🤝 Meet Connor Renton. He’s the founder and CEO of Brodie League, North America’s largest rec basketball league with more than 50,000 players across 20 cities. What started as a side hustle in Burlington, Ontario, is now a $30 million business — one that just landed four investments on Dragons’ Den. We sat down with Connor to talk about Brodie’s rise, getting a DM from Mark Cuban, and why nobody really wants to give up on playing sports.
What was the impetus for starting Brodie League?
I played sports my whole life but I never really felt like I had the best experiences growing up. I had a lot of shit coaches. Overall, it just wasn’t great. Then I went to university and played rugby at Western, so I had relatively semi-pro sports experience. I also fell in love with [the video game] NBA 2K during my time skipping class. I remember graduating and being like, sick, I can’t wait to experience what I experienced with rugby, but for basketball. And my first experience with adult sports was just absolutely horrible. We had a stoned ref, the scorekeeper was eating a burrito. All types of crazy stuff.
I don’t think anyone grows up dreaming of running a marathon or playing pickleball or doing Hyrox. That’s just the only thing available to us. Everyone wants to be in the NHL. They want to be in the NBA. They want to play the sports they played growing up. But you come out the other side, and unfortunately that whole world is built on the 0.001% of athletes who actually go pro. If you’re not part of that very select group, you get relegated to stoned refs.
What was the thinking behind giving rec league athletes highlight tapes and stat pages?
I wish there was some grand plan for it. But I think the best products are created out of huge love and almost a selfish desire. I wish I had more videos and photos of me from when I played hockey and rugby. I couldn’t get them. I looked at what I wanted, and it was really that simple: I want photos. I want video. I want to know my stats. What’s that going to cost us? What do we need to charge to make it work? That was the birth of it, to be honest. Now, in retrospect, it’s like, duh. Everyone wants to see photos and videos and stats of themselves if they can. It became our whole marketing engine as well. Any time anybody got a highlight, they’d share it.
You have something like a billion social views. How do these highlight tapes and photos get so much traction online?
We create something like 15,000 pieces of content a week, across video and photo. And that’s accelerating as we grow. There are about 600 games a week, and across every one of those games, there’s video, photo, a livestream, and iPhone footage. Every one of those games has at least 200 moments that we capture and deliver to the players. We don’t post 50,000 times ourselves, but you have 50,000 athletes posting every week, alongside our 35 Instagram pages. In this day and age, people want speed. So the goal with Brodie is that you get back to the bench and your photos and stats are already on your phone.
What was your experience pitching on Dragons’ Den like?
It was great. The hardest part is the first 60 seconds, where you have to get the business down. I fully blacked out while I was delivering it. I was just super nervous. But once you’re in the zone, it was easy. Every Dragon wanted in and we landed a deal with four of them. We went back and said, “Hey, we think we’re worth more than what we agreed to on TV,” and they all accepted, except for one. On TV, we agreed to a $25 million valuation. It actually landed at $30 million.
Mark Cuban DM’ed me immediately after the Dragons’ Den episode went up. He said, “You went on the wrong show. You should come on Shark Tank.” We actually chatted with his team. But we know what we have. They wanted all sorts of concessions — a deal we couldn’t do. But they were interested as well, which is cool.
You’ve had NBA players like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in the stands watching games. Have any of them ever checked into a game?
We had Kelly Oubre Jr. play in our Boston league. People play all the time. But you need crazy insurance. They really shouldn’t be playing. I don’t think their contracts always allow it. There’s definitely been a lot of NBA interest, though. Nick Young — Swaggy P — DM’ed us a couple of days ago. So there’s a lot of unique interest from NBA players.
How many cities is Brodie running leagues in now?
We started in Burlington and did a couple of seasons there, about six months. Then we added another night, then a third night, then we did Vaughan, Oshawa, Markham, and Niagara. Now we have 17 venues in Toronto, and we’re in New York, Chicago, Boston, and Vancouver as well. We’re in 20 cities today with 30 venues. We want to be in 50 cities with 90 venues by the end of 2027. I think we got the product down and were able to systematize what we do pretty quickly. And there’s no competition to what we do. The next best thing is Joe’s rec league in whatever city you’re in. It doesn’t really exist.
Have you thought about expanding to other sports, or are you laser-focused on basketball?
We absolutely have. Every venue we operate in also has volleyball lines, pickleball, futsal, flag football. But the way we look at it, we don’t want to convolute the brand at all. We want to be known for one thing and do it really fucking well, and that’s basketball. So for now, we’re laser-focused.
Where do you see Brodie in five to 10 years?
I think we’re going to be bigger than the NBA. When you think of adult sports, I want you to think of Brodie. Twitch and YouTube and iPhones have let anybody become a content creator. In the same way, there’s no reason there can’t be a global league for basketball players, soccer players, football players, whatever the sport is. Ultimately, yeah, bigger than the NBA. I think that’s inevitable, to be honest. We’re the 99.9% of athletes who keep playing sports. And they tell us, “You can buy a jersey, sports-bet, and sit in the stands, and that’s all.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
