On the Podcast: Hollywood ballin’?

FYI, Tubefilter has a podcast.

It’s hosted by our very own Joshua Cohen (that’s me) and Lauren Schnipper. Subscribe to Creator Upload on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

This week’s episode is sponsored by creator membership software Memberful.

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NFL careers tend to be bright and short. The average player getting drafted out of college can expect to make around $800,000 a year in pro ball. For most of them, that shakes out to career earnings of about $2.8 million. That’s a decent chunk of change–but these guys know it won’t sustain them forever. So, when they hang up their jersey for the last time, they’re already looking for the field where they can score their next touchdown.

And increasingly, they’re finding it on YouTube.

Hollywood has sort of always been the post-career aspiration for big-time sports players, but not many of them have made it there. O. J. Simpson (pre-court case) successfully parlayed his Buffalo Bills fame into multiple film cameos, Kobe Bryant won an Oscar with his 2017 animated short Dear Basketball, and Lebron James got into filmmaking in 2020 with his production company SpringHill.

But SpringHill, despite having Lebron James attached, still lost a LOT of money. Like, tens of millions each year. (It was expected to lose tens of millions again in 2024, but before it could, it merged with British studio Fulwell 73.) That’s a very stark illustration of how even major celebrity athletes struggle to make it through the gates in Hollywood.

YouTube, though, doesn’t have gates. In fact, it’s actively working to get more athletes on its platform. (Maybe because sports is responsible for some of the only dependably money-making content out there anymore…) It recently partnered–yet again–with the NFL to launch Access Pass for Legends, a program that’ll give ex-NFL players permission to use high-quality game footage from the NFL’s archives.

The goal? To “[empower] these athletes to take control of their narratives, build powerful brands, and transition into successful media moguls in their post-playing careers,” Angela Courtin

, YouTube’s VP of Connected TV and Creative Studios, said.

Yeah, NFL players might have a sweet couple million in their bank accounts when they retire. But they’ve also got renown, which is arguably even more important. These guys are capable of going from playing in front of tens of thousands of people to pulling in tens of thousands of views per video on YouTube. Fans are willing to follow them and see what they’re up to, and ex-players are becoming more and more savvy about producing engaging content.

Over the last couple years, we’ve seen several athletes make it on YouTube with podcasts and videos. There’s the Kelce brothers and their chart-topping podcast New Heights, former Tennessee Titans player Taylor Lewan and his ‘cast Bussin’ with the Boys, and former Chicago Bears player Brandon Marshall with I Am Athlete. Outside of football, there’s current golf pro Bryce DeChambeau, who has nearly 2 million subscribers, and Olympian Noah Lyles, who has 288K with another 1.6 million on Instagram.

Players are figuring out how to transition their sports celebrity for the digital age, and YouTube is at the center here. It’s helping them reach audiences in a meaningful way, with no gatekeeping and no middlemen. And I think that’s pretty cool.

I get into all this and more with my co-host Lauren Schnipper in the latest installment of Creator Upload. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whenever you listen. You’re gonna dig it.

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