Mike Murphy

Greetings! Welcome to my blog / online portfolio!

For those curious to learn more about myself and my career history, please feel free to give this writeup a read through to get the rundown in a (somewhat) succinct manner.

Over the past 10 months, I’ve put my talents hard to work assisting Fairplay Sports Media as the operations head for their O&O oddschecker US site, covering all areas important to the US business. These responsibilities involve overseeing affiliate, editorial, content strategy, SEO, reporting, budget managment, copyediting, back-end site operations, UI/UX improvements, cross-functional collaboration with numerous stakeholder groups, promotion of our OC+ subscription service, technical product migrations and updates, and a multidisciplinary team that I have recruited, onboarded, and developed into confident lead stakeholders. The efforts of myself and my team have led to a near doubling of the brand’s conversion rates for affiliate, SEO breakthroughs, and far improved communication and collaboration of other areas of the business with the US brand.

My role before Fairplay was very similar, as Spotlight Sports Group had employed my skills and experience to lead their Media Affiliate Partnerships (MAPs) business and later the entire US B2C operations. This included a successful betting content partnership with Sports Illustrated that saw my team’s efforts exceed our main KPI goal by 20% as well as record revenues during the 2024 Super Bowl ($150K), March Madness, and North Carolina sports betting launch ($400K both combined). In addition, my time at the company had senior leadership place me charge of revenue diversication and efficiency as well as cost savings on the company’s owned Pickswise brand. The strategies deployed featured over $100K saved via human-oversight-led AI tool Narrativa, an additional $100K+ in revenue generated with the introduction of STN video player, and more; allowing the brand to beat budgets after falling short under prior leadership in 2023.

For over five years prior to SSG, I worked with NBC Sports under both their fantasy sports / sports betting and Olympics brands. This involved leading the social coverage for the 2018 Winter Olympics and Paralympics and taking charge of the entire social portfolio for Rotoworld, which later rebranded to NBC Sports EDGE. In addition to my social responsibilities for Rotoworld / EDGE, I also handled site maintenance / upkeep, wrote articles, contributed significantly to marketing, product, and sponsorship pushes, led the editorial operations efforts in collaboration with NBC Sports’ Product, Technology, and Creative teams, trained writers on live stream production for Q&As, managed NBC Sports’ gaming news desk team, and much, much more.

From 20014 to 2016, I was lucky enough to work a dream job at WWE as a second screen and WWE.com producer. This included collaborating with graphic designers, brainstorming content ideas, writing articles, and running the site’s 2K Games page. After earning a promotion to Content Creator, Games, I was put in charge of WWE’s official YouTube gaming channel, UpUpDownDown. During my time in that role, I aided in the channel becoming a company success, with subscribers exceeding 700K and a social portfolio boasting an additional 300K.

Before this, my career got its start with another passion working as a videogame journalist. My home site was GamerNode, where I began my career as a staff writer and worked my way up to Senior Editor before moving on to WWE and stepping down to act as a special contributor. In addition to providing a variety of content to the site (news, previews, reviews, features, and more), I trained, supervised, and provided tips and advice to the site’s writers so they could improve and be the best they can be.

My voice and opinion had also crossed into the podcasting realm during my time at GamerNode, as I acted as a regular on its Vs. Node podcast. During the site’s Co-Op Node live-stream program in 2013, I hosted its Tuesday night block where I played a game or games of my choosing and interacted with our fans who stopped by to watch. My hosting experience continued in 2015-2016 with a weekly Wednesday live stream on UpUpDownDown, as that content saw thousands of concurrent viewers and tens to hundreds of thousands of post-stream VOD views.

On-site coverage is another area of expertise that I’ve gathered plenty of experience in. At GamerNode, my attendance was regular over a four-year period for E3 in Los Angeles, PAX East in Boston, and New York Comic Con. This was in addition to having covered other press events in New York City and Tampa, Florida. This was continued during my time as UpUpDownDown’s head, as I worked to produce content for the channel backstage at arenas around the country at WWE Live Events and TV. This was in addition to attending and covering the same aforementioned conventions, this time for the channel.

While covering these events, I interviewed and took part in videos with several recognizable names in both the gaming and wrestling industries. Those include Hulk Hogan, John Cena, Xavier Woods, Saraya / Paige, Mercedes Moné / Sasha Banks, Sheamus, Kofi Kingston, Smosh Games, Kinda Funny Games, Ken Levine, Warren Spector, David Brevik, Tim Schafer, and many more.

Other tasks performed while covering these events in the gaming realm included writing previews, live blogging / tweeting, conducting / producing video interviews, and producing Facebook Live videos.

When it comes to free time, I spend it enjoying time with my family, sports as both a spectator and participant, both playing video games and streaming them on Twitch, watching my favorite TV shows / movies, and reading comics. My personal favorite professional sports leagues to watch are the NFL, MLB, and NHL with all my favorite teams being from the NY area. I’m also a fan of the NBA, EPL, PGA, and Olympic sports.

Thanks for coming around and I hope you enjoy my work!