liew unsurprisingly is brimming with confidence when discussing the start-up and its eventual business plan even in the face of competitor mimicry, an inevitability.
“You have to let time talk and figure out how people are interacting and using something before you have clarity with a business model,” he posited. “If you can become part of popular culture, you can figure out a way to make money.”
Perez and Rogowsky are millennial beneficiaries who are smart, driven and creative. They are to be commended and not chastised. Their world bears little resemblance to the respective worlds of previous generations.
The key for folks of all ages is to develop, refine, polish and hone to a razor-sharp cutting edge the ability to adjust to the present.
The here and now.
Adjustment.
Like going with the pitch.
Just ask that wily veteran Bob Ley. He’ll set you straight.
[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in August 2018.]
