Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have "signed up to use a social-media platform called Unscriptd, which aims to connect athletes to fans directly via short videos," according to the AP. Andre Agassi and former Nike execs are part of the group leading Unscriptd, which is formally being launched "after a year of testing." Agassi said, "The truth is, I think there's an insatiable marketplace out there." Athletes "use their mobile phones to shoot and self-publish videos of up to two minutes that are posted to their feeds on sites such as Facebook and Twitter and collected at the project's self-titled website." Agassi: "We're not trying to get fans to go somewhere. We're coming to them where they are with direct athlete-to-fan engagement" (AP, 1/20). The athlete media company is already working with a roster of more than 30 top-tier athletes with a combined social media following exceeding 500 million fans, including the world's most followed athlete, Ronaldo, plus other athletes spanning the world of sport including footballers Messi and Gerard Pique; surf champion Stephanie Gilmore; Gold Medalists Mo Farah and Justin Gatlin; and captain of the India national cricket team Virat Kohli among over 30 others. Unscriptd's platform was specifically designed and built for elite athletes based on their personal insight and is simple and easy to use. Unscriptd CEO Brent Scrimshaw said, "The feedback from sports fans around the world to Unscriptd's unfiltered video and distributed media model has been outstanding." Unscriptd is led by a global team with deep roots at Nike. The company was founded by Scrimshaw, Ben Crowe, formerly Nike's Asia Pacific director of sports marketing, and Todd Deacon, who is widely credited as Asia's leading sports researcher (Unscriptd).
