There are constantly new trending topics in sports, whether it is Luka Dončić being abruptly traded to the Los Angeles Lakers or the University of North Carolina hiring Bill Belichick to coach its football team. BreakingT takes those trending topics and turns them into licensed sports merchandise in a matter of hours.
BreakingT was initially founded in 2014. Wilmington-based entrepreneur Jamie Mottram joined as the startup’s first full-time employee in 2017 and ultimately became its President. Since those early days, Mottram has scaled the startup into an eight-figure business and partnered with numerous sports associations.
BreakingT creates licensed sports merchandise, primarily T-shirts, based on real-time analytics about what is trending in the sports world across a variety of different leagues and teams.
Partnerships with sports associations, including the National Football League Players Association and the Women’s National Basketball Player’s Association, enable the company to release quality, licensed merchandise of these associations’ players.
BreakingT’s products are made in the United States and designed by a team of sports fans working from across the country—from Washington, D.C. to Mottram’s home in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Analyzing sports trends in real time
Powering BreakingT’s real-time analysis of sports trends is CrowdBreak—a software that aggregates trending discussion for each sports team based on social media posts from a variety of sources, including official posts from teams, observations from sports journalists and material from top fans.
The real-time element of BreakingT’s merchandising has always been core to the startup, but the team began developing CrowdBreak in 2020 to make it simpler to grasp trends in sports discussion. understanding a variety of sports trends more simple.
While it is easy enough to learn about nationally trending sports topics such as major trades or coaching hires, it is typically more difficult to find out about more niche or team-specific trends.
For example, the national conversation might not catch on to Carolina Hurricanes fans’ enjoyment of goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov’s defense of his players (“No touch my guys”), but BreakingT was able to catch on—and quickly produce T-shirts depicting the phrase.
CrowdBreak helps BreakingT discover these trending moments and topics within specific fan communities, enabling the company capitalize on potential merchandise opportunities others would overlook.
“CrowdBreak is how we keep our finger on the pulse of everything that’s happening in sports,” Mottram said. “It might not be on ‘SportsCenter,’ it might not be a global trending topic on X, but it’s something special in that market, special for the fanbase, and CrowdBreak alerts us to these things.”
In addition to capturing stories others might miss, CrowdBreak and the startup’s many partnerships with sports associations help BreakingT achieve rapid turnaround, sometimes turning a trending sports topic into licensed merchandise in just a few hours’ time.
On July 19, Women’s National Basketball Association players wore T-shirts with the words “Pay Us What You Owe Us” on them during warmups for the WNBA All-Star Game. By the time the buzzer sounded to end the game, BreakingT had already released a licensed version of the T-shirt for fans to purchase.
“The real-time piece is special, and I think we’re the best in the world at that,” Mottram said.
Scaling an eight-figure business
In over a decade as a startup, BreakingT has expanded to provide merchandise for dozens of sports and teams, and has partnered with multiple sports associations and universities to provide this merchandise.
BreakingT sells eight figures’ worth of products annually and will soon surpass the threshold of three million products sold.
Mottram said the market for moment-driven sports merchandise is at least $100 million, and he thinks BreakingT can realistically capture this market by continuing to hone in on its real-time merchandise.
Partnerships with sports associations are a key part in expanding BreakingT’s merchandise catalog, and developing more licensing partnerships will be central to scaling BreakingT even further, Mottram said.
“It’s really about licensing and trying to further develop the rights that we have, and to take our model and apply it to new rights that we’re not currently utilizing yet,” Mottram said.
QUICK BITS
Startup: BreakingT
President: Jamie Mottram
Founded: 2014
Team size: 11-50
Location: Washington, D.C., Wilmington
Website: www.breakingt.com
While BreakingT has partnered with numerous players associations and college teams, the startup has yet to establish licensing partnerships with national leagues, so team logos cannot be used on merchandising. By partnering with national sports leagues and gaining that ability to license team logos, BreakingT would further expand its growing customer base.
But already, the company has carved out a distinct space in the busy and dynamic world of sports apparel.
“We’ve become a leader in sports merchandise, a leader in quick-turn, real-time, moment-driven fan merchandise,” Mottram said.
