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Bob Iger, chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, defines a media franchise as "something that creates value across multiple businesses and across multiple territories over a long period of time.”
At ProStories, we talk a lot about athlete partnerships. And while a personal brand can create partnership opportunities, a media franchise can create spaces for impact and longevity beyond sports.
LeBron is a media franchise. So is Naomi Osaka. Mike Tyson for sure. They’ve all created multiple businesses that create value across time and territories, all from a single entity: themselves. But access is everywhere—you don’t have to be one of the world’s greatest to build your media franchise. You just have to start.
The Timing of Building your Franchise
With media franchises, even though each venture is tied to a single entity, no single venture depends on the others to be successful. Take Hugh Hefner. While Playboy magazine came first, a few years after its first publication Hef expanded into enterprises including
- TV shows
- Clubs
- Movies
- Books
- Pet accessories
Just to name a few. All from that single bunny logo—tons of value created across multiple businesses across multiple territories. The success of Playboy overall helped each business, but each business also was able to run itself.
Playboy Enterprises didn’t wait for the demise of their magazine business to develop others. By building them simultaneously, they supercharged the growth of the franchise as a whole. Same goes for LeBron and Naomi with their list of businesses—they didn’t wait for their primary venture (their playing careers) to slow down before starting others.
But to do this without millions of dollars of capital, it’s important to consider the types of businesses we’re talking about.
What we call a business is changing. For Mr. Beast or PewDiePie, YouTube isn’t a channel, it’s a business. For James Clear or Harry Dry, a newsletter isn’t a channel, it’s a business.
Trey Drechsel is a perfect example of the modern athlete’s media franchise, with his Atypical newsletter (business) and his YouTube channel (business) creating athlete partnership opportunities on top of the value he’s providing. Regardless of where your strengths are, the types of assets you build matter less than the key components.
The 3 components of the athlete media franchise
Regardless of deciding to build a newsletter, a YouTube channel, a community platform, an education company (or all of the above), there are 3 components that every media franchise must have.
1 - Identity
Ok so…who are you? And not just “point guard for the New York Liberty,” who are you really? What do you stand for? What do you want to achieve? What is the message or mission at the heart of your franchise?
Trey is a shooting guard for SL Benfica, but for his franchise, he’s a mentor and a teacher. He stands for action, taking your future into your own hands, and his core mission is to help young people reach their potential.
Establishing your identity is crucial to creating a franchise that goes beyond sport and that lives far beyond your playing days. It will evolve over time, but having an idea/intention from the start is important.
2 - The goal of increasing profit/impact
Having a goal gives your franchise direction. It ensures that every decision—from content creation to athlete partnerships—aligns with your long-term objectives. While impact-driven goals give your audience something to connect with, profit-driven goals ensure that your franchise can sustain itself.
An impact-driven goal could be to reduce the number of high school girls who quit playing sports. A profit-driven goal could be to raise $100,000 worth of sponsorships for your newsletter in 2025.
Reaching your goals (in terms of numbers) is less important than the clarity they provide.
3 - Marketing across multiple platforms
The easy way to think of cross-platform marketing is promoting your businesses through your newsletter, your YouTube channel, and all your social media profiles. But cross-platform can also mean platforms of other creators.
WorkWeek is a collective of business-focused newsletters focusing on verticals such as content marketing, HR, and finance. Each newsletter helps the others in the collective grow.
At ProStories we’ve taken a similar model because we believe that the athlete creator space is not a zero-sum game. There don’t need to be any “losers,” but there can be a lot of winners. And growth happens much faster when you’re part of a team.
As an athlete, launching a media franchise doesn’t have to be something you think about at the end of your career, nor does it have to be a 6 or 7 figure investment. All it takes is an identity, a goal, and the openness to grow as part of a team.
Further reading: The Pro Athlete Partnership Guide for Teams and Agencies