👋🏻 Welcome back to Newsletter Examples, where I highlight the formats, strategies, and best practices of leading newsletters to help you grow and monetize your newsletter.

This week: I show you how Kendall Baker, one of my favorite newsletter writers, and partner Jeff Tracy, have reimagined modern sports coverage with Yahoo Sports AM. Total examples: 5. Total reading time: 3 minutes.

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Example 1: Pick the right niche

Many sports outlets still focus most of their attention on legacy channels (over-the-air, print), while sports reporters often invest more time trying to grow their social followings than developing a newsletter audience.

Not Kendall, who has been writing a daily newsletter of some kind since 2016. Yahoo Sports AM blends a few things top sports outlets try to trade on but often don’t deliver—great writing, unique insights, and compelling visuals—in a digestible daily format.

Example 2: Become a one-stop shop

Kendall and Jeff follow their extremely short intro with ~5 quick headlines that bring people up to speed fast.

Example 3: Master the visual

Yahoo Sports AM reports more, with less words, through the use of compelling visuals.

In the spirit of being concise, I’ll let a graphic from one of their best stories last week do the work…

In too many newsletters, visuals are an after-thought. Kendall and Jeff take pride in finding images that move you—often about undiscovered sports.

Example 4: Create games to build engagement

By the time their email goes out every morning, most hardcore sports fans know the news. One way they keep people opening: by gamifying the games.

People regularly tell Kendall that they play his daily trivia game with friends, family, and coworkers.

“I’ve had people say, ‘I’ve been doing the trivia question with my dad the past year, and it’s really, like, helped us get closer,” he told Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton in an absolutely glorious Q&A last year.

Example 5: Create a “newsletter version” of other media

For decades, ESPN’s SportsCenter was a juggernaut in sports media, and its top 10 plays of the day were must-watch TV.

Back in 2017, when Kendall was thinking about starting his first sports newsletter, he and his friends talked about how they didn’t have time to keep up with sports. But he still wanted what SportsCenter used to deliver for him.

“What if I basically did SportsCenter in a newsletter?” he said to his friends.

Years later, that concept is one of the best parts of Yahoo Sports AM, with a clever name that plays off his surname:

That’s all for this week. I’ll be back next Tuesday with more examples!

By the way, I LOVE hearing from readers. Last week I heard from over 100 of you with words of thanks and feedback on the first issue (99% of which was very nice and humbling…but don’t hold back, I want the truth!).

Let’s see if we can get 200 emails this week…I’ll report back next week and let you know. Just hit reply and make my day!

-Brad

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