By: TJV News
The media company founded by Derek Jeter to give a voice to athletes without going through regular media outlets has been sold. The Players Tribune was dedicated to serving up first-person content from athletes. It has now been acquired by Minute Media — the latest roll-up play in a wave of consolidation in digital media, according to a report in Variety. .
Variety reports that terms of the deal are not being disclosed. Completion of the transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to be finalized by the end of the year.
Founded in 2014, New York-based Players’ Tribune had raised $58 million. Investors included IVP, Alphabet’s GV (formerly known as Google Ventures), Thomas Tull (former CEO of Legendary Entertainment), New Enterprise Associates, GenTrust and dozens of individual athletes, according to the report on Variety.
Jeter launched the Players’ Tribune in partnership with Tull, with the former New York Yankees star shortstop angling to provide a home for athletes to share “unfiltered, honest and unique perspectives” to fans.
According to the Variety.com report, Minute Media is the current owner of 90min, 12up, DBLTAP, Mental Floss and The Big Lead. Minute Media said it will provide enhanced technology, infrastructure and global reach to fuel the growth of Players’ Tribune, according to the report on Variety.
On November 21st, Jeter posted on the Player’s Tribune blog. His statement said:
“On my last day playing for the New York Yankees, I had to pack up everything from my locker and put it all into these huge cardboard boxes. It felt like I was moving out of my dorm room after 20 years of living a dream. When the last box was taped up and ready to go, I just sat at my locker for a few minutes and looked around the clubhouse for the last time. That’s when it really hit me. I knew that I was stepping into the next chapter of my life.
The next morning, myself, Jaymee Messler and the rest of our small team huddled around a laptop in downtown Manhattan and pushed the “publish” button on a website called The Players’ Tribune. The idea was pretty simple. We wanted to give athletes a platform to open up and tell their stories in their own words. But honestly, at the time, we didn’t know how far we could take that idea. As someone who is private, I wasn’t sure how many athletes would really open up the way they do in the clubhouse, at dinner, or on roadtrips, when they’re just being themselves.
I’d been in enough conversations with athletes to know that they had amazing stories to tell. But I didn’t know how many would trust us. We all realized that if we didn’t earn that trust, then this platform wouldn’t have true meaning.
We hit the publish button, and in our first few months of existence, The Players’ Tribune put out two stories that really changed what we thought was possible. First, Blake Griffin wrote an insider’s account of what it was like to play for Donald Sterling’s Clippers. And second, Andrew McCutchen wrote an essay explaining why kids from lower-income families are being left behind by the high cost of youth baseball. These stories weren’t just bringing in readers, they were also sparking real conversations with leagues and teams. That was when we started to realize the power of our platform.
Over the next few years, our athlete contributors kept getting more raw and more honest in ways that truly surprised us.”
