Taking Ownership: From FIFA Streaming to Athlete Earnings
Athletes Earning Potential. Influencer Partnering with Pro Teams. FIFA Streaming Platform.
Our thoughts are with the country and people of Ukraine, hoping a peaceful end is near.
On Today’s Agenda:
Chris Pronger Launches Twitter Account Sharing Financial Experiences
Commanders, MLS sign Influencers to Improve Their Social Brand
The Launch of FIFA’s Own Streaming Platform
Insight Into Athlete Earnings and Their Problems
Chris Pronger Launches Twitter Account Sharing Experiences
In his prime, Chris Pronger was the best all-around defenceman in the NHL. Those who never had a chance to watch him play missed a player who could do it all for a very long time. Playing in over 1100 games in his career, Pronger is known as one of the best defencemen in NHL history and even made the NHL’s 100 Greatest Players list in 2017.
Although it’s been ten years since we’ve last seen Pronger on the ice, he’s continued to be involved in various positions within the sport. He previously worked with the NHL assisting its Player Safety Division before moving to the Florida Panthers as a Senior Advisor of Hockey Operations after his contract ended in 2017. It’s safe to say that he’s kept himself busy in retirement from professional hockey.
After setting up his Twitter account in December of 2021, Pronger had a measly 20k followers up until last week when he decided to share some advice and information with the hockey community surrounding financial advice and player salaries. In a Twitter thread, Pronger explained the three problems he’s seen with an average athlete’s financial management:
Athletes often believe that their careers will last forever and the money will continue to come in when in reality they’re always one bad injury from retirement.
Financial advisors and lawyers will look to take advantage of professional athletes wherever they can.
Many players struggle with taking care of close circle and often fall into the trap of hiring unqualified friends, investing in unprofitable businesses with family, and spending way too much on entertainment
In another thread, Pronger broke down an NHL player’s salary expense by expense and explained how a player earning $6 million per year takes home much less than that. After deducting escrow (~10% or $600,000), federal taxes (~37% or $2,000,000), local taxes (~8% or $432,000), and agent fees (~3% or $162,000), a $6 million salary only nets $2.8 million. That’s also not including other necessities for professional athletes such as housing, personal trainers and chiropractors, vehicles, and nutritionists that Pronger estimates to be over $200,000 per year.
Regardless of if you’re a fan of Chris Pronger or the NHL, any sports fan or athlete should take a moment to think about these figures. It’s crazy to see how much of what is seemingly an incredible salary is taken away quickly. Combined with the fact that most players never even consider asking for a $6 salary (Pronger estimates the average NHL salary to be $2 million), athletes have to be increasingly careful of where they spend their money. Maximizing your potential on the ice should be your coach's job, but off the ice, the responsibility falls on the athlete to make smart decisions and save money for the future. With so many emerging opportunities for personal growth, creating a brand for yourself outside of your sports career has never been more important for athletes.
With the positive feedback coming from the sports community after Pronger shared his insights (his account grew to 110k followers, gaining 90k followers since April 5), it’d be no surprise if he continued to share his advice in the coming weeks. You can check out Chris Pronger’s recent comments on his Twitter page.
Are Influencer Partnerships Legit?
Commanders, MLS sign Influencers to Improve Their Social Brand
The evolution of the smartphone has given anyone the capability to go viral and make their stamp on the virtual world. It’s no secret that athletes are able to leverage social media to engage with brands and their audience - some teams in particular are well equipped to unlock the secret behind athlete marketing.
Teams have expanded and upgraded their marketing teams to include whole departments to focus solely on content and social media - with the ultimate goal to promote their brand and athletes. Content pieces involving athletes are posted daily by teams, ranging from simple questions to get athlete opinions to more detailed holiday pranks. The point here is that the athletes are at the forefront of the brand, and are “influencers” for their team.
Recently, teams have started to tap into a new clientele to grow their brand - social media influencers. The Washington Commanders have recently added TikTok star Katie Feeney to be their Social Media Correspondent this season. Feeney, who has 6.8 million Tik Tok followers, and 2.2 million Youtube subscribers, is a longtime Washington football fan who will be making content with exclusive access to the team from the draft, to training camp, and throughout the regular season. This move from the Commanders comes on the heels of a major accusation of financial fraud with their ticket sales reporting.
Feeney is not the first social media influencer to secure an exclusive deal with a sporting organization. In late February, Noah Beck was announced as the MLS’ first ‘Social Playmaker’, a role that will see Beck creating and posting content with the MLS on Tik Tok - including a weekly rundown of the MLS titled “Beck’s Corner”. Beck, who is a former Real Salt Lake academy player, has 33 million followers on Tik Tok, and over 9 million Instagram followers.
Based on the follower numbers alone, it is evident that these deals will expose the Commanders and the MLS to a larger audience, targeting a younger demographic that is all over Tik Tok and Instagram. What is interesting to see is how these roles develop, and how many teams and leagues continue to develop direct relations with social media influencers. One time partnerships and content collaborations are frequent in sports, especially on platforms like Instagram and Youtube - we often see our favourite personalities spend a day with the team in a practice session, or attend a game and record a point-of-view experience. Now, with an established role for influencers being created, we can expect the role of an influencer in sports to evolve. A full season, all access pass for someone with the following of Katie Feeney offers the opportunity to curate content at any point, and show 6.8 million followers an exclusive look at an NFL team and experience. Noah Beck’s weekly show could introduce 33 million users to the stars of the MLS.
The consequences of this could also go left and offer limited returns in the long term. Will social media correspondents replace social media departments in teams and leagues? How are athletes impacted? We encourage our favourite athletes to post more content on social media to engage with the fans beyond what they see in person and on broadcast; will these moves encourage more players to enhance their social media brand to become influencers themselves? One thing is for certain - nothing can replace an athlete’s perspective, insight, and opinion. Whether these developments are a threat or opportunity, the influence of the athlete will always give them an upper hand on other influences in the sport media space. It all comes down to who can capture and entertain an audience.
FIFA and The “We’ll Do It Ourself” Mentality
The Launch of FIFA’s Own Streaming Platform
FIFA announced this week that they are planning to release their own streaming platform service to compete with traditional media platforms and other services such as DAZN. However, FIFA plans to release the service fully free and largely featuring documentaries and some live games at the launch. The plan is to eventually be FIFA’s way of exclusively broadcasting international matches and world cup matches at a cost, without the need for third-party media.
FIFA director of strategy Charlotte Burr says “ “There is no plan to charge a subscription fee for the service, that doesn’t mean to say that we may not evolve over time should there be a value proposition that allows us to charge subscription if we step into premium rights or adopt other kind of models,”
With no specific details on which competitions will or will not be included, FIFA said the live matches would be from competitions across the globe that previously lacked coverage, looking to stream approximately 1,400 games each month from launch.
Furthermore, FIFA could shift their content from YouTube, such as highlights, conferences, interviews, and more, to their new streaming platform to make FIFA+ an all-encompassing platform for soccer lovers.
This new platform is going to pose a lot of competition to platforms such as BT Sport, Sportsnet, TSN, and other traditional media channels, as they currently have the rights to international matches. Many people will consider the easier and free alternative, rather than having to pay their TV providers for subscription to sports channels.
With the likes of DAZN and UEFA TV, most games are now streamed online, so this may pose competition for FIFA. However, this isn’t simply a new company starting a streaming platform, it's the governing body of world soccer itself. Now, people will have access to free live coverage of matches, straight from the source.
As much as I am an advocate for a free market, I just hope that since the governing body of world football is starting its own streaming platform, it doesn’t completely monopolize the streaming of international matches. At the end of the day, FIFA can exclusively control match rights for broadcasting, and in turn, charge whatever they want for people to watch the matches, but we’re grateful it's free.
The best thing FIFA can do is market the nostalgia. Imagine having a platform like Netflix where you can go back and watch movies from 1966, well I want to be able to watch England win the World Cup in 1966, and that’s exactly what FIFA+ should do.
Similar to Netflix, Hulu, and Prime, show it all. I know for a fact FIFA has every international game coverage archived somewhere, so put them all out for display. Let fans and users watch the best moments in soccer history! Iniesta’s World Cup-winning goal, Maradona’s hand of God, RVP’s diving header, Gordon Banks’ save of the century against Pele, and hey, even Zidane’s headbutt. FIFA can broadcast and categorize each match in history to make the history of football fully open to all, as well as paving the way for streaming the future of football, starting this November in Qatar.