Thanks to YouTube, NIL deals, and the creator economy, it’s easier than ever before for athletes to establish secondary careers in the arena of digital content. It’s time for sports stars to take advantage of a golden opportunity — and Select Management is here to help.
Since 2010, Select has played a pivotal role in the online video industry by working with some of the community’s biggest names. The firm’s push into the sports world has been spearheaded by Amy Neben, a veteran manager who Select elevated to the role of Partner in 2019.
Earlier in her career, Neben was known for her work in fields like fashion and beauty, where she linked up with YouTube standouts like Sofie Dossi and the McKnight family. By adding top-tier athletes to her client roster, Neben is leading Select into promising territory while interrogating an industry that’s ripe for change.
Subscribe to get the latest creator news
It all started on Dancing with the Stars: Juniors
While watching the fun-size spinoff of the ABC competition series, Neben was introduced to Sky Brown, who at the time was a nine-year-old amateur skateboarder. Nearly five years later, Brown is an Olympic medalist who is repped by Neben.
It wasn’t always an easy road. In an interview with Tubefilter, Neben explained that Brown’s agent didn’t want to share her with a manager. While managers work with their clients to unlock brand-building opportunities, sports agents focus on professional contracts. In Brown, Neben saw a rising star who could connect with fans online — not just at competitive events. “They own that audience space for the first time ever,” Neben said of the athletes she reps. “That’s a concept that’s not embraced in sports representation.”
Brown eventually linked up with the agency CAA to go along with her management team at Select. The young skateboarder now has her own gear collection among other licensing endeavors, and she has partnerships with brands like Nike, Visa, and Red Bull.
She’s not the only Olympian on Neben’s client roster. The Select Partner also works with Jordan Chiles, a gymnast who won a medal in Tokyo in 2021.
Select’s goal is to create “longevity” for athletes whose competitive years are limited.
With Chiles, Neben must tackle a tricky problem. Typically, gymnasts can only compete at the highest level for a brief window. After they retire from elite competition, they must find ways to promote themselves outside of Olympic broadcasts.
Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles.
“Usually, gymnasts have a year or two of fame and then sizzle out,” Neben told Tubefilter. “We’re trying to break that stigma.” The ultimate goal is to create “longevity” in a sport where it seldom exists.
If Chiles is going to have a bountiful second career as a content creator, she’ll have to put in work while she’s on top of the gymnastics game. Or, as Neben put it: “How do you invite your audience to be a part of the journey while you’re competitive and build that loyalty?”
Chiles’ skill provides part of the answer. Unlike other creators, Neben explained, athletes are “ranked.” The top sports stars can prove their prowess by earning trophies and titles, and that establishes a “point of difference” that comes in handy when it’s time to negotiate with brands. “Athletes carry a prestige that creators don’t,” Neben told Tubefilter.
Thanks to the name recognition they’ve achieved, Brown (1.3 million Instagram followers) and Chiles (478,000 followers) have both built strong followings on social media. By encouraging clients to harness their athletic careers in order to further their creative pursuits, Select is diverging from other firms that work with sports creators. Viral Nation, which helps college athletes bag name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals, often works with sports creators who don’t play at the highest level.
That “creator first, athlete second” approach is distinct from the strategy Neben relies on, but the Select Partner sees value in elite competitive records. “Whenever you can differentiate yourself in terms of the skill you’re bringing and the lens you’re giving viewers into your content, the easier it’s going to be to build a business,” she told Tubefilter.
So what’s next?
Neben and the Viral Nation reps I spoke with agreed on at least one thing: Young sportspeople are not being properly educated about the opportunities they have online. “Athletes don’t really have any sense of the traditional entertainment world and how to navigate finding representation,” Neben said.
Because players are not made aware of the off-the-field options they have, change can be slow to come in sports representation. For example, Neben noted that the representation of female athletes is male-dominated. She is working to adjust that balance, and along the way, she is helping clients like Brown and Chiles find diverse sponsorship opportunities. “Where there used to be more long-term campaigns for athletes, there are now one-off campaigns for athletes that have social media,” she told Tubefilter.
A lot of new brand-building formats have come to sports, including NIL deals, one-off sponsorships, product lines, and much more. But Neben was quick to remind me that we’re still in the early days of creator-athlete management. “It’s still a small pool,” she said. “I hope it does explode, but there just aren’t that many right now.”
While she waits for more creator-athletes to launch their own channels, Neben will cheer on her existing clients. Chiles has a great shot to compete at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. If she does, she’ll get another chance to announce herself as one of the world’s foremost gymnasts, and the exposure she gets from that experience could become one of her major assets as she makes her next move.
