Zushan Hashmi: Fake News and Media in Sports (Full Transcript)
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Ronen Ainbinder
Joining us now is a co founder, a sports writer, a policy expert, an academic coordinator, and more. This man can do it all. Interviewed from Mexico City to Canberra, Australia, is a sports media legend, and a sports tech enthusiast. He's the co founder of Sportageous, a media platform that is challenging the status quo of the sports media industry by providing innovative and quality content. His interests cover everything from diversity and inclusion in sports, to tech and innovation. Buckle up for today's Halftime Snack with Zushan Hashmi!
Zushan Hashmi
Thanks a lot Ronen, thank you for having me and I really appreciate the humbling introduction mate!
Ronen Ainbinder It's great to finally host you Zushan, first of all, let's talk about your background. How did you first go involved into the sports business, how did you even come up with Sportageous. And by the way, how did you even come up with such a legendary name?
Zushan Hashmi
It's interesting, as to how I got involved with sports business. In all honesty, it was an accident and a mistake and I think that when you're running a startup you often come across founders of sports businesses and so on who don't actually intend to get into the business and that's really what happened.
Sportageous, is the product of a few friends, constantly talking about sports in a WhatsApp group, and the main idea behind it was that myself and my fellow co founders Furqan and Hassaan we were fed up with the lack of credit given to fans of sport, and the assumption that we will consume anything that's fed to us whether it's clickbait content, random rumors, and memes that don't necessarily contribute to productive and progressive innovative sports conversations, and we just felt that there is room and space to have a platform that provides that smart sports content, and at the same time, enables people to gain access to stories within sports that are smart, innovative in depth and of course one of the other things that we do at Sportageous is providing that human element to the story. It's funny because I don't necessarily come from a sports background but I've always enjoyed sports and really love sports in general and I've played a lot of sport myself from basketball and football or soccer and all the way to what I mostly get up to nowadays, which is either rock climbing or playing squash and coming from a background which you sort of alluded to in political science and academia, I've been fortunate enough to really get into the depth of academic writing and research and being able to sort of transition that and bring it into sport has been nothing short of incredible and exciting so that's a little bit about how I got into Sportageous and the team itself is quite diverse we come from lots of different backgrounds, my co founders one is an engineer, the other one comes from a marketing background and works in a marketing space so having all those diverse areas of expertise has really enabled us to grow as an organization and I wouldn't say that by any means we're at a point where Sportageous is a huge company but the amount that we've achieved considering that we're completely bootstrapped has been incredible. And to see the sort of support and positive feedback that we've gotten so far, continue or pushes us to continue on. So it's been it's been fantastic. And we're really relishing everything that we get to do by Sportageous.
Ronen Ainbinder
And how did you come up with the name?
Zushan Hashmi
The name was a funny one we were just thinking about what we should call the company. And we did want to give it a spin on sports. And one of the things that I did in a past life was making a lot of hip hop music, and write rap lyrics, essentially, and I thought, let's give it a bit of a spin on sport, and the fact that we're doing something that is goes along with the lines of our slogan which is challenging the status quo of sports media and bringing in courageous with sports Sportageous, a sports platform that is that is unique and it's challenging things, and that sort of our Sportageous came to be. And it was honestly just brainstorming, a few different ideas and coming up with that title.
Ronen Ainbinder
That's awesome. I really love the name, and what I also like about Sportageous, is the fact that it's something that comes from the fans to the fans. So, fans would feel that they're being sold by someone that doesn't understand it, I feel like coming from fans like you guys as well. It makes it feel human, as you mentioned, but given your expertise in the field, I want to hear your opinion about sports media, what's one thing you love and one thing you hate about the media side of sports and businesses?
Zushan Hashmi
Without a doubt, the world that we're in today, sports media has a lot of fascinating new outlets and mediums, through which content is being, provided to the consumer and nowadays, particularly in this contemporary day and age. What I really like is the ability for sports media outlets to be able to share stories of cinematic proportions, we've seen documentaries like the all or nothing series on Amazon we've seen very recently Free Solo, winning an Oscar for Best Documentary which which was a phenomenal phenomenal documentary on climbing. It is breathtaking. Similarly, when it comes to sports media, the cinematic stories and what you're able to convey to people through them, is it creates this sense of hope and aspiration inspiration, this opportunity to really inspire the youth get involved. And also I guess keep healthy and fit, even if they're not going to take up sports professionally, but also at the same time, you're able to hear the stories of sporting heroes that you love and learn about what it really takes to get into the world of athletics and being an athlete and competing at the highest level because it isn't easy by any means. And to see what you can do to really achieve that. So I think that side of the sports media industry is is amazing. Being able to watch and learn about that stuff is incredible. And I think I really really dislike clickbait, rumors and not in all cases but in most cases, memes.
The problem around this is and unfortunately this is how how the industry has sort of become as of late with quick fixes and very very short attention spans, unfortunately, due to social media platforms that you put in an article which has the most ridiculous title. This will enable you to get clicks, and that's obviously clickbait, rumors, we saw the whole Messi story as of, as of late and what ended up happening he's staying at Barcelona and I recognize that that's an important discussion because for example, Lionel Messi actually coming out and speaking against the the Barcelona administration is something which is very unique and should be covered because it hadn't been done by him. Prior to this, but one of the most ridiculous things I came across was Lionel Messi is headed to Arsenal. I'm an arsenal fan I'm a Gunner, and I found that to be the funniest thing yet there were at least 25 articles that I came across.
Clickbait, people are going to get into it, rumors as well read about it laugh about a joke about it. What did you get out of it? Nothing. And that's my problem. Do we assume, is it fair for sports media companies to assume that fans of sport are idiots or fools, do we take that as a basis for all the content that we make and I'm not gonna name any organizations in particular because all of them do good work, but some of them tend to stray more towards this path, just desperate to get clicks and get the attention of people to come on to their platforms and consume their content, whether it's, written audio and video and in all honesty, that is that is my biggest calm, with sports media and I think that this can be done a lot better and there are a lot of organizations popping up now. I particularly obviously mention The Athletic is doing a great job in sort of providing in depth sports content.
Ronen Ainbinder
Yeah, I totally agree with you, and we're gonna touch on that a little bit later, as a fact that you like to question our myths and breaking them once in a while. What are two or three myths surrounding sports, tech, innovation that you have discovered. And why are they important?
Zushan Hashmi
We have a section at Sportageous called breaking myths and the idea around it, is that we look at assumptions that we've heard or come across and try to present the facts and these are a bit more specific to perhaps historical analysis of sports. And one of the articles or features that we did that had overwhelmingly positive responses. Interestingly, around the corner for you. With the 1950 World Cup which took place in Brazil, there is this long standing myth that the Indian Football Team which was invited to come and play at the tournament refused to do so because they were not, they did not want to play football without shoes.
And that that sounds like a really funny story, and it's and it's exciting and it's great but the fact of the matter is that the World Cup was just not a big deal at the time. And in the 1950s to ship a whole team, all the way from the Indian subcontinent to South America was well over most people's budgets and most countries budgets for that matter. We took a look into that and that was actually what happened and not in fact that they didn't want to play because they weren't allowed to wear shoes, yes when they played I believe a tournament before that they weren't allowed to go on unless they put on shoes which they did.
And that's one of the, one of the myths that we broke at sports ages, and it was really fun to see people's response because a lot of people assume based on this folklore that this kind of thing is common. Another one that I recently came across and did a piece on was had to do with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the author of Sherlock Holmes and what a lot of people might not know is, Arthur Conan Doyle was a very, very avid sports fan and athlete, so he played cricket at the almost the most at the most professional level possible in the late 1800s. He also played football, as a goalkeeper and represented a team in Portsmouth, and when you go to Portsmouth from what I've heard I haven't been personally.
A lot of people say oh, did you know that Arthur Conan Doyle played for Portsmouth FC, the team that we know today. In reality, he did play for a Portsmouth team, but it wasn't the Portsmouth FC that we know today rather pre an indirect predecessor, that was an amateur Portsmouth team, and we just talked a little bit about that it's a bit of fun. And, myths have their place and there's another famous myth of Michael Jordan gambling away all his money from basketball, and that's another one which isn't exactly the case so there are a lot of these stories that there is space to talk about and really share and for people to learn about and learn a little bit more on. What sporting history is and that's how we sort of come into that space and in regards to tech and innovation I don't, I haven't personally looked into it too much but I'm sure there's something or the other that's around and it's definitely something that I will along with the team consider moving forward because, breaking myths is one of the things we do and I personally enjoy doing it a lot.
Ronen Ainbinder
Yeah, I actually remember from watching the Last Dance Documentary about Michael Jordan how the drama around "Oh, he's the gambler and he likes to bet", and at the end of the day he was coming back to the court to play, and he was still the best player, and it's I think it's just because the media is they're junkies of drama. They, they love drama, as long as they can create drama out of something that's going to help them sell or something so that's the only reason they do it.
But I love what you what you do in in Sportageous and I love this side of breaking myths. I'm a big fan of it. Coming back to the question before, most of the followers of the podcast, are sports fans one way or another. And we are sports fans we're victims to fake news in the industry, what's your take on fake news in the sports industry and how can we as sports consumers detect them, how would you say we could report them, or how can we fight against fake news in the sports industry?
Zushan Hashmi
Yeah, that's so that's a really interesting question, I think, at a on a global and larger scale fake news in general is quite problematic. And while in sports, it doesn't always have the same impact, perhaps on a political level, it can create a lot of, I guess unnecessary high, then also impact athletes and sports administrators and so on and a very good example of this was actually during the start of the pandemic. I was quite shocked as to how many prominent and accomplished sports professionals were sharing this story on social media and particularly on LinkedIn and Ronen you might have come across it yourself, Cristiano Ronaldo converting his hotels into COVID-19 clinics.
That's a great story. We all know that Cristiano Ronaldo does a lot for charities and helping people and so do a lot of other athletes. However, he did not convert any of his hotels into COVID-19 clinics. And I think this is a problem because it creates this false sense of status that an athlete is doing this and it isn't just a problem on on this legacy that it necessarily creates, but it's also a problem on how it may impact that athlete, under the assumption or the guy is that they that we have an assumption, a pedestal that we put this athlete onto, and we have this expectation that they must do something like this. People sharing this getting hundreds of likes on social media commending, the great Cristiano Ronaldo for the work that he's doing. But what was the outcome of that nothing, why?
Because it wasn't true. And and that's the biggest problem of fake news you're diverting the attention from issues that actually matter, and both on a sporting level on a political level at a global level. Essentially, this does not create anything positive. In fact, it only, it's only divisive and creates more negative outcomes and negative outlooks for people. And I guess in terms of your second question, which is how to detect it. My go to means for this is don't always consume your news from social media. What social media algorithms often do is they'll feed you what you want to see if you click on a lot of content from a particular sports platform, you're going to continue getting content from there and you're not going to get to hear other stories from different political aisles different sporting perspectives whatever so it may be.
And this isn't good because then you're essentially stuck in a bubble. The second thing that I personally do is cross checking. So if we're talking about the Cristiano Ronaldo story. When I first came across that, , having been in the industry for a small amount of time but generally being involved in in in media and writing and so on. I've seen, I have a tendency to pick up at some time whether something seems a bit far fetched or not and when I saw the Cristiano Ronaldo story I was like ¡Hey, hold on a second! This seems a bit odd, and I go and look it up and there's already a fact check piece up about it and no it's not true. There is no major media publication that's reported it, and it's all random clickbity websites that are telling you that he's made COVID-19 Clinic hotels. So, always cross, cross check what you do don't necessarily look for your source of news through social media, go out and find good reputable journalists who share stories on sports and make sure that you're keeping an eye out for what they're saying. And always verify those stories across multiple different news outlets that's what I'd suggest if you're trying to detect fake news.
Ronen Ainbinder
Well, Zushan that's, that's really fascinating. I think that social networks like Twitter, are double edged swords, which are fantastic to hear about things and to learn about new things, but at the same time. It shares the room with, with the worst guy that you can meet. And if you start listening to the worst guy. Then, I mean, you're gonna get so distracted from what's valuable. And I think that's where those those companies, lose in a way I think if those companies, learn how to prevent fake news, either in sports or politics or in any other science to spread if they learn how to stop the spread of fake news I think social networks will be a better place for everyone. Zushan, my last question because it's a halftime snack so my last question is a very personal one. And I want to know what advice would you give to a young, graduate who wants to work in the sports industry, or someone that's just starting and is interested in sports, what would you recommend?
Zushan Hashmi
I think it's what I would say in the first instance is, I mean I'm no expert in the sports industry per se but I am learning a lot about sports business. And what I've recognized and sort of realized is to a large extent. The industry is quite ruthless. It isn't easy to get your foot into the door. However, there are a lot of great people that you come across, if you're able to market yourself, if you're able to take and are willing to take risks, and you're good with, to some extent, and have the ability to dedicate your time to social media in promoting what you are able to give to this industry. There is definitely a lot of opportunity for a young graduate to come into this space.
One thing that I will say that I've realized over my time in running a startup within sports is, go do that internship, give it a few months, even if it's not paid. Look my belief is that paid internships are a luxury for people who live in very very well developed economies, which I'm fortunate enough to do being an Australian and living in Australia, but coming from my background. My family's originally from Pakistan. I grew up in the Middle East, I live there for most of my life and I've seen a lot of people who really go ground up. Work hard and give those six months to a year in an internship, pick up all those skills, go into a job interview after that, present those skills. People are blown away by how many skills they've accumulated without ever even having a full time paid job. And that really tends to help them. If there's one thing I would say, and it is this, go do that internship, give it your all, take that risk, market yourself on social media. It's okay if you're getting paid or not getting paid if you are all well and good, that's fantastic.
Unfortunately, not everyone gets that opportunity, especially not in most parts of the world. Some places are just luckier than others but not all of them are and I think that's okay. If you can do that unpaid internship, you're probably gonna do much better than most other people when you do get that paid gig. And that's what it's, that's what it's about getting in making that happen if you have the passion, you have what it takes, you're willing to do the hard yards, you're gonna get there. Just give it your all. And I truly believe from the experience that I've had, working with young graduates both when I was working in in academia myself. Working with students, seeing all the things that they're up to. And then also now being in this space and having interns working with us at Sportageous and being able to sort of teach them guide them and direct them and also provide them with opportunities to really own projects and answer questions regarding things they want to learn about, you just have to give it your all and work hard and I really think that if you perhaps incorporate some of what I've just said, you will get some benefit out of it and get your foot into that door, and that's what you want.
Ronen Ainbinder
I love that Zushan, that's super inspiring and I think that's a great place to wrap today's conversation. I want to thank you for joining the call to be on the show. Your insight and your analysis is one of a kind and I found it super interesting. I hope we get the chance to grab some snacks again in the future but for now, thank you so much for coming.
Zushan Hashmi
Thank you for having me Ronen it's an absolute pleasure and you're doing a fantastic job and I wish you all the best with Halftime Snacks and I'm looking forward to tuning in myself and a future and seeing how the podcast grows and also how your journey in sports and sports tech grows and I'm really looking forward to it. Thanks a lot mate!
Transcribed by Otter.