Why Big-Name Athletes Are Launching Newsletters
Social media has become stale and brand-safe, stifling athletes' authenticity. Some are looking for new ways to regain control of their narratives and grow their media empires.
Hi friends! Welcome back to SportsVerse, my twice-weekly newsletter that tells stories you can't find anywhere else about the intersection of sports, fashion, business, and culture. Powered by OffBall.
This week, nine-time NBA All-Star and Denver Nuggets guard Russell Westbrook announced he was launching a weekly newsletter. Hosted on Beehiiv, a rival platform to Substack, Westbrook joins a small but growing cluster of high-profile professional sportspeople opting to connect with their fans, reach new audiences and display their interests beyond their day jobs by launching newsletters.
The most prominent example is retired NBA legend
, whose award-winning newsletter on Substack has over 224,000 subscribers and covers “sports, politics, and popular culture and how they define America”. But recently, athletes still in their playing careers—often those with prominent interests beyond their sport—have been taking to newsletters. In August, Kyle Kuzma launched Kuz Kontrol (also hosted by beehiiv), which he has used to discuss prominent life events (like getting engaged), realities of being a pro basketball player (like getting traded), and musings on the tunnel walk phenomenon in which he played a significant role.Word of Westbrook will predominantly focus on Russell’s analysis of the fashion industry. He was one of the first NBA players to truly explore and be accepted by the industry at large, long before the contemporary sports-fashion convergence came about. He designed a signature collection for Barneys back in 2014 and has long cultivated a close relationship with luxury brand Thom Browne.
On several occasions in years gone by, I would meet with Westbrook and his team at Paris Fashion Week each June, where he’d take the time to talk me through the latest collections of his own brand, Honor the Gift, explaining the inspiration behind each down to details like fabrics and sizing. Few athletes manage to create fashion businesses that are more than just screen-printed T-shirts and hoodies, and even fewer take the time each off-season to relocate their family to Paris to host showrooms.
Jackie Caldwell, a consultant at Russell Westbrook Enterprises, wrote on LinkedIn that we can expect “cultural commentary, Russ’ unfiltered opinions and trend watches” from his upcoming newsletter.
Standing Out In a Boring Sports Media Landscape
Smart athletes understand that they are brands and huge media businesses in and of themselves. Like all smart brands are doing right now, smart athletes are finding ways to differentiate themselves.
The athlete media landscape has become sterile and oversaturated in recent years. Post-game athlete interviews ask the same boring questions and yield the same PR-trained responses. Instagram has long been stale and brand-safe. Most content on your favorite athlete’s grid was posted by their management team or because of a sponsorship obligation.
Meanwhile, sportspeople and content creators alike were reminded of the risks of relying on TikTok when it was banned for 24 hours. Also, though TikTok may be suitable for up-and-coming athletes, sports stars of a certain age find it hard to navigate the platform authentically or simply don’t want to get involved.
On top of all that, there’s the proliferation of the athlete podcast. Every single player, it seems—active or retired—currently hosts or is involved in some way in a podcast of some sort. A very small handful of them are interesting, most are boring, and the fact is, there are now too many of them to even sort through.
A newsletter, still a relatively untapped channel by most public figures, offers an organic and direct way for an athlete to communicate with their fans beyond (or most likely, in addition to) posting a carousel of their latest tunnel fits. Kuzma’s “Kuz Kontrol” newsletter, for example, allows him to cut through the BS of social media by plainly speaking about matters personal to him, on his own terms. Recent editions have included his reaction to getting traded from the Wizards to the Bucks, his recent engagement and first impressions of Milwaukee, and the backstory behind why he decided to retire his iconic tunnel walk fits ahead of the current NBA season.
Westbrook even alluded to the saturated athlete content landscape when announcing his newsletter on LinkedIn.
“Instead of another player podcast or sit-down interview, I wanted to do it on my terms,” he said.
Controlling Your Narrative
Westbrook, one of sports’ genuine good guys, has always done things his way.
Traditional media hasn’t always been fair to him or other athletes who can sometimes go against the grain. The initial rise of social media companies like Instagram and Twitter in the 2010s gave unprecedented agency to athletes who, for the first time, could control their narratives and speak directly with their fans. But the hyper-commercialisation of these platforms has contributed to the reversal of that trend. Athletes are now looking for new ways to wrestle back control.
“It’s been a long time coming. Being in the league for nearly two decades, I’ve become accustomed to the traditional media cycle. As a result, I was finally inspired to create a platform where I could write and connect with people in a way I never had before,” Westbrook added.
Running a successful newsletter can also be a valuable tool to someone like Westbrook, a high-profile athlete in the final years of his playing career. It’s clear he plans to use the platform to speak mainly about his love of fashion, presumably easing the eventual transition from basketball to launching headfirst into the industry he has long had a passion for, building his ready-to-wear label Honor the Gift and attending events like the Met Gala over the years. Westbrook, among other contemporaries, pioneered the convergence of sports and fashion, the modern-day tunnel walk and despite playing in a hyper-masculine sporting environment, was never afraid to make bold fashion choices like his Thom Browne skirt-suit look.
“It'll be a front-row seat to the way he thinks and talks about fashion, both on and off the court. We are looking forward to bringing the community of people who love sports and fashion together, and I believe there is no one better to lead it than Russ,” wrote Caldwell of Russell Westbrook Enterprises.
The Future of Athlete Newsletters
Now, we shouldn’t be so naive as to think that newsletters won’t become as overused as podcasts one day. It’s also clear that newsletters are becoming so widely adopted by athletes, brands and influencers of all kinds that platforms like Substack and Beehiiv are becoming social media powerhouses in and of themselves.
But I do hold out hope that there is something deeply personal about the newsletter writing process that will keep this medium more authentic for longer and reserved to those committed to creating valuable work. Plus, the general effort that goes into the consistent writing and editing of a newsletter should hopefully deter enough people from doing it, meaning only the athletes (and/or their ghostwriters) who are truly committed to newsletter writing take it up.
As you know, I love writing about the ever-evolving notion of athlete independence, whether that’s sports stars building their own brands independent of traditional sponsors or launching their own newsletters, like Russ and Kuz. I’m excited to see this space develop.
That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
Until next time!
DYM
If you enjoyed this article, check out some other recent stories on similar topics:
…and if you’re looking for a daily dose of everything you need to know in sports culture, then don’t forget to show some love to OffBall! Thank me later.
I am a former athlete (not with Westbrook's profile I'd hasten to say!) and have long thought I'd like to help these kinds of athletes write newsletters and found it weird no-one was really doing it. Good for him and he's the exact kind of multi-faceted person to make something interesting out of it
Super interesting and completely agree with you that a newsletter can be a more engaging and deeper way for players to continue their legacy beyond their post-career, but more so to control their own narrative. The 'post-career' dilemma is such a big taboo amongst them, yet something that most of them struggle with. It made me wonder if there are some specific companies (tech or non) targeting that