*LeBron James and his longtime business partner Maverick Carter have secured $100 million in funding to form a new company with an unapologetically Black agenda.
The duo have consolidated their trio of media companies into a single entity called SpringHill Co.
According to Footwear News, the company “received backing from investors that include financial services firm Guggenheim Partners LLC, News Corp. media executive Elisabeth Murdoch, the University of California’s UC Investments and entrepreneur Jason Stein’s SC.Holdings,” the outlet writes.
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It’s about the people and the process. I’m proud to have been a part of this process for the last 5 years with @uninterrupted @SpringHillEnt and Robot and proud to continue leading that process as The SpringHill Company. #MoreThan ?? pic.twitter.com/jv2eiIetqj
— Maverick Carter (@mavcarter) June 25, 2020
Here’s more from Bloomberg.com:
SpringHill is named for the Akron apartment complex where James and his mom moved when he was in sixth grade. It consolidates the Robot Co., a marketing agency, with two other businesses.
The first, SpringHill Entertainment, is behind The Wall, a game show on NBC, and the movie Space Jam: A New Legacy, which stars James and is scheduled to be released next year.
The second, Uninterrupted LLC, produces The Shop: Uninterrupted—an HBO talk show featuring James, Carter, and other Black A-list celebrities—as well as Kneading Dough, an online partnership with JPMorgan Chase & Co., in which athletes talk about money to promote financial literacy.
“When we talk about storytelling, we want to be able to hit home, to hit a lot of homes where they feel like they can be a part of that story,” James said in an interview with Bloomberg. “And they feel like, ‘Oh, you know what? I can relate to that.’”
In a February interview James and Carter said SpringHill is a platform to give Black content creators the creative control that’s been long overdue, according to the report.
Carter described the company as a “house of brands.”
“To my brothers and sisters in sports and arts,” James recently wrote in an Instagram post, “we have incredible influence in our community. We need to use this moment to demand change… The easiest way to keep us from changing anything is to keep us from voting.”
