Ben Gilbert

three times a day so you're watching highlights but i bet if you try to look at football content on social media versus basketball content on social media it becomes clear that the follower counts are more due to like celebrity status versus engagement around the game

Well yes and a thing that's extremely measurable is how much money people make.

And using that as a proxy.

So we were sort of ripping on the fact that LeBron makes $127 million a year in disclosed deals between his contract and all of his sponsorships, and no one in the NFL even comes close.

That's just not true anymore.

Pat Mahomes is making $90 annually, and about half of that is his Chiefs deal, and about half of that is other endorsements.

State Farm, Adidas, Oakley, Head & Shoulders, Equity Ownership.

And then it's not just him, too.

You've got Josh Allen at $75 million, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, Aaron Rodgers.

There's real comparable dollar amounts for sponsorships with these guys.

That's putting a dollar amount on cultural relevance, for sure.

All right, so let's go to Taylor and Travis.

So I spent a long time really trying to find longitudinal, directly causal studies, data, anything on this.

The answer is very, very likely.

There was a massive increase from Taylor on the NFL in viewership and engagement and attention and new fans.

But what we do know for sure is there's heavy correlation on lots of little data points.

So here are a few of them just to throw around at your next cocktail party.

So in the first year of the relationship, September of 23 to September of 24, the NFL added 4 million female fans.

The Chiefs were 3.4 million of those.

Again, correlation.