Nils Wagner's by-the-bootstraps company, HoopMixTape, helped launch the public awareness of future young NBA players like John Wall, Derrick Rose, and Brandon Jennings. His videos have been viewed online more than 120 million times, and he has more than 125,000 YouTube subscribers. In the landscape of sports programming, where high school athletics are the next frontier—and, indeed, become more commercialized by the year—Nils Wagner and his competitors’ dramatic hype and frequent dunk-and-crossover mash-ups provide what networks often don’t.
