Unity: The Quiet Engine Behind WatchMojo — And a Strategic Ace for Granicus Sports & Entertainment”
Over the past two decades, WatchMojo built one of the most prolific content operations on the planet — thousands of videos per year, in multiple languages, across every major digital platform. What outsiders rarely see is the infrastructure underneath that output. Long before AI content pipelines became a topic of discussion, we built Unity (no relation to the publicly-traded by the same name, so will rebrand eventually), an in-house platform designed to manage the entire lifecycle of content:
- ideation and scripting
- contributor workflows
- production and editing
- publishing and distribution
- analytics and insights
- financial and contributor management
Unity was never meant to be a product. It was meant to solve our problems. Like many companies that scaled early in digital media, we built our own CMS out of necessity — not aspiration. I recently shared a demo and a poll, gauging where users’ pains lied.
But sometimes, the internal tools you build quietly become the seeds of bigger ideas.
The Moment Where Unity Became Something More
Recently, as I’ve been exploring the expansion of Granicus Sports & Entertainment — from ownership opportunities to civic development projects like the Expos — I found myself reevaluating what Unity actually represents.
When you strip it down to its core, Unity is a content operations operating system.
It manages:
- massive decentralized creator ecosystems
- high-volume publishing
- real-time rights-aware workflows
- distribution across dozens of platforms
- multi-language pipelines
- contributor payments and contracts
- end-to-end project management
- analytics, monetization, and strategic insights
Sound familiar?
It should.
Because it is exactly what sports leagues need today.
Sports and Media Are Colliding — Faster Than People Realize
Every league is facing the same pressures:
- Fans expect real-time highlights on TikTok and Shorts.
- Rights rules are more complex than ever.
- Teams rely on creators and influencers to reach young audiences.
- In-game content has to be clipped, cleared, and distributed instantly.
- Analytics need to unify views, impressions, revenue, engagement, and sentiment.
- Digital strategy is becoming as important as play strategy.
Sports leagues today don’t look like the sports leagues of the 1990s.
They look like… media companies.
And if leagues are media companies, then they need a modern media infrastructure.
One that can:
- ingest
- tag
- approve
- rights-clear
- publish
- analyze
- optimize
…at global scale.
WatchMojo built Unity precisely for that environment — and it has been battle-tested for a decade.
The Air Canada Analogy
In my recent article, “Unlocking Air Canada’s Value Through a Media–Travel Alliance,”
I explored how legacy systems create constraints — but also opportunities, if you rethink the ecosystem around them.
Airlines aren’t just carriers; they can be media machines, loyalty engines, retail networks, and travel content hubs — if they structure themselves accordingly.
Sports franchises and leagues are the same.
The Expos. The Canadiens. The Nordiques. MLS clubs. NCAA programs.
Every league and team today is:
- a media brand
- a content distributor
- a rights holder
- an influencer network
- a data ecosystem
- a cultural storyteller
And yet most still operate with tech stacks designed for a different era.
Unity was built for the world they’re entering.
Unity as an Ace in the WatchMojo product line & tool to leverage through the Granicus Group Portfolio
As I continue to explore Granicus Sports & Entertainment — from ownership structures and governance frameworks to civic development and digital transformation — Unity has emerged as:
**A strategic advantage
A differentiator
A door-opener
A modernizing engine
A bridge between media and sports
A rights-management solution
A fan-engagement platform**
No expansion bid, relocation group, or civic project becomes credible today without a digital-first approach.
And Unity gives us that — not as a pitch deck aspiration, but as a working, deployed system powering one of the world’s largest independent media organizations.
Unity can help:
- leagues manage social rights
- teams coordinate creators
- franchises build global content pipelines
- youth programs scale storytelling
- sponsors measure engagement
- operators understand fan behavior
- broadcasters streamline workflows
This is not hypothetical.
This is what we already do internally.
From Content OS → Sports OS
Sports isn’t moving toward digital.
Sports is digital.
If the next chapter for Granicus involves:
- a return of the Expos,
- collaboration with other teams,
- supporting leagues needing modernization, or
- stepping into ownership circles with a value proposition beyond capital…
Unity becomes the backbone. Maybe it should just be known as Unit.
It is the rare case where an internal asset becomes a strategic one — and a quiet tool becomes a major lever.
The future of sports will be shaped by media, technology, and community engagement.
Unity sits at the intersection of all three.
More to come.