The people behind viral Eagles hype videos give a Delco edge to Philly sports

A few years ago, Eric Quinn began brainstorming, wondering how he could create a successful, unique sports blog or social-media account in a metropolitan area already saturated with crazed fans and dozens of such platforms. Then, the idea hit him: Focus on Philly sports, but for a distinctly Delaware County audience.

“I knew Delco was a good market,” Quinn said. “Delco is very blue collar. They want someone who tells it like it is, doesn’t sugarcoat anything.”

And so, DelcoDelphia was born.

While Quinn was optimistic about the project, he said he never would’ve guessed that DelcoDelphia’s following would explode, buoyed by the Eagles' Super Bowl win. Over the last two seasons, some of its Eagles hype videos have received from 100,000 to 422,000 views on Facebook and been retweeted thousands of times on Twitter.

At its core, DelcoDelphia provides commentary on “Philly sports from a Delco point of view." On its Twitter and Facebook pages, and a more sporadically updated blog, the guys of DelcoDelphia — founder Quinn, 26, of Broomall; Mike Cloran, 23, also of Broomall; and Brendan Feeney, 23, of Newtown Square — pull no punches. They live-tweet games and interact with fans. They curse. They aren’t always politically correct. But they’re real, they say, and authentically Delco.

Over time, the brand organically evolved from a blog to a more social-media-focused platform. And Quinn began to refine DelcoDelphia’s identity.

“We’re not as abrasive as Barstool," the popular, often-controversial sports and pop-culture blog, Quinn said, “but we’re also not a news organization.”

Their following is primarily 20-something men from, you guessed it, Delaware County, but they’ve also seen their stuff retweeted by grandparents, young kids, and Philly transplants across the country, Quinn said. There aren’t specific ground rules for content, he said, but they try to steer clear of the offensive and don’t delve into politics.

While providing sports commentary, the DelcoDelphia team also strives to be a voice for the people of their native Delaware County, a segment of the Philadelphia suburbs that is regularly the butt of jokes about its tough, unrefined, working-class attitude (the Flyers’ new mascot, Gritty, for example, was identified as an obvious Delco native, with the Inquirer and Daily News' Stephanie Farr writing: “He obviously hates shaving, loves Natty Ice, and has ‘his stool’ at the bar of every Barnaby’s in the county. ... He’s so Delco.”)

Delaware County natives can poke fun at themselves, and the DelcoDelphia trio and their followers do so regularly on the platform. It’s a Delco bonding experience, Quinn said, with one caveat: People from the area can crack jokes, the same way a person can lovingly poke fun of their own siblings, but if outsiders do so, it isn’t always so funny.

“There’s nothing like Delco anywhere else in Pa.," Cloran said. “Delco is just extremely passionate about Delco.”

The DelcoDelphia crew tap into that passion by engaging their audience. They ask followers for score predictions and invite them to participate in block pools. They start debates about where to get the best wings in Delaware County. Even when mulling where to be photographed for this article, they crowdsourced, asking their Twitter and Facebook followers which “Delco landmark” would provide the best backdrop. They decided on Barnaby’s Havertown, a popular watering hole off West Chester Pike near the Blue Route (what out-of towners refer to as part of I-476).

DelcoDelphia didn’t always have such a loyal fan base.

When Quinn and a few friends created the platform in 2016, it was a blog with associated Twitter and Facebook pages. Most of its followers were the writers’ friends and relatives.

Then came the Eagles' Super Bowl run. Before the Eagles played the Atlanta Falcons in the divisional round, Cloran posted his first Eagles hype video. He had messed around with film editing in the past, making similar sports pump-up videos and funny documentaries about his Marple roller-hockey team when he was teenager. But he said he wasn’t sure whether this Eagles clip would get noticed amid all the playoff excitement in the region.

It did, racking up more than 420,000 views on Facebook.

As the Eagles kept winning, DelcoDelphia’s following kept growing. Its pump-up videos were shared by local media. One was even played at Xfinity Live! before the Super Bowl, Cloran said.

Seeing the response to those first videos, “I knew that was going to be how we took off,” Cloran said.

The crew said they were ecstatic to see DelcoDelphia resonate with the rabid fan base, one with which they were intimately familiar, having grown up in the area.

They balance DelcoDelphia with their full-time jobs. Some weeks the balance means sending out tweets and posting on Facebook in their spare time. For Cloran, if he’s making a hype video, he might sit in front of his computer from 6 p.m. to midnight each day after getting home from his job at HawkGrips, a Conshohocken-based company that sells physical-therapy products.

They said they would love to see DelcoDelphia become a business with a network of podcasts and revenue. Right now, Quinn said, they don’t have regular sponsors or make money off the content they produce.

But that’s OK. They do it for fun and for love of their city and their teams, he added.

“I think my favorite part is seeing how many people really enjoy it,” Quinn said. “There will be times when I’m out at the bar and people will say, ‘Aren’t you the guy from DelcoDelphia?’ ”