The Ringer: All Posts by David Gardner2021-11-09T06:30:00-05:00https://www.theringer.com/authors/david-gardner/rss2021-11-09T06:30:00-05:002021-11-09T06:30:00-05:00Hype House of Highlights
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1sL7sExuqnZFYpqCUs4D72BOZYc=/168x0:1033x649/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70115592/OTEleague_OvertimeElite_getty.0.jpeg" />
<figcaption>Getty Images/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Can Overtime Elite, a new league funded by investors like Drake and fueled by social media, overturn the traditional pathway to the NBA?</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="rl7VUs">Ryan Bewley eyed the thick stack of papers in front of him, ready to make history. It was the middle of May, and after three days of meetings at a Marriott Marquis in Miami, representatives from Overtime Elite had just presented Ryan and his identical twin, Matt, with their final pitch—and their best offer. Two months earlier, the media company Overtime had launched a basketball league for high school stars, promising six-figure salaries and an alternative path to the NBA. It had hired Kevin Ollie, who’d won a championship at UConn, to be its coach. But Overtime Elite (OTE) still had no facilities, no schedule, and, crucially, no players. Ryan turned to Matt and asked whether he was ready.</p>
<p id="UE6Wo7">This wasn’t the path that Matt had imagined for them. He thought they’d spend their final two years trying to bring their hometown high school, Northeast, its first state title. He thought they’d be all-everything—city, county, state, and American. He thought they’d play one season of college basketball at Florida State, the team they’d grown up cheering for, before making their way to the NBA. </p>
<p id="gMsSjF">Signing with OTE meant becoming a pro and surrendering high school and college eligibility. It meant abandoning so many of the experiences that high school stars would normally get to enjoy. “I was like, ‘What if it doesn’t work?’” Matt said. “I was thinking about all the risks, but Ryan was thinking about all the benefits.”</p>
<p id="tfbrA8">Although Matt, born a minute before his brother, was typically the leader in their relationship, Ryan had in recent years become the risk-taker. He was the first to get stitches. The first to break a bone. When the temperature at their home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, briefly dipped below freezing last winter, Matt planted his feet in the sand and howled as Ryan splashed into the chilly Atlantic Ocean. And now, with Matt’s nod of approval, Ryan picked up a pen and started scribbling, ready to dive headfirst into the unknown again.</p>
<p id="nEqdv8">In OTE, Ryan saw a way for them to get college-caliber coaching during their junior and senior years of high school. He saw a place for them to battle against the best prospects in their class every day, not just in a handful of games each season. He saw an opportunity to build their social media accounts—which, at the time, were run by their mother. And, of course, he saw those six-figure salaries.</p>
<p id="Gt8HEx">“I told him it was a chance to get paid to do something we loved. It was a chance to do something different,” Ryan said. “I told him, ‘It may be a risk, but let’s take it together.’”</p>
<p id="jtuuxV">After signing, Ryan threw the pen down, pushed his chair back, and stood up to dance. Matt slid into the empty chair to start signing his contract, but OTE executive vice president and head of basketball operations Brandon Williams noticed a problem: Matt was signing the same stack of papers that his brother had left behind. He sprang from his seat to stop Matt. “The real funny thing is that we were still getting to know each other, and I couldn’t tell them apart yet,” Williams said. “So I had to figure out if Matt signed Ryan’s contract, or if Ryan signed Matt’s. These are legal documents, you know? We’re a startup, so there were a lot of chaotic moments like that in the beginning, but we always got it right in the end.”</p>
<p id="3bXzg3">After a few moments of confusion and cross-outs, the paperwork was finished, and the room erupted in renewed celebration. Ryan and Matt had made history as the first American high school underclassmen to go pro in basketball.</p>
<p id="vhJ5Pg">By signing the five-star twins, Overtime had shown it could attract top talent. But many questions remained. Could a media company that had helped turn high school basketball stars into celebrities also turn them into NBA players? Could a league that paid teenage prospects above the table blow up the black market of high school basketball recruiting? And, perhaps most importantly, would anyone watch?</p>
<p id="uKrEFE">For Matt, the most pressing question was what his ex-girlfriend would say. She’d dumped him the week before, jealous of the way he prioritized basketball over her, and skeptical of his plan to get paid. When <a href="https://twitter.com/wojespn/status/1395730991172530180?lang=en">the Woj bomb</a> dropped the day after he’d signed his deal, she was his first phone call. When he hung up, he looked at Ryan, and they started laughing and celebrating all over again.</p>
<p id="zWlXgg"></p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3gDbcK13Xpv27vW6k_HyIjUFd6Q=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22997839/OTE_Leadership_Group.jpeg">
<cite>Overtime Elite president and commissioner Aaron Ryan, president and cofounder Zack Weiner, CEO and cofounder Dan Porter, and executive vice president and head of basketball Brandon Williams</cite>
<figcaption>Courtesy Overtime</figcaption>
</figure>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="lEQ2RX">For the first half of the NBA’s 75-year history, the path to the pros was the same for most players: four years at your hometown high school followed by four years of college basketball. But when the Timberwolves drafted Kevin Garnett straight out of Farragut Academy in 1995, a new generation dawned. For the next decade, first-name-only talents like Kobe and LeBron bypassed the NCAA on their way to NBA superstardom. While the prep-to-pro era was brief—the minimum draft age for Americans was raised to 19 in 2005—it showed that a handful of high-schoolers each year were ready to graduate directly into the NBA, and it generated great interest, from both fans and front offices, in figuring out who those stars would be.</p>
<p id="CGjsJ5">Scouts flooded into high school gyms. Message-board-fueled sites like Rivals launched and focused on high school recruiting in football and basketball. And major media companies like ESPN started viewing high school sports as prime-time opportunities. In 2001, at the peak of LeBron James’s pre-NBA hype, ESPN broadcast his St. Vincent–St. Mary team’s <a href="http://a.espncdn.com/nba/news/2002/1212/1476103.html">improbable upset</a> over powerhouse Oak Hill Academy. <a href="https://www.espn.com/sportsbusiness/s/2002/1213/1476503.html">Millions of people</a> tuned in from across the country. Unprecedented sums of money have poured into high school sports since, but NCAA rules have prohibited players from accepting even a penny of the profits.</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="lSYxvc"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The State of the G League Ignite, One Year In","url":"https://www.theringer.com/2021/10/1/22702644/g-league-ignite-year-2-jaden-hardy-jason-hart"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="M7qOzv">Overtime entered the amateur sports ecosystem in 2016. Backed by former NBA commissioner David Stern and <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2018/02/14/overtime-a-network-for-gen-z-sports-fans-raises.html">$2.5 million in seed funding</a>, Overtime set out to create an app that allowed users to share highlights they captured, primarily of high school athletes. (Ironically, Stern was the main reason the NBA <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/sports/basketball/nba-draft-will-close-book-on-high-school-stars.html">ended the prep-to-pro generation</a>.) It was in keeping with the skill sets of the company’s cofounders, Dan Porter and Zack Weiner. Porter had built <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/03/21/zynga-acquires-omgpop-maker-of-draw-something/?sh=533632552821">multimillion-dollar apps</a> and run the talent agency <a href="https://deadline.com/2016/10/dan-porter-digital-department-head-william-morris-endeavor-exiting-1201841153/">WME’s digital operations</a>; Weiner had started a <a href="http://joefavorito.com/2015/08/12/trying-to-find-a-winning-sports-quotient/">sports site</a> powered by unpaid contributors.</p>
<p id="m2qHhm">“We essentially built our business around high school basketball because we didn’t need rights, there were lots of games, and you could film with an iPhone,” Porter said. “Plus, basketball was at the center of culture.”</p>
<p id="Xg2gkS">Those highlights helped Overtime become a force on social media, where the company’s following rose in a sort of symbiotic relationship with the stars that it covered. Zion Williamson would have been a star without Overtime, but the company fueled his early acceleration with its footage—like this<a href="https://twitter.com/overtime/status/885632859062636544?lang=en"> two-handed excommunication</a> of another high-schooler’s dunk attempt captured by an Overtime contributor. And his videos, in turn, helped fuel the company’s. Overtime expanded its access to players through longer videos, like its<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CzGZQe1pRU"> <em>Day in the Life!</em></a> features, increasing its library of intellectual property in the process.</p>
<div id="vTB6wc"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nhq9wBexu2g?rel=0&start=589" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture;"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="gUYDuC">Overtime’s logo became ubiquitous at amateur basketball events, and its social accounts became a go-to source for highlights of the sport. As Overtime grew, its goal evolved: It now wanted to be a digital competitor to ESPN for a younger audience, and with its relentlessly positive coverage, it managed to turn the players themselves into fans of the brand. By 2019, Porter and Weiner were<a href="https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/overtime-funding-23-million-spark-capital-msg-carmelo-anthony-1203137723/"> publicly discussing</a> starting a sports league to increase the company’s programming, allowing it to feel like a 24-7 sports network, and to deepen its partnership with players.</p>
<p id="kYQBXT">“We wanted to find a way to merge two lanes: the needs we had as a business, and the needs of the players we were covering,” Porter said. “We were a huge part of contributing to the popularity of these players before they became pros. When Zion walked across the stage at the NBA draft, half of the people in America knew who he was, and Overtime had a lot to do with that. In a way, we were amplifying other people’s IP. From a business perspective, that doesn’t do a lot for me.”</p>
<p id="kaN3vI">Later that year, the company invited a dozen of the best men’s and women’s high school basketball players in the country to Brooklyn for the<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdHBp7TAUgs"> Overtime Takeover</a>, a McDonald’s All American–type showcase for the social media era. The event featured a three-on-three basketball tournament and a dunk contest, as well as skills challenges for fans who came by, and merch tables everywhere. During Takeover, Overtime’s executives talked to families about the challenges they were facing on the path to the pros, which was starting to become more complicated as NCAA alternatives began to form. </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="dzb8at"><q>“I told him it was a chance to get paid to do something we loved. It was a chance to do something different. I told him, ‘It may be a risk, but let’s take it together.’” —Ryan Bewley</q></aside></div>
<p id="2oeb3x">During those conversations, Porter heard about three main problems: basketball development, quality education, and economic empowerment. Takeover also tested Overtime’s idea that hosting these stars—notably, social media giants like Mikey Williams and Jaden Newman—in live events could be big business. The event was sponsored by Converse, and it was an enormous draw for Overtime’s audience, generating more than 150 million views across the company’s social channels.</p>
<p id="9u1Cd1">Overtime, which had by then raised more than $30 million from investors as a media company, returned to fundraising with a new goal: Starting an all-star high school basketball league. The company would offer players six-figure salaries along with perks like shares in Overtime, disability insurance, and $100,000 toward their college education if they decided not to pursue pro basketball. In return, Overtime would have almost unlimited access to, and long-term relationships with, the NBA’s future superstars.</p>
<p id="fKTKhV">By April, Overtime had armed itself with another <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/22/jeff-bezos-drake-and-more-invest-80-million-in-sports-media-company-overtime.html">$80 million</a> from investors like Drake and more than two dozen NBA players. It had hired Aaron Ryan, a former NBA marketing executive, to be the OTE’s commissioner and president. In turn, Ryan hired Brandon Williams, who had gone from the league office to front offices—first in Philadelphia, and eventually as assistant GM of the Sacramento Kings. Ryan and Williams were confident that, respectively, they knew how to build a league and a team. But they didn’t know what it would take—or what it would cost—to convince star recruits to commit.</p>
<p id="l3SEVh"></p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/RjKWw5h3YGvcOR7JY0HhFEL5gaE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22997857/OTE4347_20211030_OTE_SK19308.jpeg">
<cite>Shea Kastriner/Overtime Elite</cite>
<figcaption>Matt Bewley</figcaption>
</figure>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="8ejq2k">On a break between classes, Matt Bewley tucked his 6-foot-9, 180-pound frame into a booth to talk with Maisha Riddlesprigger, OTE’s head of academics. It was a Monday morning in mid-October, and OTE’s Midtown Atlanta facility wasn’t finished, so players were taking classes in a WeWork space with wooden floors and colorful couches. Aside from the retro Jordan 4s on his feet, Bewley was otherwise draped in OTE apparel. After talking about their favorite movies for a few moments, Riddlesprigger asked Matt whether his family was going to move to Atlanta.</p>
<p id="39EaXe">“I know my mom wants to,” he said. “It’s weird because we’re a little ahead of schedule, right? I mean, normally right now I’d just be getting my license. But instead, me and Ryan moved to another city. Mom keeps saying, ‘I miss my babies!’”</p>
<p id="Y2vIzw">It’s not unusual for basketball stars to move away from home while they’re still in high school. The Bewleys themselves had transferred to a private school, West Oaks Academy in Orlando, for their sophomore seasons, which forced their parents to make multiple six-hour round-trip drives per week to see them play. Athletic academies like IMG Academy in Florida and Hillcrest in Arizona attract top recruits from around the country and world. And even though prep schools are plagued with problems—from NCAA violations to grade inflation to outright corruption—they remain a popular destination for top prospects. In the Class of 2020, 20 of the top 25 recruits—and nine of the top 10—played for prep schools.</p>
<p id="GdJuS7">In the early months of recruiting those players, OTE’s leaders were surprised to learn that their proposed six-figure salaries weren’t of interest even to some high school sophomores. “We thought $100,000 would move the needle,” Williams said. “We quickly learned that it doesn’t. So we had to figure out on the fly: How much do you pay for a likely lottery pick? How about a likely draft pick? The market we discovered exceeded our expectations, and to their credit, our investors pivoted. They increased our budget.</p>
<p id="r66vH7">“But in some cases, we were still outbid. I mean, just think about that. We publicly told the world that we were offering six-figure salaries, and players were turning that down. It leads to a pretty obvious question: Why would a player who is planning to play in college for free turn down that money?”</p>
<p id="0ZV8DG">The NBA’s own alternative basketball development team, the G League Ignite, had learned a similar lesson two years earlier. The NBA had hoped to launch Ignite in the fall of 2019, but its $125,000 salaries weren’t enough to lure any top players. It wasn’t until Ignite agreed to pay prep star Jalen Green $500,000 that it began to draw elite talent. Ignite also hadn’t yet proved itself as a viable pathway to the NBA, though Williams and others say there is more competition than the few NCAA alternatives.</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="cES0R4"><q>“We publicly told the world that we were offering six-figure salaries, and players were turning that down. It leads to a pretty obvious question: Why would a player who is planning to play in college for free turn down that money?” —OTE VP and head of basketball operations Brandon Williams</q></aside></div>
<p id="wbtEZF">“If you look at the salaries that the G League Ignite team and Overtime Elite have been paying, it’s pretty obvious that amateur basketball players in high school and college are, in one way or another, collecting six-figure salaries,” said one NBA front office executive, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity. “I’d estimate that, at the peak of the high school basketball black market, up to $10 million was changing hands each year.”</p>
<p id="O4AgIo">OTE has so far signed 27 players but has declined to reveal the dollar amounts of any deals. Many players are represented by agents, but none has signed marquee name, image, and likeness (NIL) or sneaker deals to date. Most players on the roster are likely making something very close to that $100,000 salary. But the top prospects have no doubt commanded much more. “We had to compete in hand-to-hand combat for every one of those guys,” Williams said. The Bewley brothers’ contracts are reportedly worth<a href="https://twitter.com/wojespn/status/1395732118223925251?s=20"> seven figures</a> over two years.</p>
<p id="Qm4H8c">As Matt Bewley got up from the table to return to class on that October morning, it was easy to forget that he is well on his way to becoming a millionaire. In classes, he and the OTE players act like typical teenagers. They check their phones approximately every 10 seconds. They try to watch YouTube videos (mostly basketball highlights) on their iPads surreptitiously. And they eat. Oh, do they eat. There’s a Chick-Fil-A downstairs, and the teachers have joked that OTE’s players have become de facto investors in the franchise. </p>
<p id="tckU8d">But they also seemed to respond to educators’ efforts to make the learning more engaging. At many of the prep schools OTE competes against, the students are enrolled in online high school curricula but not given any in-person instruction. In the early 2000s, the NCAA called schools like these <a href="https://www.espn.com/college-sports/news/story?id=2510496">“diploma mills”</a> and tried to ban them, but they only evolved. OTE’s financial backing allowed Riddlesprigger—a former principal in the D.C. public school system—to build a curriculum and a teaching style that would feel relevant to these students.</p>
<p id="MgWbyU">To learn about muscle groups, they outlined each other on the ground, leaving the classroom looking like a scene from <em>Law & Order</em>. To learn about nutrition, one teacher put the students through a blindfolded taste test of healthy snacks. And the math teacher repeatedly pressed students on not only the answers they calculated, but <em>how</em> they arrived at that conclusion.</p>
<p id="UwnHXJ">From 9 a.m. to noon on weekdays, the juniors and seniors work toward their Georgia high school diplomas while the postgraduates participate in internships that match their interests, including with Overtime media. (OTE doesn’t provide college courses.) And they all attend classes and seminars on topics like social media branding, mental health, and financial literacy. </p>
<p id="f4zddT">Although OTE’s ability to pay substantial salaries got it in the door with many prospects, its offer to continue their education was a selling point for many of their families. “A marketplace exists to pay high school basketball players,” Aaron Ryan said. “Initially, it surprised me how much that market distracted people from what we were offering at the core—education and equity and basketball development and brand building. Fortunately, we ended up with a roster full of guys who understand the big picture.”</p>
<p id="GrOxdo"></p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ffjncmmYG6U4xxVhKx3BJuZGy90=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22997853/OTE226_20210910_OTE_WelcomeWeekend_1238.jpeg">
<cite>Courtesy Overtime</cite>
<figcaption>Ryan Bewley</figcaption>
</figure>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="SdwniE">If all you knew of Overtime was what the company shared on social media, you might expect every afternoon to devolve into a dunk contest. But Ollie and his assistants—Dave Leitao (a former Division I head coach), Tim Fanning (a former assistant coach at Israeli powerhouse Maccabi Tel Aviv), and Ryan Gomes (a former NBA veteran and G League assistant)—are attempting to demolish all the bad habits these prospects developed during the many years that they’ve faced little to no competition in practices or games. “In high school, we just dominated every single day,” said Matt Bewley. “But there’s no mismatches now. Everybody you go up against here is as good as you—or better.”</p>
<p id="iTBl0p">OTE’s 27-man inaugural roster is full of five-, four-, and three-star prospects, as well as four of the best 16-year-old prospects in Europe. And during a recent practice, Ollie was coaching them as if he were back at UConn. He was sweating through drills along with his players, sliding his feet and extending his arms to demonstrate proper defensive stances, and lowering his shoulders to show them how to shed screens. His voice was hoarse about halfway through the two-and-a-half-hour session, but that didn’t stop him from shouting at players on the other side of the court.</p>
<p id="4MCUe2">For much of OTE’s season, the players will compete against one another on three teams composed of nine players apiece, which are roughly balanced by talent. (Neither the Bewleys nor the Thompsons, another set of twins at OTE, for example, play on the same team as their brothers.) The high-school- and college-aged players also play prep and postgraduate programs, respectively, and travel to compete against teams in Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio. </p>
<p id="4rcW9d">Their season started on October 29 with a sold-out home game against another experimental school: Mikey Williams’s Vertical Academy. Williams, who has <a href="https://www.instagram.com/mikey/?hl=en">more than 3 million Instagram followers</a> and is arguably the most famous high school basketball player in history, had an offer to play for OTE. But instead, he pursued a more familiar path for elite prospects: His family <a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/high-school/article252763713.html">started its own prep school</a>. Williams attends classes at Lake Norman, a private school in North Carolina. But he plays basketball for Vertical Academy, which allows his family to profit from sneaker company sponsorships and tournament participation fees directly. Thanks to the NCAA relaxing its NIL rules, Mikey has been <a href="https://usatodayhss.com/2021/mikey-williams-nil-contract-excel-sports-management">able to sign</a> endorsement deals without risking his college eligibility.</p>
<div id="46F5jY">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Team OTE stays HOT and beats Vertical Academy 94-66 <a href="https://t.co/aKrc24l6oM">pic.twitter.com/aKrc24l6oM</a></p>— Overtime Elite (@OvertimeElite) <a href="https://twitter.com/OvertimeElite/status/1454577244442140673?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 30, 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div>
<p id="Ol88do">OTE’s season will culminate with an intrasquad playoffs in March, yet the ultimate metric for success won’t be wins or losses, but the number of NBA draft picks that OTE produces. In recent years, LaMelo Ball and R.J. Hampton were drafted after a year in Australia and New Zealand, and Jalen Green and Jonathan Kuminga were both lottery picks after a season with G League Ignite. Seven of OTE’s players are eligible for the 2022 draft, but only one—Dominican guard Jean Montero—is projected to be selected.</p>
<p id="u9bxbz">Until the one-and-done rule is removed, rising juniors like the Bewleys will have to decide what to do after they graduate high school in two years. They can’t play college basketball because they’ve already turned pro, but they could sign on for another year with OTE or play professionally overseas or for the Ignite team. That class’s success, or lack thereof, will prove whether this experiment offers as much in the long run as it has in the short run.</p>
<p id="RMIDF3">At some college basketball programs, the topic of turning pro can sometimes be taboo—a distraction from every team’s ultimate goal of winning the NCAA tournament. But at OTE, the players are already pro, and there are no misgivings about their ultimate goal. Ollie and his staff instead use the NBA as a motivational tool. Near the end of practice, Ollie, a journeyman for 13 years in the NBA, noticed the team’s energy lacking during passing drills and he pulled them together to light a fire. “Y’all are better than this!” he yelled. “I believe in y’all more than you fucking believe in yourselves right now. We’ve got to be better!”</p>
<p id="Dlyiqv">Before breaking the huddle, he moved his eyes to meet as many players as he could and then exclaimed one more point: “We want y’all to be pros!”</p>
<p id="ziYPPQ"></p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/a6hxFQxvgj041FGRPA0jB-yMq5A=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22997864/OTE3778_20211029_OTE_SK17634.jpeg">
<cite>Shea Kastriner/Overtime Elite</cite>
<figcaption>Ryan Bewley and Emmanuel Maldonado after a game between Overtime Elite and Vertical Academy at OTE Arena in October</figcaption>
</figure>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="t9Ot8w">A few hours after practice, the Bewleys became the first OTE players to see the team’s facility. Construction crews were cycling through 24-7 to ensure that it would be finished in time for the team’s pro day on October 23. Even in its unfinished form, the facility was a tangible display of how well funded this league is. The 103,000-square-foot complex hosts not only the practice court and show court (where the team will play most games), but also the league’s offices, classrooms, a weight room, a players’ lounge, and a barbershop. “That looks nice,” Matt said as he breezed by, “but I’ll have to check the barber’s IG before I see him.”</p>
<p id="8xaDaO">Social media will also be the primary way that audiences are introduced to OTE’s players. Although some older fans may scoff, social media presents players with opportunities to generate sponsorships and speak their minds. (Of course, <a href="https://twitter.com/DragonflyJonez/status/1451216147999776772?s=20">taking L’s is always a risk.</a>) And Overtime has more followers on Instagram or TikTok than any college basketball program, and more Twitter followers than any team except Duke, Indiana, and North Carolina. To the Bewleys, playing for a national social media audience every day at OTE was a worthwhile tradeoff to playing sporadic nationally televised games at Florida State. </p>
<p id="LTCyae">Overtime’s most successful show to date on YouTube is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzPjci7QSg4"><em>Hello Newmans!</em></a>, a cheesy reality show built around viral stars Julian and Jaden Newman, whose long-term basketball prospects are <a href="https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2863752-are-the-newmans-ready-to-be-more-than-stars"><em>substantially </em>lower</a> than OTE’s players. There was skepticism from NBA executives early on that OTE would be little more than the basketball version of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/style/hype-house-los-angeles-tik-tok.html">TikTok’s Hype House</a>. But Porter, the OTE cofounder, bristles at the notion that OTE content would be reality TV. He prefers to compare its ambitions to docuseries like <em>Hard Knocks</em>. Aaron Ryan, OTE’s president, was a production assistant on a documentary crew that filmed the Chicago Bulls during their 1998 season; two decades later, that footage became <em>The Last Dance</em>. With OTE, he hopes to build a massive library of IP featuring future NBA superstars. But he’s more focused on what the Overtime audience will be interested in <em>right now</em>.</p>
<p id="wgCyr3">“When you think about what somewhat older viewers like me want, there’s that nostalgic element, like in <em>The Last Dance</em>,” he said. “But for the younger demographic, for our audience, they want that in real time. That’s what we’re providing. There will be stories in the future, but our audience wants to be part of the journey as it’s happening.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="w57D1j"><q>“When you think about what somewhat older viewers like me want, there’s that nostalgic element, like in <em>The Last Dance. </em>But for the younger demographic, for our audience, they want that in real time. That’s what we’re providing.” —OTE president Aaron Ryan</q></aside></div>
<p id="ulPrPu">The practice court and the show court display the dichotomy of what OTE is trying to build. The practice court, which has higher ceilings than an airplane hangar, is housed with every cutting-edge basketball technology available, from <a href="https://www.secondspectrum.com/index.html">Second Spectrum</a> to <a href="https://www.noahbasketball.com/product">NOAH</a> to <a href="https://playsight.com/our-sports/basketball/">Playsight</a> and <a href="https://kinexon.com/solutions/basketball/">Kinexon</a>. OTE’s basketball staff—30-plus coaches, sports scientists, scouts, and trainers—rivals some small NBA franchises in size and scope. A 360-degree balcony on the second floor will give scouts every perspective they’d want on OTE’s talent. It’s a court designed to produce NBA players. The show court is situated in a 1,200-seat arena splashed with turquoise and orange paint, and has more LED lighting than the main stage at Coachella. There will be eight cameras positioned around the court, including a Skycam. It’s a court designed to produce compelling content.</p>
<p id="MxoISy">Live games will likely not be the biggest draw for Overtime’s audience. While the major professional sports leagues’ profits are largely derived from massive television contracts for broadcast games, OTE is attempting to reimagine how fans consume sports in the streaming generation. There will be daily—or more like hourly—social media coverage, plus a weekly documentary-style show. The league also plans to make money by selling apparel—something that Porter has said already produces more than a million dollars a year in revenue for Overtime—and sponsorships. In October, the league announced multiyear deals with <a href="https://apnews.com/article/sports-basketball-education-atlanta-f6e8390b1e573253ea7472b09928a2b7">Gatorade</a> and <a href="https://boardroom.tv/state-farm-overtime-elite/">State Farm</a>.</p>
<p id="OyWLVQ">For players like Ryan, long-term revenue plans aren’t much of a concern. Their contracts are guaranteed for two years, even if OTE folds. In that way, the league’s relationship with its players is the precise inverse of the NCAA’s with its athletes, who aren’t paid even though they generate enormous revenues for their schools. But Ryan didn’t have economic injustice on his mind when he looked up at his face on a huge banner hanging from the rafters in the show court. He just shook his head and said: “I’m speechless. The only thing I can say for sure is that I’m gonna have <em>a ton</em> of dunks in here.”</p>
<p id="wxcgjV">There were very few dunks the next day in practice. In fact, toward the end, the players separated into six teams to practice free throws for 15 minutes. Afterward, Leitao, an assistant coach, asked each team who hit the most. He removed a wad of $20 bills from his pocket and peeled off one apiece for the winners. The winning team ran up and down the court like they’d just seen a teammate put someone on the poster of the century. They waved the money in front of their friends’ faces like the bills were winning Powerball tickets. If a college basketball coach did this, it’d be a scandal. At OTE, it was just a small bonus for a few salaried employees. When the players calmed down, Leitao had a message for them. “If you’d known there was money on the line,” he said, “you might have taken the free throws more seriously. You have money on the line every day. This is your job. Treat it that way.”</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="ifxpsQ">While the winners ran to the locker room—presumably to continue bragging about their petty cash—a few of the other players stayed on the court to show off for the social media team. They attempted massive dunks and Steph Curry–range 3-point shots. And then, one of the social media directors asked them each to attempt LeBron James’s famous <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0lFHOyldPY">jab-step jumper</a>, which reliably goes viral at least once a season. None of these teenagers looked quite like LeBron yet, but they each showed some potential. For now, for OTE, that was enough. </p>
<p id="vCKIdS"><em>David Gardner is a features writer living in New York. Find him at </em><a href="http://bydavidgardner.com/"><em>his website</em></a><em> or on </em><a href="https://twitter.com/byDavidGardner"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2021/11/9/22770394/overtime-eliteDavid Gardner2021-06-21T09:11:56-04:002021-06-21T09:11:56-04:00The Rise of the $10 Million Disc Golf Celebrity
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wmfzC1j0K7x00avosj0x1AeSbkI=/400x0:2800x1800/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69480957/TheRinger_DiscGolf.0.png" />
<figcaption><a class="ql-link" href="https://www.michael-weinstein.com/" target="_blank">Michael Weinstein</a></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>How much can athletes really make in niche sports? A whole lot more than you might think. Disc golfer Paul McBeth set a new standard by signing an eight-figure endorsement contract—and his deal might only be the beginning.</p> <p class="p--has-dropcap" id="EZIjsH">When Paul McBeth first started playing in professional disc golf tournaments, he’d crisscross California in his father’s 1978 Dodge Ramcharger. His dad had mostly used it to rock-crawl in the desert outskirts of Los Angeles. The top of the SUV was sawed off and the side windows were smashed out. The doors were so dented they looked like topographic maps. The windshield was scarred, and the gas pedal was missing. When storm clouds gathered, Paul kicked a metal bar to the floor as he tried to outrun the rain.</p>
<p id="Rejo1l">His next few cars weren’t much nicer. When he was 19, he found out a friend was planning to dump an Infiniti I30 in the scrapyard and offered to pay him $500 for it. McBeth drove it from L.A. to Kansas City for the <a href="https://www.pdga.com/tour/event/8104">2009 Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA) world championships</a> and <em>almost</em> all the way back. It blew a gasket 30 minutes from his house. Then there was his Ford Thunderbird that overheated every half-hour on the highway, and his camper van that he thought would save him money on hotels but ended up costing him at the gas pump.</p>
<p id="g8Gf5l">Finally, in 2011, after winning $4,000 for taking first place at the Memorial Championship in Scottsdale, Arizona, McBeth had saved enough money to buy a new car. He wanted a Jeep Patriot. The problem was the paperwork. “Under occupation, I put ‘professional athlete,’” McBeth says. “I guess they didn’t believe me because they wouldn’t let me finance it. I ended up having to buy the car with cash.”</p>
<p id="CfNY8f">In the decade since, McBeth’s disc golf career has soared. He’s won the PDGA world championship five times and the United States Disc Golf championship twice. In 2010, the PDGA championship’s total purse was <a href="https://discgolfreport.com/whats-the-average-prize-of-a-disc-golf-tournament/">$33,782</a>; at this week’s event, the men’s winnings are expected to be upward of <a href="https://www.pdga.com/news/2021-dgpt-championship-break-payout-records-second-consecutive-year">$150,000</a>. McBeth has earned more than <a href="https://www.pdga.com/player/27523">half a million dollars</a> from his performances. He is, undoubtedly, the most accomplished disc golfer in the world.</p>
<p id="jFyZeU">But except to a subset of hardcore frisbee fans, his more impressive accomplishments have come away from the course. In February, disc golf manufacturer Discraft announced it had extended McBeth’s endorsement deal to a<em> guaranteed</em> <em>$10 million</em> over 10 years. McBeth also has sponsors for other disc golf gear, such as grip equipment and bags, and owns part of a company called Foundation Disc Golf that produces both products and content. He has deals outside of disc golf equipment too, with the likes of Adidas and Celsius energy drink. According to 2019 data from the <a href="https://opendorse.com/blog/top-100-highest-paid-athlete-endorsers-2019/">athlete marketing platform Opendorse</a>, only about 70 athletes in the world make at least a million dollars a year in endorsement deals. McBeth’s endorsement income from Discraft alone puts him on par with Bears linebacker Khalil Mack, Jazz guard Mike Conley Jr., and Astros pitcher Justin Verlander. </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="ICK2KV"><q>“Under occupation, I put ‘professional athlete.’ I guess they didn’t believe me because they wouldn’t let me finance it. I ended up having to buy the car with cash.” —Paul McBeth</q></aside></div>
<p id="HFnJ8G">McBeth has carved out a lucrative career in a niche sport, in part as an athlete and in part as an influencer. He isn’t alone in using this blueprint. Competitors in sports ranging from bowling to lacrosse have been able to amass riches by building their brands—and growing the games they love along the way.</p>
<p id="181tX3">“I think about it as a three-step funnel,” says Li Jin, the founder of the digital marketing platform Atelier Ventures who coined the term “Passion Economy” to describe how influencers monetize social media. The first step is to attract a big audience on a known platform, like Instagram or Twitter. The second is to bring them to a platform the influencer owns, such as a newsletter or podcast. The final step is to turn people into paying customers. “That,” she says, “is how influencers turn social capital into financial capital.”</p>
<p id="x30k7e">McBeth agreed to that $10 million deal in July 2020 after hosting a paintball party for his 30th birthday. A couple of months later, he signed the paperwork at Discraft’s headquarters in Michigan. In November, he shared a <a href="https://discgolf.ultiworld.com/livewire/paul-mcbeth-bought-a-mclaren/">series of stories</a> with his 150,000-plus Instagram followers. The first showed a trailer from a car dealership in Michigan. The second and third showed glamorous shots of his latest car purchase: a McLaren 570S Spider. The luxury convertible—which starts at more than $200,000—has switchblade doors and a retractable roof. </p>
<p id="s7So1q">Even in a niche sport, it’s good to be the GOAT.</p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1NtRdkqJ7A0rcxeSjCUt3blRcH8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22671602/McBeth.jpeg">
<cite>Courtesy of Lauren Lakeberg/LEL Photography</cite>
<figcaption>Paul McBeth</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="j1Y7Of">By now you may have started browsing for disc golf gear in another tab. But before you complete your order, you first need to figure out how to get anyone’s attention. Not long ago, niche sports cracked the national consciousness only as punch lines. In a now-iconic <em>Seinfeld </em>episode, George Costanza gets a severance package from the Yankees—enough to sustain him for an entire summer—and tells Jerry he’s going to learn to play frolf. </p>
<p id="zt8r6M">“You mean golf?” Jerry asks. </p>
<p id="HU2EAV">“Frisbee golf, Jerry,” George responds. “Golf with a frisbee!” </p>
<div id="mhsPGv"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 75%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PADcL1np7BE?rel=0" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="accelerometer *; clipboard-write *; encrypted-media *; gyroscope *; picture-in-picture"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="hNLBKT">In the 2004 comedy <em>Dodgeball</em>, Vince Vaughn’s group of misfits face off against Ben Stiller’s crew of hulking weightlifters on a fictional channel called ESPN 8: The Ocho. The parody network became such a cultural phenomenon that in 2017 ESPN launched an annual “<a href="https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/28921255/espn-ocho-tv-schedule-guide">Ocho TV</a>” day, featuring events like the National Stone Skipping Competition and World Sign Spinning Championship. (How sign spinning became an international competition before stone skipping is a mystery best explored in a separate story.) But those so-called joke sports have had the last laugh. From 2017 to 2019, ESPN’s the Ocho ratings <a href="https://twitter.com/espnpr/status/1161374375947440129?lang=en">climbed year over year</a>. Last May, a deadlift world record attempt drew more than <a href="https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2020/05/nascar-iracing-ratings-fox-fs1-espn-ocho/">300,000 viewers</a>—the network’s most-watched program of the day.</p>
<p id="IM4snH">For many niche sports, television is still seen as the ultimate status symbol. Some leagues have gone so far as to buy air time for their biggest events. Last year, Dynamic Discs paid the CBS Sports Network “<a href="https://discgolf.ultiworld.com/2020/07/03/a-new-dynamic-inside-the-cbs-sports-network-deal/">in excess of six figures</a>” to broadcast their disc golf tournament. This stands in contrast to networks’ relationships with the more prominent sports leagues. In March, the NFL <a href="https://apnews.com/article/amazon-gets-thursday-night-football-games-double-nfl-tv-deal-80681ad1409adf958708f65560c91da4?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=ap_nfl">secured $113 billion</a> from its television partners for the rights to air football games over the next 11 years.</p>
<p id="XFlafO">But television isn’t the only way to command mass attention. For smaller sports and their stars, social media provides access to massive audiences without traditional gatekeepers. “To millions of kids, TikTok and YouTube are mainstream entertainment. They don’t watch TV,” says Taylor Lorenz, who covers social media, Gen Z, and influencers for <em>The New York Times</em>. “Sometimes you need to get onto TV to get credibility with boomer CEOs. But for individuals, you can often monetize better on your social media.”</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"><aside id="c66QHe"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Meet the Tony Romo of Cornhole","url":"https://www.theringer.com/sports/2020/8/7/21357918/cornhole-coronavirus-trey-ryder-announcer"},{"title":"The Deadlift World Record Is Coming to the Center of the Sports Universe","url":"https://www.theringer.com/sports/2020/5/1/21243727/world-deadlift-record-espn-hafthor-bjornsson-the-mountain"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="Fl5j3J">The surest path to profitability is to go viral. And the kings of the viral clip are the dudes from Dude Perfect. What began as a series of stunts by college roommates at Texas A&M has turned into the most popular sports channel on YouTube. Dude Perfect has nearly twice as many subscribers (56 million) as four major U.S. sports leagues—the NBA (16.7 million), NFL (7.8 million), MLB (3.0 million), and NHL (1.6 million)—combined. Its <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJwoSfTOhyM">water bottle flips</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ADQauuOJto">ping-pong tricks</a> have reshaped what constitutes athletic accomplishment online. And its influence echoes across the niche sports landscape. (The dudes declined to be interviewed for this story.) </p>
<p id="BSN4ZJ">McBeth is friends and business partners with Brodie Smith, a former ultimate player who became internet famous for his frisbee trick shots and has collaborated on three videos with Dude Perfect. Smith, who boasts more than 2 million YouTube subscribers and almost a million Instagram and Twitter followers, instantly became the world’s most famous disc golf player when he turned pro in late 2019. Smith has documented his journey into the sport, and has learned the finer points of the game from McBeth. In exchange, Smith has schooled McBeth on the finer points of internet fame. “Brodie has made everyone in disc golf up their YouTube game,” McBeth says. “He’s inspired me a lot. We used to try to find the time to post videos when we could. Now we make the time. It’s become a priority.”</p>
<div id="Oo30P6"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/q0sA3YUbLSY?rel=0" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="accelerometer *; clipboard-write *; encrypted-media *; gyroscope *; picture-in-picture"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="KlttJP">Jason Belmonte, the most accomplished professional bowler in the world, has collaborated on two videos with Dude Perfect. The first—which shows him whizzing bowling balls past the dudes’ heads and breaking flying plates with bowling pins—has accumulated almost 100 million views. According to <a href="https://auxmode.com/youtube-help/youtube-views-to-money-calculator/">Aux Mode</a>, a digital service that projects the value of YouTube videos, 100 million views translates to about $400,000 of revenue. The popularity of a channel and its engagement rate can increase the value of those videos even further.</p>
<div id="MZD5Z0"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CACAmH4r1fw?rel=0" style="top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; border: 0;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" allow="accelerometer *; clipboard-write *; encrypted-media *; gyroscope *; picture-in-picture"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="RBz5yy">“Some people in my fan base can recite every single stunt I performed in those videos but don’t know how many titles I’ve won,” says Belmonte, who’s captured 25 Professional Bowlers Association titles, including a record 13 major championships. “Entertainment is king right now. Whether you’re bowling around a dude’s head or doing the world’s longest strike, entertainment is what sticks in people’s minds.”</p>
<p id="TN5d6e">Until television rights deals increase enough to start funding substantial salaries in niche sports, social media is the best way for these athletes to earn a living. Life-changing money <em>is</em> out there, but they do have to earn it.</p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-vRuS8Z5Q9PEj8AzdjG5DBGtr1c=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22671605/unnamed1.jpeg">
<cite>Courtesy of Jason Belmonte</cite>
<figcaption>Jason Belmonte</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="EecPQS">When Jennifer Delaney was a little girl, her father fastened a string to two ends of a stick to create a makeshift bow and instill in her a love of archery. As an MBA candidate at SMU, she rediscovered this passion as a way to relieve her stress from school and networking events. Her mother thought she should have taken up a “normal” sport, like golf. In the beginning, Delaney wondered whether she was right. “For the first few months, I had bruises and blood blisters on my hands and fingers,” Delaney says. “I got mosquito bites from being outside so much. I got torn up.”</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cPVtfnJXxJfSeRNvLMq08pdhaNE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22671685/jennifer_delaney_1.jpeg">
<cite>Courtesy of Jennifer Delaney</cite>
<figcaption>Jennifer Delaney</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="hSKBfX">To break up the monotony of practice, she started imagining more intricate targets. She launched a TikTok account called Freedom and Feathers, and made a video in which she <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@freedomandfeathers/video/6833123833503960326">shot a swinging tic tac into a tic-tac-toe board</a>. She has used arrows to <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@freedomandfeathers/video/6858347561305083141?lang=en&is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1">light a match</a> and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@freedomandfeathers/video/6829112444217003270?lang=en&is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1">blow out a candle</a>. In her most popular video, which has more than 7 million views, she tosses a tennis ball in the air and pierces it as it descends. Delaney does this on top of her day job as a consultant, and estimates she spends between 30 minutes and a full weekend purchasing supplies and constructing targets. Filming the videos can take anywhere from a few minutes—she shot through a Life Saver on her third try—to a few days. And the process doesn’t end there.</p>
<p id="7r8IpH">Every time she posts a video to her nearly 1 million TikTok followers, Delaney sets a goal to respond to at least 50 comments. Even though she keeps a note on her phone with standard responses to FAQs, she can’t ever clear her backlog of DMs. Still, she spends hours a day responding, because she sees how it inspires girls to get into the sport, and she wants to create a sense of community.</p>
<p id="JCHmtv">“How do small sports become big ones? I got interested in that question because I really love disc golf,” says Joshua Woods, a sociology professor at West Virginia who studies alternative sports and serves as the editor of the disc golf website <a href="https://parkeddiscgolf.org/">Parked</a>. “And that’s part of the answer to the question: a critical mass of people become emotionally connected to a sport. People like Paul McBeth are getting paid because they can cut through the noise, and there’s so much noise in the age of the internet. Passionate fans can feel like they’re part of an intimate community.”</p>
<p id="WthGqx">Even the most active NBA fans don’t expect stars to respond to social media messages. (Unless they have talked shit about Kevin Durant, in which case they’ll absolutely hear back. Hi, KD.) But the fans of niche sports sometimes feel a sense of ownership over those sports, and a sense of entitlement when interacting with their stars. Spending so much time sorting through comments can make it hard for those athletes to filter out the trolls. Delaney says that she gets daily sexist messages from men who claim what she does is easy. “They’ll say, ‘Big deal, someone has already done that particular shot.’ And I’m like, ‘Basketball players have made shots from every spot on the floor. That doesn’t make a half-court shot any less impressive.’”</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="6v2LzE"><q>“Some people in my fan base can recite every single stunt I performed in those videos but don’t know how many titles I’ve won. Entertainment is king right now.” —Jason Belmonte </q></aside></div>
<p id="B6hgXb">When Belmonte first started bowling as a child, he couldn’t lift the ball, so he pioneered the practice of bowling with both hands. While most players bowl using a single arm, Belmonte <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn4tMOUT4TA">uses both</a> to improve his power and control. That style makes him stand out the way Rick Barry once did with his underhanded free throw shooting. When Belmonte began competing professionally, he was inundated with comments about his form. “It’s funny how you can scroll right past a thousand positive comments and focus on the one negative comment you see,” he says. “It took me a long time to learn how to deal with that.”</p>
<p id="e9ytAl">He later learned that some of those online trolls were actually his competitors in the lanes. He says that several times he’s walked into the locker room—yes, there are locker rooms for bowlers—and overheard other bowlers whispering about how they’d created burner accounts to harass him. “I used to tell them ‘Don’t hide behind a username. Say it to my face.’<em> </em>Then they’d deny it,” Belmonte says. “Now my reply is ‘I have more of everything than you do. There’s nothing you have that I would want.’”</p>
<p id="qPJPHQ">Belmonte also credits his unusual style for his success on social media. He’s by far the most popular bowler across all of the major platforms, with 130,000 Instagram followers, 44,000 Twitter followers, and 66,000 YouTube subscribers. His bios online tout his unusual style, and his email signature reads, “This email was typed using #2HANDS.” He has double-handedly changed the game of bowling for professionals and amateurs alike, many of whom trace their ability to enjoy the sport to his trailblazing style. That sense of community can be lucrative for Belmonte, who regularly releases <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/COA7l-Hsb_l/?utm_medium=copy_link%20https://www.instagram.com/p/COA7l-Hsb_l/?utm_medium=copy_link">limited-edition merchandise for $25 to $60 on Instagram</a>. He says those sales, which number in the thousands every year, provide “fantastic supplementary income.”</p>
<p id="ugCd0d">“In niche sports, social media is 10 times—maybe 100 times—more important to an athlete than it is in mainstream sports,” Belmonte says. “Mainstream sports stars get constant TV coverage. They’re in people’s faces all the time. If you’re in a niche sport, you have to tell people what you have coming up and what you’ve achieved. You want people to feel like they’re a part of this journey.”</p>
<p id="dekcuJ"></p>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="uPaa0j">As she was languishing last summer before her freshman year at Aquinas College in Michigan, volleyball player Chloe Mitchell decided—like so many of us during the pandemic—that she had seen just about enough of her family. Behind her house was a storage space with dusty walls and rusty bicycles, so she asked her parents for permission to convert it into a “she shed.” She’d recently gotten into TikTok, and posted a video documenting the change to her account. Within four days, it had accumulated a million views. By the time the shed was transformed, so too was her life. She had more than a million followers, and no idea what to do next.</p>
<div id="6SvgoH">
<blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@chloevmitchell/video/6817037099271802118" data-video-id="6817037099271802118" style="max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px;"> <section> <a target="_blank" title="@chloevmitchell" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@chloevmitchell">@chloevmitchell</a> <p>It’s DONEEEE! Thank you for watching the process and having fun with me. Check out the link in my bio if you want to see a longer she shed tour :))</p> <a target="_blank" title="♬ Funky Town - The Dance Queen Group" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/Funky-Town-6703171955052251137">♬ Funky Town - The Dance Queen Group</a> </section> </blockquote> <script async="" src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script>
</div>
<p id="jeMyIw">She didn’t want to be a one-clip wonder, so she took a couple weeks off before coming back with a new project: remodeling the bathroom that she shared with her brother. “I had this massive decrease in followers after the first project was finished,” she says. “Being a TikTok star had <em>just </em>happened, and it wasn’t part of my identity. When my followers started going back up after my second project, I knew I could sustain something.”</p>
<div class="c-float-left c-float-hang"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/96rLL8i2xFkroVV8pjDWl2kaKtk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22671612/AquinasVolleyball.jpeg">
<cite>Courtesy of Chloe Mitchell</cite>
<figcaption>Chloe Mitchell</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p id="soI88z">Mitchell’s fame had nothing to do with volleyball. Nonetheless, NCAA name, image, and likeness (NIL) rules would have prevented her from collecting any profits from her social media success. During recruiting, Mitchell nearly committed to an NCAA Division II school, which would’ve cost her dearly. Instead, she chose to compete at the NAIA level, which <a href="https://www.naia.org/general/2020-21/releases/NIL_Announcement">granted athletes NIL rights</a> in October 2020. Mitchell is now <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/chloe-v-mitchell-the-first-college-athlete-to-monetize-her-likeness.html">believed to be the first college athlete</a> to make money from endorsements. (Well, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/23/sports/ncaabasketball/ncaa-college-basketball.html"><em>legal</em> money anyway</a>.) Since then, she has earned enough to buy a laptop and a car, as well as pay off her student debt. She’s saving up for her next project: flipping a house.</p>
<p id="YrgNGC">As soon as this summer, NCAA athletes in states such as Florida and Mississippi will gain NIL rights. Sensing that seismic shift in the economics of college sports, Mitchell and her father, Keith, founded a company called PlayBooked. PlayBooked already has four full-time employees and has connected more than 130 NAIA athletes to paid social media sponsorship opportunities. Keith is so bullish on its prospects he turned down venture capital funding and predicts that there will be a PlayBooked Bowl by 2025.</p>
<p id="RDNkp7">For athletes in niche sports, their college tenures often represent the peak of their popularity. Being able to make endorsement money, then, would be an absolute game-changer. “The riches,” Keith says, “are in the niches.”</p>
<p id="8EaW6C">Myles Jones first started getting interested in Instagram while he was playing lacrosse at Duke. Every time his team played on ESPNU, he’d return to his phone to discover a few hundred additional followers. He was majoring in marketing at the time, and wanted to test his ability to build his own brand. He was so successful that on the day after his 2016 graduation, STX Lacrosse representatives flew out to ink him to an endorsement deal. Within a few months, he’d also signed with Adidas and made a few thousand dollars for promoting a protein powder on Instagram. </p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="HG0kVY"><q>“In niche sports, social media is 10 times—maybe 100 times—more important to an athlete than it is in mainstream sports. You want people to feel like they’re a part of this journey.” —Jason Belmonte</q></aside></div>
<p id="WHCMx2">In November, Jones signed a major endorsement deal with Degree. He declined to reveal the exact dollar figure involved, but said he thought his agent had typed an extra zero at the end of the number when he read the text confirming the details. Yet Jones says the meaning of the deal was as significant as the money. “I was stepping into the non-endemic space. A lot of what guys are selling in lacrosse is equipment—sticks and goals. I felt like I was bridging the gap between a small sport and the mainstream culture. You can’t buy lacrosse gear at the supermarket, but everybody needs deodorant.”</p>
<p id="JjVCuy">Even in mainstream sports, most athletes rely on apparel companies like Nike or Adidas as their primary sponsors. And while deals like LeBron James’s lifetime contract with Nike make national headlines, most athletes have what are known as merchandise deals. They don’t get money, but they get as many products as they want. Only the big names receive cash deals, and even then the payout—in the low six figures, if they’re lucky—is generally pennies compared to their contracts. Only the megastars make millions from endorsements.</p>
<p id="ECY7rD">Yet while mainstream athletes often live off their sport salaries alone, niche sport athletes typically have to rely on multiple income streams. Delaney, the consultant and archer, works full time in addition to collecting between $3,000 and $5,000 a month from Freedom and Feathers. Belmonte and Jones make money as TV commentators when they aren’t competing and posting. But for them and other athletes in niche sports, there’s a goal in these games more elusive than riches: glory.</p>
<p id="nYpFGv">“There’s an obvious monetary incentive to building your social media,” Jones says. “There’s something else to it too. You’re growing your sport. A few decades from now, I want to be remembered as one of the pillars of this sport. I didn’t just graduate and give up and go to Wall Street. I want to be remembered as one of the guys who made lacrosse go mainstream.”</p>
<div class="c-wide-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_KLlh-I0lRVC8aNQaiIjXQA-Fck=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22671614/Mcbeth_1.jpeg">
<cite>Courtesy of Lauren Lakeberg/LEL Photography</cite>
<figcaption>Paul McBeth</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p class="p--has-dropcap" id="v27QFQ">When McBeth was a boy, he wanted to play in MLB. He only started taking disc golf seriously once he was cut from his high school baseball team. But even then he didn’t give up on his diamond dreams. After high school, he joined an amateur baseball league with hopes of working his way up from junior college to the minors. On his days off, he worked at the concession stand for extra cash. His mother let him live at home for free.</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang"><aside id="yV79sT"><q>“I could be the Tiger Woods for disc golf. This sport could go to the moon, and I could be remembered as one of the reasons why. It’s a bigger responsibility, but I want that responsibility. I want to be the greatest ever.” —Paul McBeth</q></aside></div>
<p id="WLDnqw">In the middle of the 2010 season, he told his coach and his mom that he wanted to take a week off to compete in the disc golf world championship in Indiana. His coach gave him permission, but his mom told him he couldn’t stay with her if he wanted to make a career out of throwing frisbees. She didn’t see a future for her son in <em>that</em> sport. McBeth went anyway, and took <a href="https://www.pdga.com/tour/event/9551">12th place</a>. “In baseball, I was so far away [from the big leagues],” McBeth says. “But in disc golf, I was <em>right there</em>. I was 11 spots away from winning. I decided that if I dedicated myself to disc golf in the way I was to baseball, I could make a name for myself.”</p>
<p id="X3A35S">Two years later he won his first world title. Now McBeth has so many trophies that he tosses some in the trash as soon as he gets home from a tournament. When he thinks about all that he’s accomplished in disc golf, it blows away even the wildest dreams he had for himself in baseball. It’s not just that he’s making the type of endorsement money typically reserved for ace pitchers and All-Star hitters. It’s that he’s become the face of a sport.</p>
<p id="fW9Er1">“In baseball, there’s no way to be a trailblazer anymore. The best you can hope for is to make it to the Hall of Fame,” McBeth says. “But in disc golf there was a bigger opportunity. I could be the Tiger Woods for disc golf. This sport could go to the moon, and I could be remembered as one of the reasons why. It’s a bigger responsibility, but I want that responsibility. I want to be the greatest ever. That’s the goal.”</p>
<p id="5GBYtu">That’s ultimately the reason McBeth released the terms of his multimillion-dollar deal with Discraft. He wants other players to have a figure to negotiate against, so that sponsorship salaries can rise across the sport. “People will pursue this sport if they know they can make $10 million doing it,” he says. “And even better, they can make $10 million without ever having to be tackled by a 350-pound man.”</p>
<p id="0BVtfs">It’s also the reason McBeth started a foundation that bears his name, and the reason he wants to expand access to disc golf around the globe. In May, the Paul McBeth Foundation completed its first project: a nine-hole course in La Paz, Mexico.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="WgJOJY">McBeth announced the installation <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CPEjHvoA4sR/">on Instagram</a>. In the video, he’s donning a branded T-shirt he helped design and clutching an energy drink so that the label is visible for the camera. His pitch face gives way to a smile as he talks about getting on the course. One of the world’s most improbable multimillionaire athletes has learned to wear the role well. </p>
<p id="TIDyNY"><em>David Gardner is a features writer living in New York. Find him at </em><a href="http://bydavidgardner.com"><em>his website</em></a><em> or on </em><a href="https://twitter.com/byDavidGardner"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>
https://www.theringer.com/features/2021/6/21/22542839/disc-golf-niche-sports-million-dollar-endorsement-dealsDavid Gardner