Jomboy Media

Jomboy Media is the great creator-economy sports story: a one-man lip-reading operation that became a full media company — and then, in 2025, did what no creator company had ever done by selling a minority stake to Major League Baseball itself. Founder Jimmy O’Brien, a former wedding videographer with a history degree, started with a podcast called Talkin’ Yanks in 2017. Two years later, a viral video of Yankees manager Aaron Boone’s profane ejection rant — subtitled via MLB’s own field microphones — turned “Jomboy” into baseball’s favorite narrator. The breakdowns became an empire: podcasts, Warehouse Games, merch, and a seat at the sport’s biggest tables.

The name came from an iPhone autocorrect of “Jimmy,” which tells you most of what you need to know about the operation’s origins. O’Brien — Pomperaug High School, Central Connecticut State University, history degree, middle of the class by his own cheerful admission — was shooting weddings and delivering food in the Bay Area when a 2015 prank video, “Scaring My Mom With a Fake Dog,” sold for $4,000 and suggested the internet might be a career. The Talkin’ Yanks podcast with friend Jake Storiale, produced by David Mendelsohn, built the first real audience — Yankees fans who liked their baseball talk funny, obsessive, and profane. By the end of 2018, O’Brien had raised enough to make Jomboy Media his full-time job.

July 2019 was the detonation. Watching a Yankees game, O’Brien realized the argument between Aaron Boone and umpire Brennan Miller had been picked up crystal-clear by microphones on the MLB.TV feed — and he published the exchange with subtitles, Boone’s “savages in the box” tirade and all. The video exploded; “savages in the box” became a Yankees rallying cry and a bootleg-merch phenomenon; the channel gained some 300,000 subscribers in the aftermath. MLB’s reaction was mixed — Joe Torre, then the league’s chief baseball officer, fretted that the audio “wasn’t supposed to be that clear” — but even the skeptics admitted O’Brien was marketing baseball to young fans better than baseball was.

The breakdowns became the signature: lip-read dugout arguments, sign-stealing forensics, rules controversies explained with the glee of a fan who just can’t believe what he’s seeing. The November 2019 Astros sign-stealing breakdown — published the day O’Brien signed his first investment deal — made him essential viewing during the sport’s biggest scandal. As of 2026 he has published more than 78 hours of breakdown content: the most obsessive, most entertaining film room in sports media, delivered in the voice of your funniest friend.

The company grew around the voice. Talkin’ Baseball launched in July 2019 with Storiale and later added former big-leaguer Trevor Plouffe; the podcast network expanded across sports; and then came Warehouse Games — the backyard-style hybrid sports competitions filmed in Jomboy’s warehouse, blending wiffle-ball chaos with genuine athletic competition. Warehouse Games became a phenomenon in its own right: nearly 400 million total views, a 63% jump in early 2025, and a TV deal with Bally Sports (now FanDuel Sports Network) starting in June 2024. The business lines multiplied: YouTube and podcast revenue, sponsorships with T-Mobile, Corona, Mountain Dew, DraftKings, and SeatGeek, direct-to-consumer merch, and media rights. In 2024 the company did over $10 million in revenue, up 44% year over year, with 93 million-plus social engagements. The CEO is Courtney Hirsch — Jimmy’s sister — and O’Brien, Storiale, and Hirsch remain majority shareholders.

The MLB deal, announced in June 2025, was the industry earthquake. After four years of stop-start negotiations — O’Brien says the league spent years offering “non-starter terms” while quietly blocking Jomboy opportunities, including a pulled ESPN Home Run Derby show — Major League Baseball purchased a minority stake in Jomboy Media, buying out early investors in a secondary transaction. It was the first time any major sports league had invested in a creator media company. The terms were the statement: no new capital into the company, no editorial control for the league — “It was a very important part of the deal that we don’t have editorial control,” said MLB’s Kenny Gersh — but full access to MLB and club intellectual property for apparel and home goods, plus Jomboy content woven through the league’s digital platforms at the All-Star Game, the Home Run Derby, and beyond. The kid MLB once treated as a nuisance was now a partner. Other leagues, O’Brien says, have already come calling.

The throughline of all of it is fandom as a credential. Jomboy Media works because it is unmistakably made by people who love the sport the way the audience does — the lip-reading, the Warehouse chaos, the podcasts that feel like the group chat. From an autocorrected nickname to a seat at the table with the commissioner’s office, Jimmy O’Brien proved the thesis of the entire creator economy: the fans were the media company all along. They just needed someone to hand them the microphones — preferably the ones already on the field.

Previously covers Jomboy Media because it’s the blueprint — the creator company that ate sports media from the outside. For more sports voices, see UrinatingTree.