How a Sports Streaming Startup Shipped Its CMS, Payments, and Live Streaming in 3 Weeks

12 CMS block types, live preview, ticketed streaming, and a cinematic public site shipped before the spring signing window.

The problem

A sports streaming founder had 6 weeks to launch a recruiting-and-streaming platform before the spring portal window opened. The previous vendor had burned 4 months and delivered a broken CMS and no payment flow. Every week of delay was revenue walking away.

The stack

Next.js 15 on Vercel, Supabase Postgres + auth, Stripe Checkout for ticketed events and stream passes, GSAP for the marketing site, custom CMS with 12 block types and a live-preview editor.

The architecture

The single most expensive decision in this build was the CMS. The easy answer was to install Payload or Sanity. The right answer was a custom block-based editor with live preview because every one of the 12 content types had sport-specific metadata the off-the-shelf CMSs couldn't express without 4 hours of schema fighting per type.

That one decision compressed 4 weeks of CMS work into 5 days and made every downstream feature faster.

The result

Shipped in 3 weeks, 3 weeks before the hard deadline. First month: 40+ ticketed events processed through Stripe, a four-figure ARR baseline, and a public site that looks like a $50K/month SaaS.

The cost math

Custom CMS build: roughly $4,200 one-time. Monthly run cost: $50 (Vercel + Supabase + Stripe fees on transactions). Replaces: an ongoing $1,800/mo CMS vendor contract that wasn't shipping.