Today, Vox Media’s sports network SB Nation launches Secret Base, a new community dedicated to the internet’s most entertaining and creative stories for sports fans—and anyone who loves great storytelling and community. Secret Base is the brainchild of the creators behind SB Nation’s popular YouTube channel and mixed-media features including “Beef History,” a show that celebrates the sports world’s most electrifying rivalries; “17776,” Jon Bois’s ASME-winning multimedia fictional narrative; and, recently, “Dorktown: The History of the Seattle Mariners,” the offbeat documentary mini-series.
“For years, our team has been finding new stories to tell and new ways to tell them. They just happen to be about sports, because that’s where we find so many of the greatest triumphs, funniest catastrophes, and most fascinating people,” said Secret Base co-founder Jon Bois. “What’s excited us most is that we’ve drawn in lots of people who wouldn’t even consider themselves sports fans. At the heart of it, this is a home for anyone who enjoys a good story.”
Throughout the day, a variety of content and features will become available on the site, including the premiere of the new series ‘Overlap’ and a Secret Base merchandise store:
- 11:00am ET: Check out a new episode of ‘Rewinder’ that tells the full story of the Secret Base team: how they got to this point and what’s in store for the future. The YouTube community sparked this idea through a multi-year comment campaign pushing for “the creation of SB Nation deserves a deep rewind.”
- 2:00pm ET: Join the Secret Base team for a live Q&A, and catch the premiere episode of ‘Overlap,’ a new series that will illustrate the overlapping stories of sports icons. The first episode explores the history between Magic Johnson and his young gun successor Penny Hardaway.
- 3:30pm ET: Don’t miss the supercut of Dorktown’s critically acclaimed documentary, “The History of the Seattle Mariners” from Jon Bois and Alex Rubenstein, now with accompanying merchandise including the film’s much-requested timeline poster and a live Q&A with the creators.
Secret Base is the product of a storytelling collective spearheaded by veteran SB Nation creator and Secret Base Editor-in-Chief Graham MacAree. “This team has always challenged the norms of sports media by delivering off-beat and compelling content, producing stories that are rooted in sports but not reliant on sports. Secret Base will lean into that ethos offering playful, experimental storytelling.”
The new community features Vox Media’s Coral, an inclusive commenting platform that will serve as an important part of Secret Base’s user experience, allowing audiences to meaningfully engage with both their favorite creators and each other.
The Secret Base team includes:
- Jon Bois — Innovation Editor
- Will Buikema — Executive Producer
- Michael Das — Senior Motion Graphics Artist
- Graham MacAree — Editor-in-Chief
- Clara Morris — Producer
- Philip Pasternak — Senior Motion Graphics Artist
- Seth Rosenthal — Senior Producer
- Alex Rubenstein — Producer
- Ryan Simmons — Director
- Kofie Yeboah — Producer
- Jiazhen Zhang — Director
ABOUT SECRET BASE
Secret Base, SB Nation’s newest sports community, is dedicated to entertaining journalism from the network’s most creative individuals and teams. Secret Base’s storytelling collective focuses on smart, memorable stories — that happen to be about sports — and finds unconventional ways to tell them for an audience of sports lovers...and people who say they “don’t like sports.”
Powered by innovative community-building tools, Secret Base encourages fans to engage with its creators and participate in the group’s exciting, and sometimes absurd, journeys. At Secret Base, we recognize that sports are silly, but it’s fun to take silly things seriously, and that’s exactly what we’ll do.
Secret Base is home to acclaimed programming including “Dorktown,” “Beef History,” and Jon Bois’s ASME-winning “17776.”
ABOUT SB NATION
SB Nation is where fans live. Our network of communities is dedicated to covering the biggest moments, the breaking news, and heartfelt stories of the sports and teams we love. For the past decade, SB Nation has acquired, launched, and grown over 300 digital communities and more than 100 podcasts. Core to its DNA and since its founding as a collective of Bay Area team sports blogs, SB Nation identifies and fills the whitespaces in the sports media landscape for both fans and partners, through building communities that capture the nuances that make each fan base special.