We enter the summer movie season this weekend, one in which the back to the theater with limited streaming at launch plan seems to be growing. Case in point is “Top Gun: Maverick,” which will hopefully lead the return to the coffers of massive dollars into the studios who have struggled to find their way since The Pandemic began. While the streaming services push forward, retrench and figure out the best path forward to profitability, the entertainment world watches carefully to see if peoples habits of returning to theaters are being restored.
It was with that in mind that I read last weekend’s New York Times piece by Nicole Sterling on Tom Cruise and the Hollywood star making industry with great interest, because it holds so many juxtapositions for what makes and continues to make sports the only “must watch live” property still coming to a screen or a device near you. One thing that really stood out was the ability to make stars out of individuals, and how “franchises,” the Hollywood kind…from Marvel to Bond…are now the driver vs. the box office star.
Sports for the most part, at least in North America at the highest level, is more and more the opposite.
The segment that stood out was this..
In Hollywood, stardom has an elastic definition. There are screen legends who are not box office stars. A global movie star is someone whose name is the draw. They have broad appeal, transcending language, international borders and generational differences. In short, they can get people of all ages into theaters around the world by virtue of their screen personas.
They are the kind of stars — like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone — that box office blockbusters were built around for decades.
And they are the kind of stars who no longer really exist. Actors like Dwayne Johnson, Zendaya, Tom Holland, Ryan Reynolds and Chris Pratt are ultra successful but they are also either closely tied to a specific franchise or superhero film or have yet to prove that multigenerational appeal.
Now, it’s the characters that count. Three actors have portrayed Spider-Man and six have donned the Batman cowl for the big screen. Audiences have shown up for all of them. The Avengers may unite to huge box office returns but how much does it matter who’s wearing the tights?
Think about that for a moment. There was a time, a long time, when team sports was so tribal in the U.S. and Canada that people root, spent, and passionately followed their hometown team ad nauseum. Athletes stayed in one place, controlled by owners, and you lived and died with your geographic team for the most part. It was who you saw, you read about, and you cared about. Maybe once in a while you had transcendence…Babe Ruth or Wilt Chamberlain or even Jim Thorpe…but in team sports you put the dollars into the hometown franchise.
That has been eroding for decades, starting with free agency, and the birth of social media gave us even more of a reason to follow and engage with individuals on and off the court, the ice or the field, because of the content we could grab on to. Nowadays those attending games, while still rooting for the home team, will take even more interest, and teams will fill distressed seats, because of the individual star power. Come see AARON JUDGE and the Yankees, STEPH CURRY and the Warriors, MEGHAN RAPINOE and the Reign, SUE BIRD and the Storm. Athletes followings are global, and as such they have become franchises un to themselves. While Hollywood doesn’t worry as much about who is in the Batman or Catwoman suit, team sports in North America does more than ever.
You look to team marketing campaigns, and with few exceptions, ticket sales programs are driven by the star power. The Yankees, maybe the Red Sox and the Cubs, maybe the Maple Leafs or the Knicks, still put the majority of the emphasis in the team brand and building those stars. Most other markets, it is much more WHO is coming to town to fill a void as much as who is in our local “Batman” suit. That idea has also evolved internationally. Back when the NBA first went to expand their borders abroad, the emphasis was on the logos and the marks as much as the stars…the Lakers and the Celtics were coming to Paris or Japan vs the individual. That also evolved with The Dream Team and the ability for athletes, led by Michael Jordan at first, to become their own value proposition outside of team. We don’t care what team Yao Ming plays for, we want to see him, or Tracy McGrady or Kobe…or Jeremy Lin or Dwayne Wade. The athlete brand is now transcendent, and in some cases even more valuable than “The Franchise.”
Now maybe this juxtaposition is cyclical, and that Hollywood will find more and more breakout stars transcending just the typecast roles, as we see now with Tom Cruise. Maybe the franchise is more manageable and marketable, and the movement of stars into and out of those roles makes the franchise more elastic over time. After all, like with athletes, having again stars playing young heroes can be a bit of an issue, even with AR and VR and the magic of cameras. You also can’t age well when you are live in athletics, father time catches up with all.
So which is better, to market the franchise or to grow the individual? The answer is probably a little of both, but one thing is fairly certain, the growth and value of the individual athlete in a world where stars transcend the franchise from where they came is gone forever. All the aspects of growing an individual brand, be it NIL, social media, or her business interests are here to stay.
The franchise in sports is individual as much as team, in Hollywood, it’s the opposite. Let’s hope both models keep growing.
