Russell Westbrook's Newsletter Blueprint That's Disrupting ESPN

Hey ,

Welcome to edition 15 of The Sports Stack, and welcome to a lot of our new subscribers - it’s great to continue building out the community.

This week, we are exploring how direct relationships are reshaping the sports business. Russell Westbrook has just demonstrated that a simple newsletter can outmanoeuvre ESPN's breaking news machine, while new AI tools are democratising competitive intelligence that previously cost hundreds of thousands.

In this edition of The Sports Stack, we’ll be covering:

• The Westbrook Blueprint: How Athletes Are Bypassing Media to Own Their Narrative

• Perplexity Labs - The $100,000 analyst in your pocket.

• Investment, media rights and partnership round-up

• Quick hits and updates

📧 The Westbrook Blueprint: How Athletes Are Bypassing Media to Own Their Narrative

Russell Westbrook just demonstrated the most powerful fan engagement technology of 2025, and it's not an app, AR experience, or AI chatbot. It's a simple newsletter that delivered breaking news to his most loyal fans before ESPN even knew about it.

Last week, Russell Westbrook broke the norms, sharing an important injury update not with the media or through socials but directly with his fans through his newsletter. Together with Beehiiv, Russell Westbrook has launched ‘Word of Westbrook’, and it’s a really interesting new way athletes can connect directly with their most loyal fans.

The Key Details: 

• The newsletter was launched in March 2025, with Westbrook announcing it via social media and LinkedIn.

• The newsletter primarily centres on Westbrook’s analysis and commentary about the fashion industry, reflecting his longstanding interest and influence in fashion.

• ‘Word of Westbrook’ is designed to give fans a direct and authentic connection with Westbrook, bypassing traditional media and social media’s limitations. It offers exclusive content and behind-the-scenes insights directly.

• Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any details on the number of subscribers, but perhaps Tyler Denk will share that if we continue to ask. 👀 

Westbrook shared the announcement via his newsletter, and within minutes, ESPN and other news outlets had picked up the news. However, his loyal subscribers were the first to know, gaining exclusive updates on his personal life.

As a newsletter creator, it’s so cool to see the source on the ESPN graphics being his ‘Word of Westbrook’ newsletter. 

Why Newsletters Could Work for Athletes?

Athletes being able to communicate directly with their fans is not new, but it’s typically done through video on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. To me, it feels like written content is just a little more personal and could become a more common medium for athletes to connect with their fans, like the old school blogging days.

The benefits are clear: 

• Control: No misquotes, no context lost, no editorial spin.

• Intimacy: Direct relationship with fans vs. algorithmic social media reach.

• Monetisation: Owned audience = owned revenue streams if they decide to go that route. 

• Authenticity: Athletes can show personality beyond their sport (like Westbrook's fashion focus).

The Athlete Newsletter Landscape

The athlete newsletter movement is gaining momentum, but it's still in its early stages. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar most likely leads the pack with 224,000 subscribers on Substack (from the numbers I could find), proving there's a real appetite for athlete-driven content beyond traditional mediums. His newsletter tackles everything from politics to pop culture, demonstrating how retired athletes can leverage their platform for broader cultural commentary.

The active player cohort is small but growing fast. Kyle Kuzma's "Kuz Kontrol" focuses on the realities of NBA life and fashion influence, while Sloane Stephens uses "Off-Court" to share what matters beyond tennis.

Here’s an overview of some of the sports stars who are on Beehiiv: https://www.beehiiv.com/beehiiv-for/sports 

The opportunity is massive. With thousands of professional athletes in major leagues, we're looking at less than 0.1% adoption rate. Compare this to the explosion of athlete podcasts, video channels, and social media, and you'll see that they represent untapped territory. 

It’s important, however, to recognise that distribution is equally vital, so utilising the existing social platforms to drive newsletter acquisition will remain key for athletes. 

The Business Opportunity

Unlike traditional newsletter creators, I believe that athletes should approach a newsletter strategy without initially considering monetisation, and some may never wish to consider it.

Athletes should think of newsletters as a way to connect with their fans first, in a direct and intimate way. However, as we’re a sports business newsletter, it’s worth discussing the monetisation opportunities that could be available. 

• Revenue potential through subscriptions, sponsorships, and merchandise - with an engaged and personal audience, athletes can promote their own merchandise or establish a subscription model for access to behind-the-scenes content, continuing the trend of athletes becoming media powerhouses. 

• Partnership opportunities with teams and brands - this is a really interesting one. Athletes, along with the clubs they represent, can utilise their newsletter audiences to promote games and offer exclusive ticket pricing, creating new marketing channels and revenue opportunities for both the athlete and the club. The future of athlete contracts could change to include marketing rights & revenue models between clubs to support this approach.

• Data ownership - athletes building first-party databases to help leverage stronger partnerships directly or combining team CRM with athlete subscriber insights for hyper-targeted campaigns.

What’s next? 

• More athletes building direct connections with their audiences through newsletters. 

• Exclusive updates and insights shared directly to their audiences before any other major outlet. 

• Teams negotiating newsletter clauses in player contracts as a channel for distribution and rights. 

• Traditional media adapting their sourcing strategies - ESPN and others monitoring athlete newsletters as primary news sources rather than breaking stories themselves.

• Retired athletes monetising their expertise - following Kareem's model to build subscription-based analysis and commentary businesses

🚀 Perplexity Labs - The $100,000 analyst in your pocket.

What is it? 

• Labs transforms Perplexity from a search engine into a complete project execution platform, performing 10+ minutes of autonomous work to create reports, spreadsheets, dashboards, and interactive web apps. 

• All files created during a Labs project, including code, images, charts, and datasets, are organised in an Assets tab for easy viewing and download.

• The output is a fully clickable and interactive UI that you can use - it’s also possible to download the code and use it to create a deployable application.

• Available to $20/month Pro subscribers with 50 queries monthly, Labs combines deep web browsing, code execution, and visual creation tools to deliver what would previously require coordination across multiple specialists.

How do you use it?

Some of the use cases have been incredible:

• Reddit forum collating some of the best use cases

• Datacamp blog with other visualisation examples

I haven’t found many great sports examples, so I thought I’d create my own and share it to demonstrate the power of labs. I recommend gaining access and experimenting with it. I’ve dropped my referral code at the end of the chapter if you’d like some discount on a subscription.

I created a prompt (see example below) to help me build an overview of all the major European football leagues as an experiment. Some of the insights this data provided:

• La Liga has a higher digital maturity score than the Premier League, driven by a higher engagement rate, a higher growth rate, and a higher total number of followers. (The data is collected from over 60 sources, but it’s always good to validate it.)

• There are some clear strategic recommendations for all leagues, including Serie A, which is recommended to improve its Youth Engagement and Marketing Efficiency.

The result is amazing. After about 10 minutes of working in the background, here is the output.

VIDEO Walkthrough 👇️ 

🎁 P.S. Here’s my referral code for Perplexity if you want $10 off your subscription: https://perplexity.ai/pro?referral_code=J3WOLM96

🤑 Investment, sponsorship and media rights round-ups: 

LA28 x Snowflake 

Snowflake will serve as the Official Data Collaboration Provider for the LA28 Olympic & Paralympic Games, centralising and managing critical data, such as athlete training, health, and nutrition information, while enabling personalised fan engagement and supporting event planning for Team USA and LA28. 

🏌️ SAP Worldwide Partner for Ryder Cup 

SAP has become a Worldwide Partner of the Ryder Cup for the 2025 and 2027 matches, providing advanced data and customer engagement technologies to enhance fan experiences and drive personalised, connected engagement for millions of golf fans globally. 

I’ve been involved with this deal, and it’s going to be a really exciting partnership and technology project. It was great to be in Madrid last week to see Paul McGinley announce the partnership on stage, with Europe’s most valuable technology company (and company). 

⛵️ SailGP Italian Team + Anne Hathaway

Oscar winner Anne Hathaway joined a female-led consortium that acquired the Red Bull Italy SailGP Team in May 2025, marking the first women-led ownership group in the global sailing championship and highlighting SailGP's growing commercial appeal with team valuations now exceeding $50 million. 

🤑 Kings League and SURJ sports investment

SURJ Sports Investment, backed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, partnered with Gerard Piqué's Kings League in May 2025 to launch Kings League MENA, marking the seventh global expansion of the viral seven-a-side football format that generated over 7 billion social media impressions and 400 million engagements in 2024 

📺️ YouTuber acquires the rights to Frency Rugby.

We knew that when Cristiano Ronaldo streamed the Padel World Championships on his YouTube channel, this might signal a new way of thinking about streaming and rights on YouTube, and this story caught my eye. Tim Cocker of EggChasers Rugby (139,000 YouTube subscribers) became the first YouTuber to officially acquire professional rugby streaming rights, securing broadcast rights in the UK and Ireland for France's Pro D2 league. The landmark deal brings 35 fixtures next season to the FR-UK Rugby YouTube channel completely free-to-air.

🗞️ Quick Hits & Updates:

🤖 Satisfi Labs hires Dima Galat as head of AI to build agent-to-agent communication capabilities and multi-modal fan experiences, allowing sports teams to leverage nine years of specialized AI tools (including Ticketmaster integrations and live stat feeds) rather than building conversational AI systems from scratch—part of a growth push that's added 50+ sports teams in the past year per SBJ.

🎾 The French Open remains the lone holdout against electronic line-calling as Wimbledon joins the Australian and U.S. Opens in adopting automated systems, with players like Djokovic and Gauff advocating for technology over tradition, leading to the bizarre spectacle of players now using smartphones to photograph ball marks in disputes with human officials.

🌯 Cobra Golf partners with Chipotle for a burrito-themed driver head cover featuring PGA Tour pro Max Homa at the Memorial Tournament, highlighting golf's shift toward bold, entertainment-focused collaborations that appeal to younger audiences, with 250 free covers being given away via Homa's Instagram.

Thanks for reading,
Mark