In the first few months of Twan’s tenure as chief editor, the site deliberately prioritised building up its editorial team to ensure a strong foundation. Soon, they were able to send out more reporters. “The summer was packed with sports,” Twan says, “and the Paris Olympics were a particularly important performance indicator for us. We had to be on top of our game for that, which also meant breaking our own stories. And we pulled it off – we actually did better than expected – thanks in part to a popular video podcast featuring former field hockey stars Ellen Hoog and Naomi van As. Each day, they gave their take on how the athletes were performing, using dilemmas and statements as their jumping-off point. Clips from that podcast also did very well on TikTok and YouTube.”

Meanwhile, the site’s team was growing at an exponential rate. “There are 20 of us now, and we’re a young bunch – a lot of our employees are under 30. That’s why we’re keen to ensure that our new editors get enough support.”

And they do, says Twan, himself a dyed-in-the-wool veteran who previously held senior positions at De Telegraaf and AD Sportwereld. “It’s okay to make mistakes here. I know how difficult it is to be a young, inexperienced reporter going to a big event like the Olympics for the first time, or to ask questions in a mixed zone. At the same time, this isn’t a charity, so you have to show that you’re able to pick things up quickly.”

In many ways, sportnieuws.nl is like a pressure cooker. “Of course, this is a form of pioneering. Our quality has to go up, we have to produce more unique content, and we need to attract more prominent pundits from the sports world – and then we’ve also hired three video creators. So we’re moving around lots of different pieces of the puzzle simultaneously, and they all have to come together in the end.”

One of the biggest challenges is to become less dependent on Google. Twan: “AD Sportwereld is part of AD. That’s a strong ‘umbrella’, which we don’t have. At the same time, we need to build on our own strengths and work on our brand awareness. In terms of our writing style, we’re more accessible and get to the point quicker than traditional media. And when our people show up in a mixed zone, they ask different questions than other sports journalists. We believe in a combination of sports and entertainment – we want to have the best coverage of sporting events while also sharing interesting stories about the private lives of our stars.”

And this approach of appealing to a wide audience – from die-hard sports nerds to casual fans more interested in fringe issues – seems to be working: “What are our sports heroes and anti-heroes like as people? Who are the people around them? That’s the sort of stuff people love to read about, which also means there’s still a lot of room for us to grow.”