Derek Jeter's The Players' Tribune since launching in October has enabled athletes to "speak in their own words" and has become a "source for first-person athlete accounts that increasingly are making news and driving headlines in a rapacious media environment," according to a cover story by Marisa Guthrie of the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. Jeter said, "It's a trusted place, a place where they can speak freely and not have to worry about how their words are twisted and turned." He then elaborated on his remark, "perhaps remembering he's talking to a journalist." Jeter: "I'm not saying everyone twists and turns. But when they can speak openly and honestly, it's pretty amazing what people talk about." Guthrie writes the media "raised a collective eyebrow when TPT launched, viewing it as an incursion on journalistic turf where hard questions and objectivity rule." That the site's first "big get was a November piece by Tiger Woods excoriating a mocking faux interview by golf writer Dan Jenkins only advanced this narrative." Guthrie notes Venture capital firm NEA in June announced $9.5M in "Series B funding for TPT, marking its first round of venture capital funding." Original investors Legendary Entertainment and its Chair & CEO, Thomas Tull, "have contributed about" $7M. Jeter also "has put his own money into the venture." Many of the athletes on the company's board, including Cavaliers F Kevin Love, Clippers F Paul Pierce and NASCAR driver Danica Patrick, are Excel Sports Management clients, "which early on fueled the perception that TPT was some sort of in-house PR vehicle." But Players' Tribune President and former Excel CMO Jaymee Messler "stresses that the site is 'agency agnostic.'" She said that only about 20% of the athletes who have contributed to the site "are Excel clients." The site has "averaged 1.1 million unique viewers each month from January through June, according to Google analytics, while July is tracking to be TPT's best month yet with 2 million uniques" (HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, 8/7 issue).
