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King James of All Media? LeBron James and Maverick Carter Get $100 Million Investment

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LeBron James has thoroughly conquered the NBA through his Hall of Fame career and now he sets his sites on media. As his career reaches its final stages, James is working toward building an empire for his future and he wants you to know that he has an agenda. The stated mission of LeBron and longtime business partner Maverick Carter’s SpringHill Co. is to be “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 under-served,” according to a profile in Bloomberg Businessweek. 

The new company is a merger of three existing entities, SpringHill Entertainment, Uniterrupted and Robot Co. The latter is a marketing and public relations agency that works on sneaker lines with Nike and partners with other high profile athletes in both clothing and charity efforts, while the two former companies are already involved in media production. James and Carter produce their HBO show “The Shop” through Uninterrupted, and SpringHill Entertainment is the production house for next year’s new Space Jam sequel — which, naturally, will star LeBron James — as well as The Wall, a big-money game show that airs on NBC.

The merged companies will be known as SpringHill Co., named for the apartment complex James lived in as a child in Akron, Ohio. The company raised $100 million in funding with both Guggenheim Partners and Elisabeth Murdoch, the daughter of media titan Rupert Murdoch, taking major stakes. According to Bloomberg the company’s board will include LeBron James as CEO, several executives from the investment firms, tennis superstar Serena Williams, Michael Rapino the CEO of Live Nation, Red Sox chairman Tom Werner, and Murdoch herself.

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In discussing the company’s focus on under-served creators, Carter would say “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.” He would go on to tell Bloomberg that the plan is “we are building a consumer and entertainment business that’s committed to diversity, that’s unafraid to stand up for what we believe in and that’s resonating with our community.”

A statement released by LeBron James stated “I’ve always wanted to use the platform of basketball to empower those around me. Now I’m incredibly excited about the opportunity to build a company that empowers creators, consumers, and everything it touches. The SpringHill Company defines empowerment.” James would also tell 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.”

The duo has been busy during the pandemic, Carter has established partnerships with Disney and Netflix, and SpringHill Entertainment was partly responsible for the nationwide graduate-at-home event Graduate Together: America Honors the High School Class of 2020, which featured speeches from Malala Yousafzai and President Obama. The company they are building is focused on diversity, with COO Devin Johnson telling Bloomberg that the organization is currently “64% people of color and 40% female.” The production house is hard at work on a number of projects, the largest of which is the upcoming sequel Space Jam: A New Legacy.

For his part, LeBron James isn’t afraid of the spotlight or taking on the burdens of leadership. In the Bloomberg profile James says “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. 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.”

LeBron James is going to be a national figure and a leader for a long time after he decides to call it a career in the NBA. His company seems poised to take on the world and make significant change for the better. In the meantime, James is also giving his time to causes like fighting voter suppression in minority communities. The superstar recently announced the formation of an organization called More Than a Vote, through which James and other high profile athletes and celebrities will use their gigantic platforms to expose attempts at voter suppression. James was joined in the effort by Maverick Carter as well as fellow NBA stars Trae Young and Draymond Green, the WNBA’s Skylar Diggins-Smith, retired NBA star Jalen Rose, NFL running back Alvin Kamara, and comic Kevin Hart.

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