According to Opendorse, a company that specializes in executing and monetizing digital and social media campaigns for athletes, a tweet from LeBron James about your product has a media value of about $140k, i.e. $1,000 per character.
For those who do not know LeBron, he plays professional Basketball for the Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The 30 year old has 23.2 million followers on Twitter.
According to the CEO of Opendorse Blake Lawrence, “We’re basically saying that the value of one LeBron tweet is worth $140,000 and with that, you will reach 23 million people. It would cost you five times more to reach that many people with a TV ad.”
Opendorse figures out how much a particular tweet, Facebook or Instagram post is worth by determining a celebrity’s true reach, activity, and quality and overall level of engagement of their audience of followers.
According to ESPN, rounding out the top five athletes whose single tweet would provide a company’s product or service the most value are Kevin Durant ($66,553), Kobe Bryant ($42,389), Floyd Mayweather ($34,924) and Dwight Howard ($34,290).
Despite the big numbers, Blake Lawrence said most companies pay athletes between $1,000 and $2,500 for a single tweet. The most his company has sold a one-off tweet for was for $20,000 during last year’s NFL playoffs when a New England Patriots player, who he said he can’t disclose, took the bounty.
I wonder what the likes of Wizkid – Nigeria (@wizdayo) with 1.67 m twitter followers, Caspar Lee – South Africa (@Caspar_Lee) with 2.97m will command.
