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By the time Aaron Rodgers completes his current contract he will have earned over $450 million. That doesn’t include any endorsements, sponsorship deals or other sources of off-field income.
Despite those massive riches, the New York Jets quarterback is launching a crowdfunding campaign looking to raise $1.235 million (or 3/10 of one percent of his career earnings) for his new business, the Online Sports Database.
If that isn’t infuriating enough, the reasoning behind it, shared by Rodgers’ partner and OSDB CEO Ryan Rottman (best known for his role as Joey Colvin on the TeenNick series Gigantic) told Sports Business Journal, “One thing that struck us … was the loyalty the fans had in the community [of Green Bay], the passion they had for the team, because a lot of them were owners.
“We were all so taken aback by how much that actually built the community around the team, and doing this bridge [round] was something we wanted to use to create within OSDB a community of likeminded sports fans.”
For the record, fans who buy Packers stock receive zero dividends and have zero voting rights. No wonder Rodgers and Rottman love that model of raising money.
“What we are building is the IMDb (Internet Movie Database) of the sports market,” Rottman told Bloomberg. “We want to aggregate all the sites and consolidate them and make a one-stop shop for all things sports.”
So… like Sports-Reference.com then?
Currently, the site has five professional sports but Rottman said it will eventually grow to 40. The website lists information about athletes such as position, height, weight, number and college. Near the bottom of each athlete’s profile are their endorsements, business ventures, philanthropy and their representation’s contact card.
Bonus: In August or September, OSDB will offer an upgraded version of the site to its users… for $9.99 a month.
“One of [Aaron’s] mandates was we are not to be like other editorial websites,” Michael Goldman, executive vice president and partner of OSDB, told Bloomberg. “It was really important to him not to focus on the x’s and o’s but more human interest stories.”
After the crowdsourcing round (AKA people donating money to someone with half a billion dollars) is complete, OSDB will launch a Series A funding round to raise even more free money.
Think I’ll stick with commemorative coins.
— Mark Russell (@Manruss) June 20, 2023