NBA: LeBron James is Still King of Twitter Ad Value

Lest you keep believing you can get Kevin Durant or LeBron James to plug your company’s latest goods and services on Twitter simply in exchange for some dexterous social media flattery, think again. Per a report from ESPN’s Darren Rovell, getting a top tier athlete to endorse your product on Twitter can be a costly enterprise, though—comparative to the advertising value of the tweet—still a pretty good deal:

"Opendorse, a company that specializes in executing and monetizing digital and social media campaigns for athletes, says a tweet from James, who has 23.2 million followers, has the highest value of any U.S. athlete. Each tweet from James has a media value of $139,474, the company said.“We’re basically saying that the value of one LeBron tweet is worth $140,000,” said Opendorse CEO Blake Lawrence. “And with that, you will reach 23 million people. It would cost you five times more to reach that many people with a TV ad.”Lawrence’s company figures out how much a particular tweet, Facebook or Instagram post is worth by determining a celebrity’s true reach, activity, and quality and overall level of engagement of their audience of followers."

For the math (or headline) averse, that tidy sum averages out to about $1,000 per character. For all of the “Bill Gates will make $10,000 by the end of this sentence” mythology swirling around elementary school playgrounds, it’s refreshing to hear that 7-year-old me wasn’t totally taken for a ride in believing that such lofty sums were, in fact, possible for America’s highest earners.

Though to be fair, it’s not all swan dives into mountains of cash for the technologically-inclined modern professional athlete. In yet another instance of NBA players taking a steep discount in proportion to what their services are seemingly worth, Opendorse goes on to state that, except for the most elite athletes, most will churn out 140 character blurbs for the low, low cost of around $1,000 (or possibly even less):

"Despite the big numbers, Lawrence said most companies pay athletes between $1,000 and $2,500 for a single tweet.[…]“I think a lot of companies think they can’t get a star athlete for less than $100,000,” Lawrence said. “You can get [Baltimore Ravens quarterback] Joe Flacco to tweet about your company for less than $1,000 right now.”"

While the relative pittance of Twitter-related advertising deals can’t match the heft and popular appeal of the gilded “Sneaker Wars” that net stars like James Harden hundreds of millions of dollars, they don’t always pay relative peanuts either.

A 2011 article in Men’s Journal detailed how mega stars like Shaquille O’Neal can earn millions based on their enormous Twitter followings and the ability to engage with fans through humor and other, less heavy-handed forms of advertising. Aside from traditional, mundane avenues of income like “contracts” for “playing basketball”, if an NBA star plays his cards right, something as nonsensical as shoveling ungodly amounts of cookies down his gullet could net a financial windfall of millions of dollars:

"“I never say ‘Go buy this’ on my Twitter,” says Shaq, explaining how his approach to social media can work for corporate America. “I make people laugh – I inspire people. I have a deal with Oreos. I do a shout-out, saying, ‘I’m eating Oreos. How many can I eat in 15 seconds?’ And that makes you laugh – you talk about Oreos, and then 10 percent of the four million people go buy Oreos.” For Shaq, who already makes around $15 million a year on traditional endorsements, those shout-outs are big money and, according to his media strategists, could earn him an extra $1 million to $5 million, thanks to his 7.7 million Twitter minions."

It certainly comes as no surprise that Shaq holds such financial clout on Twitter, as he was one of the earliest and most recognizable NBA players to fully embrace the branding power and reach of social media (he now has 10.3 million followers). This social know-how was on full display in O’Neal’s recent “It’s the middle of the summer so why the hell not” online feud with Scottie Pippen. While Pippen lobbed a few decent salvos the Big Fella’s way, he was no match for a fully engaged Shaq and his social onslaught. You’d typically never think of a 7 foot, 300 pound behemoth like O’Neal as being light on his feet, but there’s really no better way to describe his nimble leveraging of Photoshop and Instagram in thoroughly roasting the former Chicago Bulls great.

Rounding out the remainder of the top five most valuable Tweeters after James are Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, Floyd Mayweather and Dwight Howard. While it’s doubtful that Kobe pays as much attention to lists like this as he does to ESPN’s annual player rankings, it’s probably a good thing the Nebraska-based Opendorse has a several hundred mile buffer between its Lincoln offices and the nearest NBA city, just in case Bryant should feel inclined to exact revenge on the naysayers doubting his social media worth.

Then again, in this day and age, Kobe doesn’t need a basketball arena to unleash his mighty wrath on one more set of haters. Though if anyone other than Kobe himself wanted to finance a Twitter war between Bryant and Opendorse, at an estimated value of $42,389 per tweet, things could get pricey very quickly. Each keystroke could weigh in at over $6,000 a pop—that is, assuming the Mamba stuck to his typically succinct social media methodology in such a theoretical feud.

“Third!?”

Next: NBA Finals History: Ranking The Last 50 Champions

NBA: LeBron James is Still King of Twitter Ad Value

By Jameson Miller | Aug 20, 2015

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