Although not everyone is born a writer, in order to get rid of reporters and unwanted stories, LeBron James and Derek Jeter encourage athletes to write.
- LeBron and Jeter make lots of money with their websites
- Athletes have the opportunity to tell their own stories
- This will help athletes become closer to their fans
If you’re wondering if they are running awareness campaigns, they aren’t. They simply started their own websites. LeBron owns Uninterrupted and it is a website where athletes can post video testimonials and Derek Jeter owns the Player’s Tribune where athletes can publish essays or stories about themselves. Jeter has a partnership with Kevin Durant and Kobe Bryant and they managed to raise about $18 million from this.
The main reason they are doing this is because they want to directly communicate with their fans and audience, without having to rely on reporters and journalists for it as the stories don’t always reach the audience in their real and truthful form.
Plus, they’re gaining a lot of money. For example, Warner Bros. and Turner Sports are investing $15.8 million in LeBron’s Uninterrupted to help him expand the business.
On the other hand, we could argue that given the popularity of social media athletes’ direct communication with fans was enabled years ago. Although the websites should focus more on the athletes’ professional lives, in LeBron’s website, you can find personal stories or videos filmed at his house with his family.
Despite the fact that LeBron prefers to tell his own story, he is also very open to reporters and can easily be approached.
Now about the issue of hearing, watching or reading a story directly from the source. Although many of you think that not having the story filtered by a reporter means it’s going to be cleaner and clearer, you might be mistaken. The story is still filtered by the person who is telling it.
In this case, the stories could suffer alterations because of the athlete’s subjectivity. We’re not saying they’re necessarily lying to you, but you still shouldn’t take anything for granted.
All in all, these websites are not meant to be newspapers or magazines, they are meant to be places where athletes can tell their stories, whether they’re talking about last night’s game or some childhood memory. In this way, they can easily reach their fans and become closer to them. If anything else, this will definitely bring them more popularity.
Image source: www.bing.com
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