Kobe Inc. & Startups in Sport

This essay was written for the Makers of Sport® newsletter in December 2015. Monday Musings and Weekend Reads were the written editions of the newsletter that accompanied the podcast; the archived email is on Mailchimp. The newsletter's links and announcements are trimmed here.

Wow, what a week it has been for sports. The table has been set for the College Football Playoff with Big Ten, SEC, Big 12 and ACC champions. Somehow, Nike lucked out with all 4 schools representing their brand.

The Portland Timbers also capped off the MLS Cup by beating the Columbus Crew.

We also learned, in perhaps the biggest news in sports last week, that Kobe Bryant — one of the greatest (if not the greatest) basketball players to ever play the game — is retiring at the end of this season. On November 29th, the legend let the world know through a love letter to basketball written in poem form on a funded startup's website. Oh how the times have changed over the years.

The site in question is The Players' Tribune, a company founded and funded by Yankee great, Derek Jeter.

You have most likely watched The Social Network. You are probably aware of the whole Silicon Valley startup scene. Maybe you have even watched and laughed (fittingly) at Silicon Valley, the HBO comedy show. There are many stereotypes about the tech startup scene, but one thing is for certain, it is not going anywhere anytime soon with all of the venture capital money flowing around and creative talent leaving traditional agencies to work for the Facebooks of the world.

I posed a question a week or so ago on twitter asking the podcast audience where they would rather work: a pro team, a college athletic department, a consumer brand, or a sports tech startup. The majority (no surprise), wanted to work for pro or college teams. In 3rd place, people wanted to work for a brand (i.e. Nike, Under Armour, etc.) and dead last were tech startups. The reason why I asked this question was because I wanted to gauge where the audience's knowledge was regarding opportunities in sports. Many of us leave design school with this thought that we have to work for an advertising agency, in-house company, or in sports — a team. But times are changing.

There are many opportunities out there for sports creatives that extend beyond the grip of a team. The reality we all know and (for the most part) accept is that working for a team will mean long hours, low pay in regards to the average salary of the creative industry, and a low amount of value & respect from upper management. Part of that is because we as creative people are willing to take jobs for little pay in exchange for the tickets and other benefits teams offer. Dallas Mavericks owner and serial entrepreneur Mark Cuban stated on SportsGeek podcast that he would not recommend working in sports at all; that the salaries were low and that too many people are willing to work for a free to get a foot into the door. How many of you would agree with this?

Working in sports is competitive. Even on the brand side. When it comes to teams though, we're always sort of just lead to believe that the passion has to be greater than the money because you'll never truly make much money unless you move into an executive role or athletic director role at a large school. But what creative person wants to do that? The good news is, this all may be changing due to sports tech startups.

Last year when Kobe was injured, he launched Kobe Inc., a company focused on "owning and helping grow brands and ideas that challenge and redefine the sports industry while inspiring". This is fantastic news for us, the creative folks working in sports. More and more athletes are taking interest in additional business ventures outside of their professional sport in order to both prepare themselves for retirement from their respective games, as well a continue their competitive nature in the sport of business.

The problem right now with sports-related startups though is there is a lack of innovation. Kevin Plank, founder of Under Armour, recently stated at an ESPNW event: "we (UA and companies like them) are not competing with 'are you going to come work at Under Armour or some company in the Pacific Northwest'...how do we get the smarter people to address sports?".

Most founders and tech talent that are savvy about the startup industry are focusing on the next big social app in the Silicon Valley, not solving problems in the sports vertical. And most talented people with knowledge and expertise in the sports vertical are slaving away at a team for less than what they are probably worth. It's time to change that.

Forbes states that "Millennial fans (are) increasingly compelling sports teams to invest in tech" and that "one looking for an investment angle might look no further than the networking equipment companies that are doing deals with sports teams" [source].

With professional athletes such as Kobe Bryant, Derek Jeter, Rob Gronkowski, Carmelo Anthony, Steve Nash, LeBron James and others taking an interest in investing some of their hard-earned playing dollars on companies innovating the tech space in the sports vertical, the time is ripe for us — the creative people with ideas and the talent to actually execute much-needed products such as websites, brand identities, applications and digital products.

The L.A. Dodgers recently even launched a startup accelerator in partnership with Nike's digital agency (R/GA) investing seed stage money into companies innovating the sports & entertainment tech space. Renown tech and startup blog, TechCrunch, wrote in Octoberthat up that point in 2015, venture capitalists had invested more than $1 billion in venture deals in sports tech startups. Also, the NFL is getting into the sports & tech investment game.

Teams and athletic departments will always need talent to create for them in-house or in agency form. But, they won't much longer be able to sell low-paying, over-worked jobs for the sexiness of working for a team. We'll all have additional opportunities to consider in the sports industry for creative and design gigs.

Sports are truly the great unifier in the world and I fundamentally believe that we all have a purpose to do more than just create cool social media graphics for our teams, but to really use our talents to create a better future for those that come after us and that share our love of sport. Even if that means innovating in other areas such as coaching, youth sports, player development, etc.

I advise taking some time to research startups and learn more about this side of the creative tech industry. Who knows, maybe it's you that lands an investment deal from one of those athletes that are looking to use their money, knowledge of sport and talent to innovate a pain point in youth sports or some other area of the vertical.

Have a great week!

Cheers,

Adam