Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC]
00:03 Let's end here with a new partnership coming in.
00:05 We saw this on social media yesterday.
00:08 LeBron James partnering with DraftKings, but to promote NFL betting,
00:13 and also potentially to do some of his own content.
00:16 We saw LeBron earlier in the football season, Sam, take to social media saying,
00:20 man, my picks are pretty good.
00:22 Maybe I'm gonna post them every week.
00:24 Boy, DraftKings certainly took note of that, and here we go.
00:29 >> Yeah, kudos to DraftKings for taking note of that.
00:32 I remember LeBron post, he's like, I do this NFL thing, or
00:34 like I'm posting all my picks today.
00:37 And now he's monetizing it, and DraftKings is gonna monetize it.
00:39 It's kind of funny, both sides, King James, DraftKings,
00:43 some, I guess, synchronicities there.
00:46 But he's basically gonna be doing this football initiative where he's gonna be
00:49 doing content, and I would assume it's picks for the next football season.
00:53 Which is pretty interesting because you have the history of sports betting and
00:59 athletes being involved.
01:00 Now, he's obviously not gonna be doing any NBA picks,
01:03 at least while he's still playing.
01:04 I don't know how many years he has left, but if he retires, he could go into it.
01:08 So this is a guy that said he predicted Kobe scoring 81 points back in the day,
01:13 and has kind of popped up on social medias,
01:16 having all these kind of embellishing stories and stuff.
01:18 So I bet it'll be a lot of funny content that they do together.
01:22 And he has 53 million followers on Twitter, about 159 million on Instagram,
01:27 which is like 150 times DraftKings.
01:30 So it's a good opportunity for them to promote the content more.
01:34 And up until last year's collective bargaining agreement,
01:38 this wouldn't have been allowed.
01:39 Players were prohibited from not only doing partnerships with sportsbooks, but
01:44 investing in the companies in general.
01:46 And that was something they actually really fought for in the CBA,
01:48 because the owners were allowed to invest in companies.
01:52 You have the Rockets owner, Toman Fertitta, a huge stake in DraftKings from
01:56 selling Golden Knight, and a lot of players are kind of saying,
01:58 "Hey, we want to get our piece in.
02:00 This should be fair for everyone."
02:01 So as part of that change, they said, "Hey, players, if you guys want to do
02:04 sponsorships with sportsbooks, you can."
02:07 And this is sort of the first one we're really seeing here.
02:09 And obviously, LeBron James is a huge, huge name, not only in the NBA,
02:13 but across the world.
02:14 So I'd have to think that more of these will follow, maybe with probably it
02:19 wouldn't be in a sportsbook's best interest to do it with a smaller name,
02:22 but I'd imagine other companies like Caesars,
02:24 or even a little bit MGM that want to make it on these partnership deals
02:27 we're seeing will pop up with their own.
02:29 But yeah, very interesting to see the king get involved with DraftKings here.
02:34 - Yeah, definitely.
02:35 So Sam, do you think that it was strictly them, like,
02:39 piquing the interest of LeBron?
02:40 I mean, obviously, they don't go through LeBron.
02:42 They go through Maverick Carter, or his agents, or everything else.
02:44 But do you think that that is why he's doing this?
02:47 Like, it's the direct correlation just from simply his social media post
02:50 back in September?
02:53 - I wouldn't be surprised if they said, "Hey, wow, LeBron likes to bet.
02:56 Nobody has him as a partner.
02:57 Nobody's making money off that.
02:59 Let's do it."
03:00 And I mean, yeah, Maverick Carter, like we just talked about,
03:02 was one of the guys implicated in this illegal bookie ring.
03:05 So interesting to see, you know, the lines kind of blurred there,
03:08 what people accept, what people don't accept.
03:11 But yeah, if I'm DraftKings, I'm like,
03:13 just going to throw him as much money as possible,
03:16 because, you know, they pay Kevin Hart a lot of money.
03:17 They pay Peyton Manning, I think, is with Caesars.
03:20 All these celebrities get paid so much money.
03:22 So if you can get an actual active athlete who not only likes to bet
03:26 and talk about it, but actively posts on his own on social media,
03:29 you don't even have to make him do that.
03:31 And he's already such a well-known player.
03:34 He's even bigger online as a personality.
03:36 I think it's a no-brainer and a great move for DraftKings.
03:39 Kudos to whoever was following his Instagram feed and realized it,
03:42 and also realized that we need to keep this to NFL, not other sports.
03:46 (MUSIC)