Barstool Sports at Shear Media Studios

Role: EVP, Shear Enterprises — Strategy, Studio Operations & Business Development

The situation

Shear Media Studios was newly open. The facility existed. The market position didn’t. The infrastructure for national broadcast clients wasn’t finished. And the type of clients we needed — sports networks, content creators, recurring broadcast productions — weren’t going to walk in based on a facility tour.

I was brought in to build all of it.

What I built

The first job wasn’t getting clients. It was making the building ready for the clients we were going after.

I worked through the production workflow from intake to delivery, designed the booking and operations system that could handle recurring clients without conflict, and built out the technical infrastructure for broadcast-grade live production: a full broadcast control room, multi-stream capability, and a REMI workflow — Remote Integration Model — connecting Studio G to any control room anywhere in the world.

The platform at the center is the Appear X20. Six cameras in 4K, live transmission to a remote control room for the live line cut, with ISO cameras recording locally at the same time. Broadcast-grade contribution infrastructure, not consumer streaming. That distinction is what puts Shear in a different category for a production like Barstool.

At the same time, I built out the podcast and creator infrastructure: dedicated suites, acoustic treatment, booking workflows, and a production environment that scales from a solo creator to a full broadcast crew without friction.

The strategy

Once the infrastructure was in place, the work was positioning and business development.

I identified the client profiles we could serve well: specialty sports programming, niche content series, podcast creators who needed broadcast-capable environments, and national networks looking for a production home outside their primary markets.

Tampa Bay is an underserved production market relative to its sports infrastructure and population. That’s not a liability — it’s a positioning advantage. I built the pitch around it.

I developed the relationships, built the technical demonstration capability, and closed the Barstool Sports engagement: a recurring weekly professional football production at Studio G. Custom set built specifically for the show. Same workflow, every week.

The result

Barstool Sports became a recurring weekly client in Shear Media Studios’ first six months fully open. The same infrastructure and strategy now support the full facility ecosystem: podcast studios, content creators, specialty series, and broadcast networks — with live transmission running to control rooms in Chicago, London, Toronto, and Sydney.

The building works because it was built to work before the client asked for it. The clients came because the positioning was right before we asked for their business.

Full technical spec on the REMI and live transmission capability: shearmediastudios.com/live-transmission