James gets huge investment to construct media empire
The Lakers star and his longtime business partner, Carter, form a new company after raising $100 million.
“We’ve been through a lot this year,” Lakers star LeBron James said.
The three-time NBA champion talked with Bloomberg on Tuesday via Zoom with his childhood friend and business partner, Maverick Carter. It was the second of two joint interviews to discuss their new company but the first since the world locked down because of COVID-19.
James was in their hometown of Akron, Ohio, while Carter was in Los Angeles. Kobe Bryant’s death in January was followed by the pandemic and the suspension of the NBA season and then, of course, the horrific killing of George Floyd.
“Just seeing that video, how many people were hurt not only in Minneapolis but all over the world — and especially in the Black community, because we’ve seen this over and over and over. So, you know,” James added, “it’s been a lot that’s gone on in 2020.”
The pair thought it was going to be a big year for different reasons. On March 11, the same day the NBA suspended its season and a little more than a week before their adopted hometown ordered residents to shelter in place, James and Carter formed the SpringHill Co. after raising $100 million. They describe it as a media company with an unapologetic agenda: a maker and distributor of all kinds of content that will give a voice to creators and consumers who’ve been pandered to, ignored or underserved.
SpringHill is named for the Akron apartment complex where James and his mom moved when he was in sixth grade. It consolidates the Robot Co., a marketing agency, with two other businesses.
The first, SpringHill Entertainment, is behind “The Wall,” a game show on NBC, and the movie “Space Jam: A New Legacy,” which stars James and is scheduled to be released next year. The second, Uninterrupted LLC, produces “The Shop: Uninterrupted”
— an HBO talk show featuring James, Carter and other Black A-list celebrities — as well as Kneading Dough, an online partnership with JPMorgan Chase & Co., in which athletes talk about money to promote financial literacy. Uninterrupted, a hybrid production-marketing business, is also responsible for a Nike Inc. shoe collaboration and a hoodie collection for Pride Month designed with soccer star Megan Rapinoe and basketball great Sue Bird.
In an interview in February at the Lakers’ practice facility in El Segundo, they talked about SpringHill as a platform to give people of color the creative control that has long eluded them. Carter calls the company a “house of brands.” It’s part Disney storytelling power, part Nike coolness and part Patagonia social impact. In 2020, stories can be told in many different ways — on social media, in films, as well as with sneakers and sweatshirts.
“This is ultimately a company that’s about point of view, the community you serve, and empowerment,” says L.A. investment banker Paul Wachter, who helped put the project together. “This is a company designed to move the culture.”
At the practice facility, a day after putting up 40 points against the New Orleans Pelicans, James told Bloomberg: “When we talk about storytelling, we want to be able to hit home, to hit a lot of homes where they feel like they can be a part of that story. And they feel like, ‘Oh, you know what? I can relate to that.’ It’s very organic to our upbringing.”
Carter added: “When you grow up in a place like where we were, no matter how talented you are, if you don’t even know that other things exist, there’s no way for you to ever feel empowered because you’re like, ‘I’m confined to this small world.’ That’s our duty. A lot of exposure.”
What was aspirational in February is a lot more real now. Black people are dying from the coronavirus at more than twice the rate of whites, amid a recession in which Black unemployment has climbed to its highest level in more than a decade, and while a historic wave of protests is sweeping across the country — and world.
But these are the times James and Carter find themselves in, and they might be the two people best suited to help others voice and answer the questions we’re all asking. Discussions about race dominate media. Books about white privilege and antiracism top bestseller lists; U.S. demand for Netflix Inc.’s satirical “Dear White People” and “When They See Us,” a miniseries about the Central Park Five, skyrocketed as protests got underway, according to Parrot Analytics. HBO Max temporarily removed “Gone With the Wind” from its catalog (in honor of Juneteenth, HBO.com made “The Watchmen” available for free), while Epic Games Inc. got rid of police cars in “Fortnite.”
Carter took advantage of the lockdown to spend virtual one-on-one time with the 105 employees of the new venture, as well as to finalize partnerships. He signed a TV production deal with Walt Disney Co. and is working with Netflix on a basketball-themed movie that would star Adam Sandler. A series he worked on with Netflix, “Self-Made,” about Madam C.J. Walker, a Black woman who created a beauty empire in the early 20th century, starring Octavia Spencer, premiered in March.
As the pandemic ground Hollywood to a halt, SpringHill Entertainment joined with Laurene Powell Jobs’ XQ Institute to produce a virtual ceremony James hosted called “Graduate Together: America Honors the High School Class of 2020.” It featured addresses by former President Obama and Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai.
Carter said on Zoom: “I’m getting a lot of calls from other CEOs. A lot of calls on, ‘What are you doing? What do you think we should be doing?’ I’m explaining to people, ‘Don’t treat this as a moment.’
“This is bigger than a moment — the attention that issues of inequality are getting right now is more like what this country should be, and what this world should be,” he said.
Devin Johnson, SpringHill’s chief operating officer, says diversity is built into the company. He says its employees are 64% people of color and 40% female. “I’ve never had to convene a task force,” he says, as other companies scramble to figure out how they can be more reflective of society.
SpringHill might just sound like another superstar athlete’s vanity project. But Johnson says the company isn’t set up for — and around — a single athlete; rather, it’s a platform in his image.
That attitude has freed up James for other projects — such as, for example, playing professional basketball. Play is scheduled to resume July 30, with 22 teams competing for spots in the playoffs, all to be held in a quarantine bubble at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla. Many analysts have picked the Lakers to win the title.
And this month, James recruited current NBA stars such as Trae Young of the Atlanta Hawks, as well as former standout and now broadcaster Jalen Rose, to form More Than a Vote.
The group is focused on protecting voter rights and preventing suppression, especially in Black communities. James announced it after social media posts showed people waiting for hours to cast ballots in Georgia’s primaries.
If there’s pressure on SpringHill to rise to the occasion, the founders are lucky that neither of them is new to expectations. James, after all, was on the cover of Sports Illustrated when he was a junior in high school.
“I’m OK having that pressure of my community and other Black communities across America that look up to me and look to me for inspiration or for guidance,” he said. “It’s just my responsibility, and I completely understand that. And so every day I leave my home, or I wake up out of my bed, I understand that it’s not just about me. I’m representing so many people.”
‘We want to be able to hit home, to hit a lot of homes where they feel like they can be a part of that story.’ — LeBron James, discussing the goal of his new company, SpringHill