A&M players to get $10K for fan site interview

[sporty]

We are in trouble if this becomes a thing for fan sites, especially if athletes are allowed to now decline interview requests.

Fan site will pay A&M players $10K for interviews

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

This thread being the most recent thread on the J board, right ahead of The Way It Was, is some kind of timing.

 

[LanceyHoward]

I think A@M is leading college athletics into the future. Let's say that you are the rights holder for a major college team. You have an interest in getting the best players to go to your media property. So you start paying for players to endorse watching the programming in television. How much is a five star recruit worth to, for example, the Kansas Basketball Network?

 

[Mr. X]

I'd love to know what the Texas A&M sports information director thinks about this.

 

[wicked]

I’d love to know where this site is getting the money. I remember that quite a few were mom-and-pop shops. Must be part of Rivals or whatever it’s called anymore.

 

[PaperClip529]

I’d love to know where this site is getting the money. I remember that quite a few were mom-and-pop shops. Must be part of Rivals or whatever it’s called anymore.

I think that headline is a little misleading. I understood this story as a booster with a business paying that 10K. The fan site is just serving as the middle man and putting together the wink-wink interviews. I’d imagine that the fan site either is also getting paid or has an existing relationship with this booster but I don’t know that for sure.

I am not too worried about this becoming a problem for journalists who cover college football.

 

[Matt Stephens]

FWIW, there are media outlets that are starting to pay athletes for "exclusive" content. I've one of the large recruiting site affiliates announce they're doing it, along with a popular sub-only Colorado sports blog (along with "exclusive merch") and I swear I saw a major metro announce an exclusive deal with select players of a major college team but when I went back last night looking for a copy of the announcement/tweets regarding it, I couldn't find any and I feel like I'm losing my mind. If I find it, I'll share. Just don't want to name the place and then realize I had made it all up in a dream.

 

[sgreenwell]

I’d love to know where this site is getting the money. I remember that quite a few were mom-and-pop shops. Must be part of Rivals or whatever it’s called anymore.

I'm a mod on a message board for my alma mater's basketball team. Every couple of years, we'll do a fundraising drive to pay for hosting and what not, and raise a couple hundred. But from that, we have emails from plenty of our users, and *know* that plenty of them have million dollar homes and own businesses and what not. So yeah, I imagine it could easily serve as a middleman of some sorts, as opposed to this being "honest" revenue generated from advertising.

 

[Della9250]

I’d love to know where this site is getting the money. I remember that quite a few were mom-and-pop shops. Must be part of Rivals or whatever it’s called anymore.

Basic: $4.75/month or $50.00/year

Premium: $12.99/month or $140.00/year

Varsity: $25.00/month or $275.00/year

A quick search got me this: As of 2013, there were over 9,500 paying subscribers

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

A quick search no doubt attached to any young collegian in the early Aughts, because back then TexAgs was she ****.

 

[MeanGreenATO]

I'm pretty familiar with TexAgs and how they operate. For years they don't tout themselves as a media outlet, but they get the best access in a North Korea-like atmosphere. They also are among the profitable content sites in all of college football.

From a media standpoint, this isn't a big deal aside from TexAgs cementing its status as a non-journalism outlet.

 

[sporty]

Basic: $4.75/month or $50.00/year

Premium: $12.99/month or $140.00/year

Varsity: $25.00/month or $275.00/year

A quick search got me this: As of 2013, there were over 9,500 paying subscribers

 

[sporty]

That was nearly 10 years ago. I'm sure his numbers are much now. But basically an advertiser is footing the bill for this exclusive content.

 

[sporty]

I'm pretty familiar with TexAgs and how they operate. For years they don't tout themselves as a media outlet, but they get the best access in a North Korea-like atmosphere. They also are among the profitable content sites in all of college football.

From a media standpoint, this isn't a big deal aside from TexAgs cementing its status as a non-journalism outlet.

 

[sporty]

Your response reminds so much of what is wrong with journalism today. Everybody is a journalist these days, not just people who work for traditional news gathering companies. The reading or clicking audience determines who is practicing journalism by who they read. I've known Lucci for years and competed against him and he loves getting information out first. That's why subscriptions are through the roof. Trust me this is a threat, especially if kids decide to stop talking unless they are paid.

 

[ondeadline]

Not all Rivals or other school-focused sites can fairly be called "fan sites." Some have excellent beat reporters, break news and provide impartial coverage. I know nothing about this particular site, so I can't say whether the "fan site" label is fair in this case.

 

[OscarMadison]

Your response reminds so much of what is wrong with journalism today. Everybody is a journalist these days, not just people who work for traditional news gathering companies. The reading or clicking audience determines who is practicing journalism by who they read. I've known Lucci for years and competed against him and he loves getting information out first. That's why subscriptions are through the roof. Trust me this is a threat, especially if kids decide to stop talking unless they are paid.

This is why I referred to myself and people like me as "media." Journalism is a discipline-specific field with mores, theory, and standards to be met.

 

[Col. Nathan R. Jessup]

I'm conflicted.

As a journalist, I don't like this.

As a fan and content consumer, I love it.

Professional journalists continue to produce the best written content about sports. However, on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and other places where video is the top medium, fan accounts and dreaming-they-make-it-big amateurs are making engaging and very high-quality content. Look at Hayes Fawcett, for example, an excellent graphic designer who obviously connects with the top players in college football. If he were to pay Spencer Rattler $20,000 to spend the day with him, shooting video and asking questions the whole time — chances are, it'd benefit both parties. More credibility for Fawcett, more money for Rattler, more exposure for both parties, and more content for fans. I understand that in a perfect world no money would need to be exchanged for this sort of content, but the whole landscape is changing.

 

[MeanGreenATO]

Your response reminds so much of what is wrong with journalism today. Everybody is a journalist these days, not just people who work for traditional news gathering companies. The reading or clicking audience determines who is practicing journalism by who they read. I've known Lucci for years and competed against him and he loves getting information out first. That's why subscriptions are through the roof. Trust me this is a threat, especially if kids decide to stop talking unless they are paid.

1. It's *Liucci
2. I think even he'll tell you he's not a traditional journalist
3. I'll start getting concerned when athletes who are off-limits to traditional media start speaking exclusively to TexAgs.
4. Access is already so bad at places like A&M that TA becoming the middleman for bagmen isn't going to have a massive impact on traditional outlets.

 

[PaperClip529]

Your response reminds so much of what is wrong with journalism today. Everybody is a journalist these days, not just people who work for traditional news gathering companies. The reading or clicking audience determines who is practicing journalism by who they read. I've known Lucci for years and competed against him and he loves getting information out first. That's why subscriptions are through the roof. Trust me this is a threat, especially if kids decide to stop talking unless they are paid.

I think you are overblowing this. All of the athletes may want to get paid for media appearances, but not all of them will. There will always be someone available to talk. I would also bet that a bunch of "exclusive" media deals would conflict with the branding done by the university and other NIL deals that these athletes have. Even the athletes with media deals in the pros still show up to chat with the tradition outlets.