In December 2014, Zero Digital Sports (then Zero Digital Media) was formed with the idea being an independent voice in the Australian sporting media landscape.
Ten years later, Zero Tackle sits as the largest independent NRL website on the internet, Zero Hanger is doing the same in the AFL space, and our editorial and production teams serve content to over two million Australians every month, with our pages viewed up to ten million times per month in season.
The Zero Digital story comes from an incredibly small beginning, and while it's a story every employee who has been through the doors has heard, it's not one that's been told publically all that much.
Before 2014, the idea behind Zero Tackle was based on a spreadsheet shared between mates to track player movements and length of contracts in the NRL.
Zero Tackle founder Matt Clements quickly realised a spreadsheet wouldn't cut it in the ever-changing NRL environment, where contracts are signed all year round.
So, with his digital (web and app) development background, he created zerotackle.com.
A fledging audience was enough to see Interplay Media join as an early commercial partnerย and quickly become invaluable in monetizing content.ย Zero Digital Sportsย was officially formed late in 2014 with the launch ofย the AFL websiteย Zero Hanger.
Over the last decade, Zero Digital Sports has experienced plenty of highs and lows, but given that all websites were operated out of a small Melbourne-based office with a single editor for the first six years of its existence, the company trod water at the best of times.
2020 saw the COVID pandemic, and while the rest of the media shrunk in size, Zero Digital Sports made aggressive steps to scale up. Nick Splitter was brought on as the general manager of the publishing business, and before long, the call was made to separate editorial teams for each site, with a Sydney-based rugby league editorial team for the first time, and Scott Pryde joined as Zero Tackle editor in July of 2021.
The last three years have been a rollercoaster for Zero Tackle, albeit one heading predominantly in the right direction, with our audience almost three-fold what it was before the pandemic. Our team is as big as it has ever been, with innovative steps into video and social media also forming a strong backbone of our on and off-platform strategies.
Our content strategies are always refining and developing, and our editorial standards along with them. Our Season Guides have been a major production project for the publishing team in recent years, and the 2025 NRL Season Guide is already under production, with its expected release date in early February.
We want to continue doing what you expect of Zero Tackle - providing an independent rugby league voice, being fair but critical, and completely free for our audience.
We know there is much we can still improve on, and we still have a long way to go in our journey, There's still a lot to learn, but we also have a lot to be proud of as we celebrate this milestone - a decade of Zero Digital Sports.
Gentlemen, the accuracy of the news articles, and the insights in the articles, are praiseworthy.
The only thing you need to improve is getting more comments. I don’t know how you do it, other than by increasing the readership. That’s a problem for the guys with the greying hair !
Here’s wishing you well for the next ten years !