David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…Listeners, even if you don't care about cricket, if you like thinking about the design of sports leagues, that episode was very fun to do. Very, very fun. But that said, even now, a couple years later, and even now after the Taylor Swift crossover, the social media gap between players in the NFL and players in the NBA absolutely still persists. I believe Travis Kelsey is the active NFL player for now with the highest number of Instagram followers these days. He has just under eight million followers on Instagram. Patrick Mahomes has six and a half. Tom Brady has 15, obviously he's retired. LeBron James has 157 million Instagram followers. And it's not just LeBron. Steph Curry has 60. There are a bunch of NBA players with 20 to 30. You can debate the value of all this, but it's wild that number one in the NFL is under eight and one in the NBA is 157 and number two is 60. Yes, the difference is staggering. I bet this is true when you look at follower counts, but if you think about it a different way, which is how much social media stuff do I get about NFL versus about NBA. Most of the time when you follow LeBron, it's not like he's putting up game footage 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.…

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