Exploring the limits of the sports x culture crossover
In another universe, Haaland could be so much more. His elvish features and freakish dimensions would be an avant-garde designer’s dream. His modest musical talent and immense fame among young people would be enough to secure collaborations with the world’s biggest artists. An acerbic personality and love for Minecraft make him perfectly suited to Twitch, helping him deepen bonds with fans.
In another universe, Erling Haaland could be a global multimedia phenomenon, shining brighter than any other star. Just not in this one.
Cultural crossover
Crossover stars in film, television and music have existed since the dawn of showbusiness, but sport’s insular culture has historically prevented its participants straying into the creative arts.
With a few exceptions, like the NBA’s Damian Lillard or Formula 1’s Lewis Hamilton, sports stars don’t become rappers, singers, actors or fashion designers until they retire. Golden boot winners and league MVPs don’t appear in films, bingeworthy series or release hit singles.
But as entertainment formats converge, how long can sport afford to keep a lid on the creativity of its biggest stars? What are the rewards for those players that dare to cross the line? And what’s stopping those that don’t?
According to Yao Williams, a sports marketer with experience across NBA talent endorsements and brand partnerships, the hip hop career of seven-time NBA All-Star Lillard AKA Dame D.O.L.L.A. allows him “to pull into a different group that may not follow basketball closely, but may follow hip hop or music. One can make the argument that those fanbases are adjacent to each other, but I think it adds a tone to his marketability.”
Williams added: “Anything culture-related, fashion, music, acting or even being a fan of a different sport, can increase your marketability. People want content, want to be engaged. People want behind-the-scenes stories. People want to understand how you’re built, what you’re made of, what makes you tick, what keeps you up at night. People would like to humanise the athlete and humanise any celebrity for that matter.”
Whether Lillard’s recent move from the Portland Trail Blazers to the potentially championship-winning Milwaukee Bucks puts a stop, or not, on his musical career will be instructive. Shaquille O’Neal, one of the NBA’s biggest stars in the 90s and 00s, recently revealed that the Los Angeles Lakers blamed his music career whenever he had a dip in form.
O’Neal released his debut album, ‘Shaq Diesel’ in 1993, while he was a young power forward at Orlando Magic, with the disc peaking at number 25 on the Billboard 200. Shaq continued to release music during his prime at the LA Lakers and has subsequently developed a portfolio music career under the DJ Diesel moniker.
Williams believes attitudes are changing, at least in the US. “American culture allows that bit of flexibility where in European football you have two poor games, you’ll have fans saying, well, you shouldn’t be posting [on social media], or that’s why you shouldn’t have commercial spots.”
Brand Beckham
Is sport’s potential limited by the refusal of its paymasters to encourage the crossover potential of its biggest stars?
Someone who knows better than most is Simon Oliveira, managing director and founder of talent and creative agency KIN Partners, who has worked with David Beckham, Lewis Hamilton and Andy Murray. Oliveira’s career included eight years at Simon Fuller’s 19 Entertainment where he managed global communications for Beckham during the last eight years of the player’s football career.
He believes that Beckham, the subject and co-producer of the eponymous documentary on Netflix, has blazed a trail for creative sports people based on his experiences in the pre-social media age.
“David is a perfect example because everyone had an opinion on what he should do next and what he shouldn’t do next. David dabbled with fashion, did covers of magazines and had a pop star wife [Victoria Beckham of the Spice Girls] and at times the criticism, particularly in the traditional sporting arena and football world, was that it was a distraction.
“Why is he suddenly doing the front cover of GQ and The Face? Why is he turning up at Victoria’s fashion show? But the reality is, would you rather somebody do something productive with their lives, something that’s of their passion or their interest or would you prefer that they sit at home and play on a computer game for seven hours?
“The reality is footballers do have time to kill. Nowadays, they do short training sessions and so some players want to do other things that aren’t just based around their careers.”
Beckham’s situation in the late 90s and early 2000s also bears an uncanny resemblance to the Taylor Swift x Travis Kelce phenomenon, where the pop star is now dating the Kansas City Chiefs player. The reaction of the vested interests from sport and entertainment is more positive than in Beckham’s day. “She’s now attending games and attracting more women to watch football games and to understand more about Travis Kelce and the Chiefs, but also certain teams around the NFL,“ Williams said.
Would you prefer that they [athletes] sit at home and play on a computer game for seven hours?
Hamilton on hold
Oliveira has also worked with another client, Lewis Hamilton, who has a talent for both music and fashion (he has his own clothing line +44) and is testing the crossover waters.
Under the name ‘XNDA’, Hamilton featured anonymously alongside Christina Aguilera on ‘Pipe’ from her 2018 album ‘Liberation’ that reached number six on the Billboard 200 chart. He later confirmed that he supplied the vocal.
Indeed, it is understood that Hamilton has a body of work from collaborations with an impressive array of producers just ready to go. Which begs the question, why has it not been released?
In this case, Oliveira does not believe Hamilton’s Mercedes F1 team is the problem. He recalled: “There was a great response from [Mercedes F1 chief executive] Toto Wolff when Lewis arrived late from a fashion show and missed the media duties on the Thursday before the Singapore Grand Prix.
“All the media were pushing for Toto to pull him into line and say this was a distraction, but Toto decided not to do much because he felt the pressure cooker of the F1 world was so demanding. Lewis needed something to distract himself and ended up ‘smashing it’ in qualifying and arguably having one of his best races in Singapore”.
Hamilton has not released his stash of music, Oliveira suggested, for reasons Beckham would understand – the “significant challenge, particularly in the UK, presented by traditional media viewpoints.” In other words, the opprobrium of the tabloid press. “It’s getting better, but it’s still very difficult for a sports star to release music.”
Learning from Influencers
It would be wrong to apportion all these artistic endeavours to the creative urge alone. Money is also deeply embedded in the sports x creative crossover and social media is frequently the key to unlocking the marketing dollars.
According to Sean Jefferson, the former head of partnerships at Manchester United, now running his own consultancy SportsValue, this is where the extra cash gets made.
“All talent managers want to leverage the power of social media to build an athlete’s brand presence and level of credibility – the bigger the audience and influence, the bigger the endorsement deals, and it can create a valuable fanbase beyond the sport and beyond their sporting career,” he said.
For prime examples of crossover monetisation on social media, he added, one should look no further than the influencers themselves, some of whom have used sports to drive up audiences.
YouTubers like the American Logan Paul and the British KSI initially generated followers through personal vlogs and gaming content, respectively, but have spectacularly used boxing to up their profiles. Paul and KSI’s bout in 2021 has spawned a whole universe of influencer boxing, often pulling in more pay-per-view revenue than top-level professional boxing.
“People sniffed at the likes of YouTube boxers to start with until they realised, ‘Wow, look at the size of their audience’,” Jefferson said. “Sport can learn from their ability to create stories, entertain and sustain highly engaged fans. Brands and media find that attractive – especially if the stars have carved out a role in culture, hang out with the right people, and consistently generate cool content.”
Agency analytics
It may seem a lot to ask of an athlete to provide regular crossover entertainment on social media, but at the Sportfive agency, they are taking an analytical view of how to position their athletes in the cross-cultural space.
Ron Wiegand, senior vice president, global athlete and team marketing at Sportfive in Germany, has worked on commercial deals with some of the biggest names in sport, including Neymar (and Oppo), Kevin Durant (and Coinbase) and Russell Westbrook (and Hennessey).
When the agency takes on a new client, he said, the budding star is asked to fill out a questionnaire highlighting their interests, so that the agency can develop areas for engagement on social media.
Says Wiegand: “What we’re looking for is not only the performance on pitch, but performance off the pitch. Is there a personality who transcends sport to culture and subculture, to media and entertainment, to music and so on, because this is also what the brands are looking for. They need personalities that can be related to their brand.
“We were representing, for example, one of the biggest and best strikers in the world and the problem was he was marvellous on pitch… but he was a kind of neutral person. Brands need certain character traits that their brand can be linked to and without say, a sharp personality, it becomes difficult.”
Wiegand argues that it’s not enough to “hang out with Spike Lee and Drake, drive a gold Lamborghini, party with Jay-Z or have your picture taken with Beyoncé” to fill the social media void. “If you’re the CMO of Volkswagen, for example, you’re not looking for something like this. You’re looking for a guy who is standing clearly for sustainability, or someone like a Megan Rapinoe, who’s clearly for equality. Someone like Haaland, for example, could be the global superstar in soccer, but he’s not arrived as a superstar in the US because he’s got no communication strategy for markets abroad, so he lives on his on-pitch presence. I don’t think they [his management team] have a clear communication strategy for his own brand.”
Could singing help? “Of course, why not? But it has to be authentic and shouldn’t detract from his status as a player. Not easy.”
What we’re looking for is not only the performance on pitch, but performance off the pitch
Building an audience
In Haaland’s case, his income from football alone butters his bread. He reportedly earns a basic salary of £375,000 per week, or £19.5m per year from his club – a sum his agent, Rafaela Pimenta, wants to improve well before his current contract expires in 2027.
He also has a boot deal with Nike, reupped in 2023, and thought to be worth a basic £10m per year, increasing to as much around £20m if he wins all the prizes the game has to offer.
SportBusiness understands that he has a mixed bag of non-endemic endorsement deals currently valued in the high six-figures and low eight-figures in pounds sterling per deal per year.
With 36m followers on Instagram, the 23-year-old is not yet in the ‘premium’ category inhabited by Cristiano Ronaldo, the former number seven at Manchester United, Real Madrid and Juventus, now plying his lucrative trade in the Saudi Pro League.
The aging Portuguese superstar has more than 600 million followers on Instagram, his own fashion brand CR7 and still commands $3m per year each from tens of sponsors, often for little more than a handful of social media posts.
Haaland is not yet in that bracket and is yet to explore his full marketing potential. That doesn’t have to be a Ronaldo-esque crypto brand portfolio, or a Beckham-esque celebrity relationship. It could just be him, calmly playing Minecraft on Twitch.
Whatever the case, Haaland – and hundreds of other footballers like him – have other strings to their bow. Isn’t it time we saw what they’re capable of?
Erling Haaland was rapper number three on a Norwegian language rap by ‘Flow Kingz Feat Lying’ called ‘Kygo Jo’ posted on YouTube in 2016. It currently has 11 million views.
