The Players' Tribune is giving a platform to athletes, so they could tell their stories, and give fans a look into their personal lives.
With over 2,000 pro athletes already contributing, the sports media company is catching on quickly. Peter Gorenstein sat down with Jaymee Messler, co-founder and president at The Players' Tribune at the WPP Stream event to discuss the company's plans to disrupt the sports media landscape.
The Players' Tribune is giving athletes the chance to connect with their audience beyond the box score. One of the media platform's high-profile documentaries dives into the life of NBA star Isaiah Thomas and highlights the ups and downs of his wild year in the league. The "Book of Isaiah" shares how he dealt with tragedy and how he felt being blindsided by a trade.
The Players' Tribune is also trying to reimagine the traditional sports press conference. It will be debuting a new 30 minute Twitter show with live athletes holding a Q&A. On top of the new show, Messler also says that having Derek Jeter as a co-founder and board member has helped the company grow.
Trysta Krick and Mark Drumheller give viewers their winning picks ahead of Week 17 of the NFL season, while Brandon Marcello dissects each of the College Football Playoff semifinal matchups.
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The National Women's Soccer League is partnering with Voyager Digital as its first-ever cryptocurrency brokerage in a multi-year deal. Marla Messing, interim CEO of the NWSL, and Steve Ehrlich, CEO of Voyager Digital, joined Cheddar to discuss benefitting the league and educating players and fans as a way of democratizing cryptocurrency. Messing explained that the players themselves will own half the assets as part of how the deal is structured. "My hope is, just in terms of the expectations of crypto over the long term, that I hope a lot of them are able to just let it sit there," she said. "And that one day this will be a nice retirement account for them."
Barstool Sports CEO Erika Nardini joined Cheddar's Kristen Scholer to discuss plans for the future even as COVID-19 upended Barstool's sponsorship of the Arizona Bowl featuring the Boise State Broncos and the Central Michigan Chippewas due to the spreading omicron variant. "In our case as a company, coronavirus has been a big boom for us," she noted. "We've been able to create a lot of new programming, launch a lot of different personalities, and frankly take share from traditional media, and that's what we've done the entire pandemic." While she admitted to taking a hit on the canceled Bowl game, live events aren't completely off the table for Barstool in 2022. Nardini also talked about potential sports betting expansion following its partnership with Penn National Gaming.
Five women have been named to the U.S. short-track speedskating team for the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Among those five, there was only one returning Olympian of the group, Maame Biney, who competed in the 2018 Olympics as the first African-American woman to ever qualify for the U.S. short-track speedskating team. JD sat down with Biney to discuss how she's preparing for the games.
Eric Mitchell, Sports Analyst and President & CEO of LifeFlip Media, breaks down the updated rules around testing in the NFL and outlines how vaccinated players are impacted by new return-to-play guidelines.
Carlo and Baker kick off the weirdest week of the year with all the news you missed over the holiday weekend, including calls for the CDC to shorten its isolation window as Omicron sweeps through the country.
