One of the biggest milestones in athlete-driven media was when Derek Jeter started the Players Tribune, which is a hugely successful website and business now. But, it started as just a way to give athletes a voice and to give them the opportunity to tell their stories in their own voice rather than relying on traditional media to do an interview, tell the story, maybe chop it up into a way that wasn’t fully what the athlete had intended.
Since he founded it in 2014, it’s become hugely successful. It has allowed several different athletes to tell their own stories about sometimes very, very emotional topics. But, they’re able to present it when they’re comfortable and in their own way.
Aside from traditional media and aside from social media, there are so many different sports news outlets that now exist. And ESPN has always been a leader in this regard. But now you see Bleacher Report and Deadspin and some of these that take maybe a little bit more of a comical view or slant on the way that they present the news.
I think one of the big differences we’re seeing now is that instead of relying so much on the written word, organizations are really doing these short snippets, short broadcasts, short highlight clips. That’s really what the younger generations of fans want, and that’s how they prefer to get their news rather than reading 1,000-word news articles.
