In just one month, The Arena: Gridiron—the football expansion of Gilbert Arenas’ hit basketball show Gil’s Arena—has exploded into the #2 most-watched sports show on YouTube. With 23.18 million views in September, the show sits just behind The Pat McAfee Show and ahead of First Things First and Nightcap, according to new data from Mondo Metrics.
This isn’t a fluke. It’s a content strategy masterclass.
Arenas + Bayless: A Collision Course That Worked
When Underdog paired Gilbert Arenas, one of sports media’s most unapologetically unfiltered voices, with Skip Bayless, arguably the godfather of sports hot takes, the internet took notice. The chemistry clicked—and so did the algorithm.
The move rebranded Gil’s Arena into a broader, NFL-focused format right as football season kicked off, leading to a 93% month-over-month surge in viewership. In a saturated creator economy, that’s the equivalent of dropping a mixtape that instantly goes platinum.
The Data Doesn’t Lie
September 2024 YouTube Sports Podcast Rankings (data from Mondo Metrics inclusive of long-form and shorts):
- The Pat McAfee Show — 26.9M
- The Arena: Gridiron — 23.18M
- First Things First — 23.05M
- Nightcap — 22.63M
- The Rich Eisen Show — 18.75M
- Club Shay Shay — 15.1M
- Club 520 — 13.54M
- New Heights — 13.38M
- All The Smoke — 10.64M
- Pardon My Take — 9.19M
That narrow 135K-view gap between second and third? It shows how hyper-competitive the upper tier of YouTube sports media has become.
From Talk Shows to Digital Networks
What’s really happening here is the rise of sports content ecosystems. Underdog isn’t just building shows—it’s building fandom loops.
From The Underdog Football Show (up 29.5% in September) to The Arena, the company’s “authentic-first” strategy is paying off: talent-led media, real-time fan engagement, and smart alignment with sports calendars.
This is the same formula powering McAfee’s empire—except Underdog is executing it with creator DNA baked in.
The Underdog Era
Underdog was built for this moment: a new kind of sports network blending content, community, and competition. Founded in 2020, it’s now the fastest-growing sports company in the U.S., merging fantasy, betting, and media into one culture-forward experience.
“Gil’s Arena quickly became THE place for basketball dialogue, and The Arena: Gridiron is already one of the top football shows in the country,” said Liam Roecklein, SVP Content & Partnerships at Underdog. “At Underdog we innovate not only on product, but also with our modern sports content. This style of content - authentic, always on, fan-engaged, thoughtful but unfiltered – is where the best of modern sports media is going, and we’re taking it to the next level with The Arena: Gridiron.”
What’s Next
With The Arena: Gridiron airing live three times a week and fan engagement surging across platforms, the show isn’t just competing—it’s rewriting what a “sports show” looks like in 2025.
If The Pat McAfee Show was the blueprint, The Arena might just be the remix that defines the next era of sports media.