Derek Jeter: Entrepreneur?
Retired New York Yankee Derek Jeter is launching a website wherein professional athletes—a guild he once belonged to, don’t you know—can…say things, apparently.
The Players’ Tribune, as the platform is called, will serve as a publishing house for athletes, with a goal of offering a better way to connect with fans.
In an introductory article on the site, Jeter, fancying himself ‘founding publisher,’ says he never wanted to be a terribly boring interview. He just never had The Players’ Tribune at his disposal.
I do think fans deserve more than “no comments’’ or “I don’t knows.’’ Those simple answers have always stemmed from a genuine concern that any statement, any opinion or detail, might be distorted. I have a unique perspective. Many of you saw me after that final home game, when the enormity of the moment hit me. I’m not a robot. Neither are the other athletes who at times might seem unapproachable. We all have emotions. We just need to be sure our thoughts will come across the way we intend.
So I’m in the process of building a place where athletes have the tools they need to share what they really think and feel. We want to have a way to connect directly with our fans, with no filter.
Best way to combat perceptions of roboticism: To start a website where athletes and their handlers can whittle their thoughts down ’til they’re just so, then transmit them electronically. (In the interest of giving Jeter the opportunity he has longed for, to have his words read with no spin involved, here’s the link to his full post.)
Still, this could be interesting if athletes get on board. It calls to mind LeBron James’s move to announce his return to the Cleveland Cavaliers through a first-person essay published by Sports Illustrated. Perhaps this will be a place where more of that sort of sports news can be made directly by the players, albeit alongside plenty of canned balderdash.
And why is this better than Twitter or Facebook, where Jeter himself announced 2014 would be his final season earlier this year? Jeter, that’s why.
The venture is presumably funded by seed money in the form of some of the $265 million Jeter made in his career as a player, not to mention endorsement deals. It’s not totally clear whether, or how aggressively, the site will chase revenue, but its privacy policy does say it intends to collect and share at least some of its users’ personal information.
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