I’ve been doing this long enough to remember when brands were panicking because they didn’t have a MySpace strategy. In fact, we were working on brand strategies for MySpace when Facebook started taking off and suddenly everyone needed a Facebook strategy instead. Then it was Twitter. Then Instagram. Now it’s TikTok, and tomorrow it will be live selling or something we haven’t heard of yet.
I’ve spent more than twenty years in digital marketing and managed more than $100 million in digital advertising, so I’ve seen enough of these cycles to know that the names of the platforms will keep changing. The larger lesson has never changed with them.
I recently read an article about how athletes are redefining sports fandom through TikTok, and the data behind it made sense. Fans want more than game highlights and postgame interviews. They want access to the person, the process, the humor, the workouts, the family, and the moments that never make it to television. Social media has allowed athletes to communicate directly with fans instead of relying entirely on leagues, networks, reporters, and traditional media to define who they are.
That shift is important, especially for athletes who have spent years watching other people shape their public identities. Today, an athlete can tell his own story, show his own personality, and build a massive audience without waiting for permission from anyone else. That is real power, and I think more athletes should use it.
The mistake is believing that audience belongs to them.
It doesn’t.
An athlete may have five million followers on Instagram or TikTok, but those followers still live inside someone else’s business. The platform controls the algorithm, the reach, the rules, and ultimately the account itself. It can reduce distribution, change the terms, suspend access, or disappear altogether. Anyone who spent years building an audience on MySpace, Vine, or any of the other platforms that lost relevance understands how quickly rented attention can evaporate.
I’ve had some version of this conversation with athletes and their representatives more times than I want to admit. One in particular has stuck with me. I was sitting with the representatives of a famous international football (soccer) player. Their team is smart, sophisticated, and very good at what they do. The athlete has nearly 100 million followers across social media.
I asked them a simple question.
How many of those people can you reach without opening Instagram, TikTok, X, or another social platform?
Their response was basically, “What do you mean? How else would we reach them?”
That’s the problem.
Nearly 100 million people were following this athlete, but if those platforms disappeared tomorrow, there was no meaningful infrastructure for reaching them directly. No owned audience of comparable scale. No direct distribution channel. The audience was enormous, but access to it was rented.
That is why I keep telling athletes and their teams that building a large social following is only the first step. The real objective should be converting some of that attention into an audience they actually own. Email addresses. Phone numbers. Members. Subscribers. Customers. Purchasing behavior. A CRM filled with people who have raised their hands and said they want to hear from you.
Those things may not feel as exciting as another million Instagram followers, but they are actual business assets.
And the difference becomes significant very quickly. An athlete with five million social followers has tremendous reach. But an athlete with five million followers, 200,000 opted-in fans, 75,000 text subscribers, and purchasing data on 10,000 customers has something fundamentally different.
That athlete has enterprise value.
The followers create visibility. The owned audience creates infrastructure. It gives the athlete the ability to launch apparel, sell tickets, distribute content, build memberships, support causes, introduce products, create events, and eventually build businesses without starting from zero every time.
That is the part I think gets lost when we talk about athletes as brands. The smartest athletes are not simply players with large social media accounts. They have the opportunity to become media companies and operating businesses with direct access to millions of potential customers. Their audiences can support businesses and communities long after their playing careers end, but only if they convert some of that visibility into something they control.
None of this means athletes should stop using TikTok, Instagram, X, or whatever platform comes next. Quite the opposite. They should use them aggressively. Social media remains one of the most efficient ways ever created to gain attention, introduce people to a personality, and create relevance.
But Instagram’s job isn’t to build an athlete’s business. Instagram’s job is to build Instagram’s business. There’s nothing wrong with that. The mistake is building your entire business as though their interests and yours are the same.
I think about it as rented land.
There’s nothing wrong with building on rented land. Some of the most valuable distribution in the world exists there. I just wouldn’t build my entire community there. Use that land to attract people, create attention, and build relevance, but at the same time, plant a stake somewhere that is meaningfully yours.
Build the website. Build the database. Build the membership. Build the CRM. Learn who your fans/customers are, what they care about, what they buy, and how they engage. Give the people who really care about you a reason to move from follower to subscriber, member, or customer.
I’ve watched enough technology companies rise and fall to know there will always be another platform. TikTok will not be the final evolution of social media any more than MySpace was. The features will change, the audience will move, and the algorithms will continue to decide who gets seen. Athletes who understand that will use those platforms without becoming dependent on them.
The opportunity is much bigger than gaining followers. Athletes now have the ability to control their own narratives, build communities around their interests, and create businesses that extend far beyond sports.
But 98 million followers and no way to reach them without asking someone else for access is still 98 million people standing on somebody else’s land.
Use their land.
Just make sure you’re building your own at the same time.
Attention is rented. Audience is owned. Build accordingly. -OG
