Sharmistha Gooptu
RevSportz enters its third year today and, like all my colleagues, I too have my own anecdote. A story of starting and growing, of the ups and downs of start-up life, of sometimes being unsure of the direction one should head into, and then those Eureka moments when you start to see that name make its own mark, of people recognising the quality of work when they now speak that name. The name of our baby – RevSportz.
I started my RevSportz journey shortly after its founding on December 1, 2021. I have been a historian, writer and editor working mainly in the academic domain and, more recently, as a writer of popular fiction. Sports media was something new, and the task of the everyday running of this new company was on me. I had to learn anew and unlearn some of the things from my academic life. I had to teach myself to make the most relevant points of a video reportage within the first 30 seconds, else I would lose the eyeballs of my audience, whose attention span was less than a minute before they flitted across to another platforms. This was contra my learnings as an academic presenter at conferences where audiences listened with attention for a minimum of thirty minutes. Start-up life also taught me to multi-task like I had never done before!
My first coverage of an international multi-sports event was for RevSportz during the Commonwealth Games of 2022, when I first learnt the ropes of media coverage on an event of this scale. It was exhausting and, on some days, when we returned to our hotel in Birmingham close to midnight, having left early morning, I had trouble getting my aching feet out of my shoes. No coffee breaks, no lunches like you could reasonably take during academic research trips. You and your teammates are on the go from one venue to another, and nobody rests until they’ve gotten that story, all the time supporting and cheering our athletes. We worked relentlessly during the CWG and then again during the FIFA World Cup in Qatar at the end of 2022, from where each team member returned physically sick from fatigue. But mentally, we were glowing from the kind of coverage we could give to our by-then dedicated viewing community.
Indeed, it is a community that RevSportz has spawned, a community connected by its love of sport and excellence in sports coverage. A community that values each sport for its own mettle and all athletes, men and women, able-bodied and para, as equally worthy of coverage. It is a community supported by India’s top athletes like Abhinav Bindra, Pullela Gopichand, Sania Mirza, Deepa Malik and Devendra Jhajharia, who have been with us in spirit. As have some of the country’s top brands like Tata Steel, Ageas Federal Life Insurance, Bharat Serum and Vaccines, Coca Cola, Wow Momo and many others, who have supported our cause.
From a start-up employing a handful of people, we are today a team of over thirty. For each of us, it’s been about growth and learning. Learning from other team members, learning from the first mistakes and learning to survive in a fiercely competitive media space with only quality work to speak for us.
My own learning curve extended from training myself to speak before a camera, to developing our now super-strong website (www.revsport.in) to organising India’s biggest sports conclave in early 2023, in only the second year of our existence. And I have seen that very same learning and growth in some of my younger colleagues who rose to the challenge, whether that was covering the Asian and Para Asian Games or the Cricket World Cup. Now, as we gear up for the Paris Olympics in 2024, myself and each of my team members learn anew every day. We’re creating, learning and unlearning, so that by the time we leave for Paris, we’ll be a stronger team that you can look forward to watching.