During his sophomore year at the University of Miami, Kevin Fitzgibbons was filming a Miami Dolphins football game for the NFL when Tyreek Hill — one of the NFL’s star wide receivers — scored a touchdown right in front of him.
Hill ran over to Fitzgibbons, who happened to be both his friend and personal photographer, took his phone, and did one of his signature back flips – all while filming.
That moment of celebration immediately went viral, rocketing around the Internet on social media. The NFL, however, was not pleased. The league fined Hill for excessive celebration — and suspended Fitzgibbons from his job as an NFL videographer. (Hill was back in the news this week after being detained by Miami police during a traffic stop on the way to his game.)
“It was one of the best moments of my life, turned upside down in a matter of seconds,” Fitzgibbons recalled in an interview from Miami.
But Fitzgibbons didn’t stay down for long. He received widespread support from fans and followers, including celebrities and professional athletes. Hill spoke glowingly of his friend, promising to cover Fitzgibbons’ lost salary. Even LeBron James spoke up for Fitzgibbons.
Fitzgibbons already had created a name for himself on social media with his videos, which put highlights from star athletes to music. But now he had been launched into the Internet stratosphere.
He has made the most of the moment. Fitzgibbons made a video about the backflip incident that so far has received 38.6 million views on X, formerly known as Twitter.
And he saw the opportunity to realize a long-held dream.
“Obviously I was able to capitalize on the Tyreek-grabbing-my-phone-moment, it was such a viral opportunity,” he said. “But from the moment that I was a senior in high school, I knew that I wanted to start a sports marketing company.”
Fitzgibbons, along with his business partner and fellow videographer, Will Foster, recently announced the launch of AVIS1ON Sports & Entertainment, to help professional and college athletes build their personal brands.
They’re off to a strong start.
They already have worked with a roster of superstar athletes, including Dallas Mavericks shooting guard Luka Dončić, 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey, and New York Jets Cornerback Sauce Gardner.
“I was helping athletes get highly viewed posts on Instagram, and I was going to leverage my social media to make that happen,” Fitzgibbons said. “I know that building my personal brand is going to make the marketing company successful.”
Fitzgibbons already had three Instagram pages while still in high school. They showcased his skill at sports video editing and helped him capture the attention of athletes and sports fans.
“I would always be storytelling through my videos, and you can see this on my pages going back to 2018 through now,” he said. “It’s about taking advantage of the moment, and creating something that’s going to capture the attention of an athlete.”
His timing couldn’t have been better.
Many athletes want to control their image and story, marketing themselves on social media while competing for pop-culture popularity that can translate into brand deals and revenue. And that means new opportunities in sports media for content creators, videographers, and social media managers.
It’s a perfect confluence for Fitzgibbons. Like many kids in Rye, he grew up playing and watching sports. He’s a passionate New York Giants fan, played football and lacrosse at Rye High School, and often went to watch high school basketball games.
At age 14, when he was in the gym watching the Garnets play basketball, it wasn’t the action on the court that he found most interesting. He noticed Kyle Gardner, a Rye High School Senior who was the Rye basketball videographer. Gardner managed the team’s social media pages until 2018, and is currently working for a variety of U.S. professional sports leagues.
“He’s my biggest inspiration for why I started doing this,” Fitzgibbons said. Gardner’s films made people want to come to basketball games, he said. “He’d make this hype around each game where the student section would be more packed than ever, and it made me want to do it myself.”
Fitzgibbons already had learned how to edit video from his mother, Mary Hannon Fitzgibbons, an experienced editor who runs her own company, MH Montages. Mary had learned how to edit video herself from taking classes at Rye TV.
“She wanted to teach me. I was hesitant,” he recalled. “I wasn’t sure about diving into it, but it turned out to be the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me, because as soon as I had that skill, I could edit videos, and created my own Instagram account.”
“I was only getting clips off YouTube and making my own sports edits out of them,” he said. “I was storytelling through my videos and would match the lyrics of songs to what I was making, and it became my unique style.”
Fitzgibbons had a big hit right away. At 15, he created a video of then Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield, along with a Mayfield comment, “I woke up feeling dangerous.”
Mayfield took note and messaged Fitzgibbons, complimenting the video and asking for a copy. That video now has 1.5 million views on Instagram.
“That moment really opened my eyes to how much reach you can get through social media,” Fitzgibbons said. “It really gave me the confidence to say that I was good at this.”
By the time he was 16, Fitzgibbons was posting edits regularly, telling stories with video and understanding social media marketing.
“I was capturing the viral moment,” he said. “I was learning the skill of getting attention on social media, and I’ve continued to do that.”
Even before graduating from high school, Fitzgibbons was editing film for some of the biggest sport media companies in the country, including Bleacher Report, Overtime, and Vayner Sports.
By the time he was a junior in high school, he realized he wanted to do more than just edit. “I wasn’t really sure what path I wanted to take, whether I wanted to be an editor or a videographer,” he said. “But it was Kyle [Gardner] who said, ‘Kevin, you need to pick up a camera.’”
Gardner encouraged Fitzgibbons to start filming Rye basketball games and then edit that work. “Things escalated very quickly once I bought that first camera,” Fitzgibbons said.
Then the pandemic hit — and school closed. Fitzgibbons’ family was in Miami when he decided to start doing what he calls “social media researching.”
“We were kind of stuck in Florida,” he said. “During this time, I had my camera with me, and I was checking to see what athletes were working out in Miami.”
Fitzgibbons learned that Hill, then with the Kansas City Chiefs, had a large social media following and was living in Miami. He sent Hill a message volunteering his editing and videography services for free.
Hill accepted.
That led to videos for Hill and other NFL players. And Fitzgibbons soon learned that social media was a way for him to connect with athletes and showcase his work to both athletes and brands.
“I was the one that sent a message to Tyreek, as opposed to when Baker Mayfield reached out to me,” he said. “I realized that I could reach out to anyone in the world, and I had developed social proof, around 10,000 followers on Instagram, and tons of video edits on my page, so I started sending out messages.”
His “KFitz” Instagram page now has some 282,000 followers — one of the largest among sports videographers in the U.S.
While a student at the University of Miami studying sports management, Fitzgibbons was offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity when Gardner recommended him for a job with the NFL.
“It’s every NFL fan’s dream to be able to walk on the field or in the tunnel with the players,” he said. “And after he recommended me, I went for an interview, they looked at my work, and I somehow got the job.”
So what advice does Fitzgibbons have for those who would love to follow in his footsteps?
“Personal branding and social proof are everything nowadays,” he said. “If you’re able to develop that, you can pretty much take your career anywhere you want to.”