Celebrating [eyeblack] 1,000 with our first reader giveaway!

When I launched eyeblack, for real, in February, I knew I was trying to build a place for the sports media I couldn’t find elsewhere: scoopy and provocative, robust and revelatory explorations of how power shapes the games we love. On Saturday, eyeblack passed a major milestone: 1,000 unique email signups! This metric matters so much more than basically anything. ¹

Which is why I would like to thank you with our first giveaway: Courtney M. Cox’s outstanding book, Double Crossover: Gender, Media and Politics in Global Basketball!

I want to using our growing platform² to highlight the people who help me keep my eye on the ball. As a labor, sport, and technology scholar, Cox has spent her academic career doing a methodical version of what I’ve always endeavored to as a journalist—critical, research and reporting-heavy examinations of the constant ricochet of the sports we love and the world we inhabit. Cox’s scholarship, manifest most recently in this book, places a special emphasis on women’s basketball, both college and pro, USA and global.

Women’s hoops is growing in cultural, economic and political prominence—when Sophie Cunningham points, The White House points right back. Exploring this realm with a thinker who has carefully studied the sport long before Caitlin Clark was even a twinkle in Cathy Engelbert’s eyes is essential for understanding the people who strive to make this league great.

I’m obsessed. and anyone who has yet to have the pleasure of reading Cox connect the dots when Double Crossover hits your mailbox will be, too. Here’s how the giveaway works.

If you’re an existing eyeblack reader: congrats! You’re already in, and don’t have to do anything.

If you’re new and want to become an eyeblack reader before July 30th at 5 PM ET, again, congrats! You don’t have to do anything besides click the button below and add your email:

But, I’d like to sweeten the pot.

If you’re a new or existing reader and want to continue helping the cause, you can now boost your odds.

Anyone who uses our refers two new individuals to sign up for eyeblack by July 30 at 5PM gets an extra five entries into the raffle. Two new emails = 5x chances. At 5 PM, I’ll enter every individual into a random number generator—some people many more than once—and pick a winner!⁵

But, while we’re still here, I want to explain one reason why eyeblack’s first giveaway is centered on your inbox and not your wallet.

Yes you can sense our thirst for your sweet, sweet inbox. If you’re curious why, let’s zoom out a little bit.

You’re probably drawn to eyeblack because you can’t really find the kind of storytelling we do elsewhere. You won That’s great. But it’s also proof of a problem.

Search engines are increasingly useless, cannibalizing its core product, the search engine, by making its front page into an AI generated strip mall. Speaking of, AI apps—ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc.—have no shame scraping exclusive reporting and getting some (or all) of the facts wrong along the way. They are not passing the value of the work to the people creating the value. (404 Media does a great job explaining how AI tools stole their content, readership, and eventually, revenue.) 

In other words, eyeblack can’t work without a direct and persistent connection to our readers. The best answer to that problem is the most durable communication method of our digital age: email!

Now, I know a metadata or two, and I still use social media. I’ve built real relationships on these billionaire-mediated platforms. I’m on Instagram, because I’m an adult, and I’m on TikTok because I have the heart and whimsy of a child. I’m gonna be on YouTube way more. I’m on LinkedIn³ and Bluesky ⁴. Forgive me father for I have sinned: I’m even on X. But almost all The Platforms, and what you see on them, are steered by their respective algorithms, most of which punish people from sharing work that isn’t native to the platform. Like, you know, an article on a website. Which means when you post material that links elsewhere, the app itself will make your “friends” and followers less likely to see what you did. And while I remain somewhat stuck in the social media finger trap, I can never contort the journalism. In other words…

Or Elon. Or Larry and Sergey or whoever owns TikTok, all of whom want people who create media to obsess over an inscrutable moving target math problem they will never help you answer. Playing their game is trial and error, and spending too much time on optimizing engagement for my work takes me away from doing the work you’ve come to appreciate. 

Without email, eyeblack’s steady diet of exclusive scoops and storytelling have no guarantee of reaching the people who most want to read, hear, or watch what we have to say (That’s you!). I’ll never fully abandon social media—my goal is always going to be connecting with people wherever they congregate, digitally or otherwise.

But your inbox is the foundation, and it can’t be hacked away as easily by our tech barons. Freeing eyeblack from endless twerking for the algorithm isn’t just a moral stand, it’s a business necessity.

Further, email helps strengthen eyeblack for current and future revenue streams. Paid subscribers are the core of the business, and we want as many opportunities to prove our value to readers who might eventually decide this is a space worth supporting. Building a quality email audience also enables eyeblack to alternative revenue streams, especially paid sponsorships  with anyone who wants to reach an engaged, ethical audience—never Kalshi, never gambling, never exchange your personal data for kickbacks—with services and products that have a chance of adding value to their lives.

That’s why almost every article has an email gate at the beginning, and I’m running a Give Me Your Email contest. And why it means so much to see a thousand people believe eyeblack deserves some real estate in your inbox.