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Unlike many media moguls, Nash Patel – founder of sports media company Clutch Points – is a fan first.
This passion has shaped every step of his career. His path into sports media was driven not 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 on 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 it — most of us don’t care about that stuff,'” explains Patel. Entrepreneur.
Little did he know that Page would become one of the biggest players in modern sports media.
As Bryant’s career neared its end, Patel began to wonder who would carry the torch for the next generation. The answer came in the form of bulls of the time. Encouraged, she launched a “confessional” fan page D-Rose is D-Man. It quickly took off, churning out hundreds of thousands of ideas within months.
But the basketball gods give and take. When Rose tore his ACL in 2012, it was a heartbreaking moment for NBA fans — and a turning point for Patel.
“I remember, damn, I spent a lot of time building that fan base, but I should have thought bigger picture.”
In February 2012, Patel launched NBA Memesa parody account sharing funny photos 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 very niche. And I thought, no one is doing this for basketball.”
NBA Memes was an instant success, reaching over a million followers in just six months.
“We had this whole community of people submitting memes and creating content for us,” says Patel. “We’d credit them, and they’d go crazy — sharing it with their friends and family, saying, ‘I’m featured!’ This was really the early version of the creator community that is now so large.
After the Derrick Rose experience, Patel learned not to put all his eggs in one basket. He started thinking of his online presence “like a stock portfolio.” Instead of focusing on one player or team, he began building fan pages for each franchise, regardless of league or sport.
“My vision was simple,” Patel says. “As a Lakers fan in a big market, when Kobe got hurt, nobody was talking about the team. Sports Center. I thought, if that’s the case here, imagine the fans in smaller markets like Charlotte or Memphis. I wanted to create content that every fan actually cared about.
Instead of pushing a polished narrative, Clutch Points led its audience, often sharing fan opinions and comments.
“It goes back with our origin story NBA Memes,” says Patel. Let’s get your content out there. We see everyone who talks to us as a version of Stephen Smith or Max Kellerman.
As the clutch points piled up, Patel held her own and overwhelmed her.
“I would wake up at 1am, 3am, 5am and 7am – there was no scheduling option even then,” he recalls. “It was too much.”
Patel’s first hire, a high school friend from UCLA, helped answer the flood of messages from fans.
“We wanted people to know that we cared about them — that we saw their submissions and appreciated what they had in common,” says Patel. “It was always about making something for the fans.”
The idea worked. Sports figures like Maverick Carter began to reach out, noticing that clutch points were generating massive engagement.
“He literally messaged us through Facebook,” Patel recalled. “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 feedback that you guys have for a specific approach to the team.”
In 2015, Patel joined campus incubator Startup UCLA, where he learned how to build a more professional company.
“In the beginning, one of my employees was just accepting payments on PayPal until we hit a threshold and realized we needed to figure out something else,” Patel recalls.
Through UCLA’s Startup Network, Patel connects with investors and entrepreneurs in business and tech, the two areas they primarily look at when building a company. After completing the program, the newly named Clutch Points raised its first funding round in 2017 — and the rest is history.
When Patel launched NBA Memeshe was still a pre-med student studying for midterms. But his lack of media experience proved to be his biggest advantage.
“When I was fundraising, people would ask, ‘Oh, you’re doing another Bleacher Report?’ Or ‘another SB nation?’ ” Patel recalled. “But I didn’t want to be corporate. I wanted to create something that fans would talk to their friends about — because that’s how it started.”
This fan-first mentality has fueled the evolution of Clutch Point into one of the largest independent sports media networks today. Patel now oversees over 300 social pages across X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook with a combined audience of over 38 million across every major sport and team.
The company is expanding its fan base beyond the major professional leagues into sports verticals, including women’s sports, HBCUS, college football and college basketball.
The company has generated more than 5 billion lifetime video views, has placed NBA reporters in more than 20 arenas and WNBA reporters in more than half of the league’s locations, and has landed sponsored content deals with brands like State Farm and McDonald’s.
“Our goal was never to be a media company that transcends fans,” says Patel. “We wanted to be there with them.”
Unlike many media moguls, Nash Patel – founder of sports media company Clutch Points – is a fan first.
This passion has shaped every step of his career. His path into sports media was driven not 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 on 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 it — most of us don’t care about that stuff,'” explains Patel. Entrepreneur.
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