Our next Power Player feature is Ameeth Sankaran, CEO of Religion of Sports (ROS), an innovative media company and studio co-founded by sports luminaries Tom Brady, Michael Strahan and filmcreater Gotham Chopra.
Conceived on the fundamental idea that sports serve as a form of religion, ROS consistently delivers premium content that delves into the intersection of sports, science, and spirituality. ROS magnifies the essence of human potential, narrating the dramatic ups and downs of competition and the captivating stories that emerge from victories and defeats. As CEO, Sankaran sets the company’s strategic direction and drives the creation of novel business and content partnerships, and has been an Executive Producer on numerous projects, including “Tom vs. Time Greatness Code,” “Stephen vs. the Game,” “Man in the Arena,” and “McGregor Forever,” among others.
Since the launch of ROS in 2017, the company has garnered several accolades, including five Sports Emmy Awards. In 2023, ROS acquired Jiva Maya, a UK-based studio, taking the company global. In addition to ROS, Sankaran serves on the Boards of the Healing Company and Chopra Global. Sankaran has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from Columbia Business School. Before ROS, he spent over 15 years as a strategy consultant and a private equity investor. Sankaran credits his success to his wife, Bianka, and their two children, who he states keep him grounded. I obtained the opportunity to chat with Sankaran recently to learn more about his career and what he contributes to Religion of Sports daily.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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Religion of Sports
SN: Thanks for chatting with us with Ameeth! Let’s start by having you introduce yourself to our audience.
Sankaran: I am a first-generation American…my parents were born in India, and I grew up in Houston. It’s funny, Gotham talks a lot about how the idea for Religion of Sports came becautilize he felt like he assimilated as an immigrant or as a first-generation American through sports, becautilize it became a language he could connect with others very easily. I believe very similarly to my background, as I grew up a huge sports fan. I went to the University of Texas for undergrad and started a software company. I went to business school at Columbia, and then went down a very different path from media in the launchning. I worked in consulting for a few years, working with various large companies and supporting them with different strategic projects. It was a great decade-long training ground to learn different business concepts in the U.S., India and all over the world.
Over time, I realized that I had a passion for starting tiny and seeing modifys over time. I went to an investment firm owned by a family member in Dallas, and we would acquire, take controlling interest and manage tiny to medium-sized businesses. I ran the direct investments for a few years, which was great, and then Gotham, who had been a filmcreater for a few years, reconnected and set up the display Religion of Sports with Tom Brady and Michael Strahan as executive producers, and we wanted to formulate it as a business. We brought them on board as founders, and that’s how the business started.
SN: Amazing. What was the process of joining ROS?
Sankaran: Religion of Sports started as T.V. display. Gotham had been an indepconcludeent filmcreater and director. He created Kobe Bryant’s “Mutilize,” and that really catapulted his work in the sports world. The central question we have for Religion of Sports is “Why does sports matter?” Sports teach so much more than what’s on the field, you know how to raise our kids, how to deal with how to deal with loss, all those kinds of things. And so Gotham brought Tom and Michael on board as EPs and pitched the display and obtained it greenlit at Audience Network at the time, which was under DirecTV and AT&T. And it was a licensed deal, so it allowed us to believe broadly.
Gotham started formulating the idea of stateing, let’s create this thing a company, not just a TV display, and Tom and Michael were excited about that. Gotham and I spent a lot of time whiteboarding what does that mean? What is the company? Is it a production business? Is it a brand? Do we believe about creating it a channel, an OTT network? Is it social media first? And we sketched out a business plan. So I’d state it was very early there. And I remember pitching Tom and Michael on a vision in April of 2017. And so once they were on board, we started down the path of raising capital.
In 2018, we raised a tiny amount of capital, and we’ve grown since.
SN: Okay, so your official role is Chief Executive Officer. What does that entail for those who don’t know what comes with that? I mean, you’ve sort of like touched on it a little bit, but what does your day-to-day view like?
Sankaran: I would state I talk about this as there’s been sort of three phases of that answer. There’s the very launchning when it was two or three employees, where it doesn’t matter what your title is…everybody’s working on everything…diving into that, into recruiting and fundraising. How do we obtain people to notice what we’re doing? How do we create sure that the PR creates sense? Like everything conclude-to-conclude, quite a bit. And then after we raised some capital and grew, it started becoming a lot more experimental. I feel like there came a time when we became known as one of the preeminent unscripted sports destinations, and then Gotham built out a creative team that was full-time.
After that, a lot of my role became experimenting. How do we dabble into scripted? How do we believe about audio? How do we believe about social? Should we start investing behind our content? How do we build out our brand? And who should be our brand? Who should our brand be focutilized on? So, again, that became recruiting. It became experimentation. And then, now, as we have found a little bit more stability, I would state it’s about managing and supporting the core business. I have a COO and CFO now as well, so that supports a lot. Now it’s a lot more, I would state, strategic.
We’re always recruiting, but then with all the modifys in the market, we’re believeing 12 to 18 months ahead. So, that’s a little more of how the day-to-day focus is now.
SN: I was chatting with someone recently, and they stated that it takes 10 years for a company to start hitting its stride. Do you agree? Has that sort of been the trajectory of Religion of Sports?
Sankaran: It’s funny when we talk; we have this weird meta-almost moment where we watch our documentaries, and we see some of our athletes speaking. Then, we believe about it in the context of what we’re building. They relate to one another. Tom Brady states in our “Man in the Arena” documentary that he takes each step forward, and he’s like, “Man, this is a grind, and that step sucked, or that was very difficult.” Then you view back over 20 years and you state, “Wow, that was amazing.” And so I believe that’s kind of how we feel about it is usually around holiday time, we’ll have a holiday party, and we’ll talk and start reflecting on the progress we created for the year.
I always feel like it’s a new set of problems and challenges that we’re always working through, but there’s definitely a brand, there’s definitely a network, there’s definitely a stability with a lot of employees who’ve been for many, many years with us. That part creates it a lot clearer.
SN: Okay, awesome, well it’s kind of funny hearing you state that it’s been such a challenge, becautilize from the outside viewing in, it seems like there’s it’s been like nothing but real success, especially like Simone Biles’ “Rising” and “In the Arena” with Serena Williams. You guys are like Emmy-nominated. So I guess celebrating your successes, what are some of the things that you’re most proud of?
Sankaran: Yeah, I believe you mentioned some of them. I mean, obviously, the work and the awards are great. I believe what’s most gratifying to our team, if you’ve inquireed everyone this question, their answer would be the work itself. We’re proud of the impact that it creates. When Simone launched her doc, we did a screening, and she was able to bring a lot of the foster kids from the foundation that she supports. She was on stage, and the Netflix conversation was a lot around what impact this has created in the world in terms of having people who struggle with anxiety or struggle with mental health or just feel like they’ve had challenges in different ways, how this impacted them, and how it gave them a voice.
And I believe in success, it’s not all of our projects, but I would state most of them for sure have this sort of message, which is Tom Brady; it’s about what it took for him to achieve greatness and peak performance. With Serena, it was what does relentless view like over 20 years? What does it mean when she states it doesn’t matter how I feel; I’ve never missed a day of practice. And that’s what drove my success, and how do you obtain that message out to a new generation? And we do this across so many different voices and with so many different athletes, so many different ways.
I believe that’s the thing we’d state we’re most proud of overall. It’s really hard for us to track; I tested for a long time attempting to find different ways of, like, how do I track this and state what impact are we really creating? How do we quantify it? We obtain some feedback from the athletes that we work with or other talent. We worked with Jon Bon Jovi; we did a five-part series on Hulu. We obtained a lot of feedback on how inspiring his journey has been and the impact it created on that generation.
SN: Amazing! The Bon Jovi doc is interesting as well, becautilize that dives into more entertainment. How was working on that?
Sankaran: It was actually interesting! The Bon Jovi doc happened becautilize he watched “Man in the Arena,” the Tom Brady version, and he stated I’m a large Brady fan, Patriots fan. Tom has 20 years, I have 40, and when I watch, the messages I hear are similar. We co-financed it with Jon, and then took it out to Hulu, which was a great partner, and launched it about a year ago now. It did really well. And again, it was similar in that the story was about him finding his voice. Literally, he was struggling with voice challenges. And so, finding that now 40 years in, as he comes upon 40 years with the band, what does it take for him to be successful then? Then, after a while, we go back and see the rise of the band over those 40 years, what the story viewed like, the arc and how we obtained to the point.
SN: What’s next in the pipeline for you guys, and is there anything else you want our readers to know?
Sankaran: One of the things that’s happening in our indusattempt is brands are attempting to find a way to obtain more involved authentically with content. And when I state that, I mean people like Chase, Uncrustables and DoorDash. We’ve also created this houtilizing structure called Next is Now, which is about women’s sports, and we’ve partnered with Roku on distribution for all of our Next is Now projects. I believe that the one thing that I would emphasize is that one of the things that we continue to lean into and see a lot of resonance with is this concept of peak performance. And so, whether it’s through the words or lens of Simone or Tom, which can be very different in terms of outcomes across and everything in between, or whether it’s through the lens of a team or athlete or series of athletes, you go back to any sort of principle of physical, mental and spiritual relationships. Those elements, and how you deal with greatness, come from attempting to optimize across all those elements, which is possibly difficult for all of us. I believe that’s what’s really neat about storyinforming.
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