Deron Guidrey and Collin Castellaw are the dynamic business duo behind PlayersTV, the first ever athlete owned media network and content provider. The network is dedicated to showcasing the lifestyle of professional athletes inside and outside of the arena. Launched in March 2020, the player owned television network is revolutionizing what sports entertainment is and how it’s consumed. PlayersTV has over 100 athletes creating comedy, reality shows, documentaries, podcasts, movies, and more.
Over 120 current and retired athletes have their own production company, Guidrey and Castellaw are capitalizing on their distribution first model to help players retain ownership of their intellectual property, and broaden the reach of their content while creating and contributing to a new ecosystem of sports entertainment content. Deron Guidrey and Collin Castellaw sat for an interview with me to discuss their strategies for making PlayersTV a success— and a household name.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
The Roster
Stephanie Tharpe: The path to entrepreneurship isn’t always a straight line; How did you both start in the sports industry?
Deron Guidrey: I was always an entrepreneurial type of person. I forged some great relationships with athletes early on in my career to help them with their off-to-court obligations, responsibilities, and opportunities. I worked with marketing, endorsement deals and strategic investment opportunities. I was leveraging who the athletes were as influencers to build startups and businesses and turn their association value into equity. That led to meeting Collin and conceptualizing PlayersTV.
Collin Castellaw: I began my professional career as a K through 12 art teacher in a tiny little town in rural Idaho. The school had about one hundred and fifty kids. I come from a teaching family, but I loved basketball and wanted to figure out a way to make it a full-time gig. That’s when I launched my company Shot Mechanics which became a YouTube channel and the second largest basketball training channel on the platform. It was fun because once I got into the content space, I fell more in love with the content creation and digital content side of the equation; rather than the actual basketball coaching, training, and teaching.
Stephanie Tharpe: What is the origin story of your partnership?
Deron Guidrey: I met Collin back in 2012 or 2013. He was a big up and coming YouTuber. I reached out to talk with him about how I could bring some advertising dollars to his media company, and that is how we initially forged a business relationship.
The Perfect Storm
On March 11th, 2020, Utah Jazz player (big man Rudy Gobert) tested positive for COVID-19, causing the game to be called and the suspension of the NBA season. Like many industries, the COVID-19 pandemic had a lasting effect on The sports and entertainment network. For PlayersTV, it was the perfect storm to pivot and execute.
Stephanie Tharpe: How were you able to reorganize during the pandemic? Were there any setbacks?
Deron Guidrey: We conceived the idea of PlayersTV around 2018. We were on the road, pitching to athletes in hotel rooms, etc. We announced the launch in February 2020 during the NBA All-Star event in Chicago, with plans for an official launch in March. On March 11th, one of our athlete partners, Chris Paul, was playing against the Utah Jazz when the game was abruptly shut down. We were just eight days away from our launch, so we had to adapt quickly. We were in LA attending investor meetings when the entire world shut down. We were striving to build something special, but it felt like the pandemic was robbing us of our opportunities. However, with live sports coming to a halt and no games on TV, we could pivot our approach. A competent business leader should uncover the beauty in the struggle and identify the potential pivots within.
Collin Castellaw: There were some positives to launching during that tumultuous time. It was a really hard time for everybody. But for us, it helped to get a more captive audience of athletes. We had a great opportunity where we started pitching our butts off on Zoom. We were able to get a lot of traction from the athletes we brought to the table during that period. It did take a lot of focus, grit, and a little bit of a pivot from a business perspective.
At the time, we saw companies go into content hustle mode. They were trying to figure out content to fill this dead air. They were creating what we call ” Zoom Content.” We decided not to waste time and money creating subpar content. Instead, we hyper focused on the distribution side of the business and built the foundation we needed to be successful long term. That contributed to our success coming out of that tough time.
Getting Down To Business
Stephanie Tharpe: Collin, How were you able to transfer your skills of growing an organic audience to growing PlayersTV?
Collin Castellaw: when it comes down to audience building in general, right, just as a whole, from a high level point of view, it comes down to personality and connection. So for somebody like me from Idaho and just some random basketball coach trying to teach kids how to shoot it takes a while to build up and build that trust. But when you’re working with the biggest athletes and some of the most recognizable personal brands in the world, it’s a lot easier. What’s so exciting about this whole experience was that athletes are just incredibly interesting people! A lot of them are kind, philanthropic, funny and have life experiences that connect with an audience in a bunch of different ways.
Our job at PlayersTV isn’t necessarily to create world changing content but to bring these athlete’s personalities to life. So that through their content, they can connect with their fans. I’ve been absolutely blown away by how great everybody is on camera. Athletes are in a completely different space than they were maybe twenty or thirty years ago. And from a media perspective, extremely polished. So it hasn’t been that hard of a lift; it’s just been a matter of putting down the right strategy and kind of, you know, going after it.
Stephanie Tharpe: Deron, what was your funding strategy?
Deron Guidrey: We didn’t want to bring in outside VC money. We didn’t want to lose the integrity of what we’re trying to build here. When you bring in outside capital, you could potentially lose your identity as a founder, the mission and the story of what the business is supposed to be. We didn’t want to go that route, ultimately risking becoming over leveraged. PlayersTV is the player’s company, and they also have input on how we scale the business. I’m glad we stood our ground and gave the power back to the athletes. This is their business and their stories.
Stephanie Tharpe: Are there any new distribution deals coming down the pipeline?
Collin Castellaw: We just announced our distribution partnership with Amazon Prime Video. That’s a marquee partnership, and we’ll do some incredible stuff. As far as content, we’ve got 50 Plus athletes as investors and partners, and with that comes contractual content hours. We have coffers of content and content opportunities.
One cool thing is we’ve been very strategic in the athletes we reached out to and organically brought to the table. Most of them come with a bunch of ideas and things they want to create and put their creative spin on. PlayersTV has already created seven original series working with thirty plus athletes. In 2024 you should see a massive ramp up of content.
Stephanie Tharpe: Why did you go with distribution partnerships and not direct to consumers initially?
Deron Guidrey: Distribution is vital. We are a distributor of content. Athletes are creating so much content out there with podcasts, shows and documentaries. They need a home for it to be seen and live, and that’s where Playerstv comes in. The most common way of consuming media is on youtube or Instagram, but the TV experience is still here! Our focus is building Players TV as a TV network, then next will expand to direct to consumers and on demand.
Distribution is essential because it unlocks opportunities like monetizing your content and advertising revenue for our athlete partners. Being able to bring in advertisers in a super authentic integrative way is one of the reasons why athletes are working with PlayersTV.
Collin Castellaw: From a monetization standpoint, two main factors essentially tell you how much you can monetize content for. The first is how many eyeballs are going to get on it. And the second is what sort of brand value will it bring? So Deron and I noticed this bottleneck from a distribution perspective. There’s plenty of great stuff being created in the sports media landscape. But it always came back to the question of; where was it going to live. So we developed our distribution model around taking the content and diversifying how we monetize and get eyeballs on it. An athlete makes a show or a piece of content; then, we put it in a bunch of different areas and places to maximize viewers and advertisement. That’s really at the crux of why distribution is so important. I always like to say; it doesn’t matter if you bake the best apple pie in the world if nobody ever gets to taste it.
PlayersTV is funded by athlete partners such as Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony, Kyrie Irving, Deandre Jordan, Will Allen, Russell Wilson and more. In September, PlayersTV will launch its direct to consumer platform.
Read the full article here