Tom Brady is returning to Gillette Stadium as a seven-time Super Bowl champion. He’s also coming back as the head of a burgeoning business empire.
The TB12 ™ brand was fledging when Brady was with the Patriots. There were two training centers, $160 pliability rollers and $250 cookbooks. Brady even published his own lifestyle book, the aptly titled “TB12 Method.”
But the reach of TB12 ™ has exploded since Brady moved to Tampa Bay. He’s invested in a production company and NFT platform, and this week, announced the launch of his own high-end apparel line: Brady ™. While Brady’s playing career may not end for a couple of more seasons, he’s clearly setting himself for his post-football life.
Brady wants to firmly be in the billionaire class.
“These opportunities are out there for the ultra-elite athletes,” said Sportico’s Kurt Badenhausen, who writes about sports business. “Whether it's LeBron James, Tiger Woods or Roger Federer, these guys have opportunities that run-of-the-mill all stars and MVPs just don't have. The doors open up like nothing else for these guys.”
Up until recently, Brady largely passed on off-field business opportunities for the sake of football. He carefully curated his endorsement deals — Uggs, TAG Heuer, Aston Martin — and kept out of everything else. He started to build TB12 ™ in the middle of last decade, but the brand was all about football.
The best pitch for TB12 ™, and its obscenely expensive products, was Brady’s continued dominance on the gridiron.
But that’s started to shift over the last 24 months. Make no mistake: Brady is still a competitive maniac. He led the Bucs to the Super Bowl last season and leads the NFL in touchdown passes at 44 years old. His second act in Tampa Bay might be the most impressive late-career performance in the history of pro sports. He’s already the best player in football history.
Now Brady™ is looking to dominate in every medium.
Currently, Brady has the second-most social media followers among NFL players (20 million), just behind Odell Beckham Jr. (21 million). Hookit, a company that helps brands maximize sponsorship opportunities via social media, says Brady currently has the second-most valuable social media accounts in sports — just behind Patrick Mahomes.
It’s safe to say that Brady’s move to the Buccaneers further expanded his cultural cache. He gained three times as many followers in his first season with the Bucs than his last season with the Patriots. Even though he was less active on social media in 2020, he generated more engagement on those posts. (Still, Brady has posted 260 times over the last 13 months.)
“He’s active on social. He’s engaging with his friends. That’s something that’s huge for his audience, and fans not just of football, but fans of the Bucs and Patriots,” said Roger Breum, Hookit’s director of marketing. “They love his personality, or they hate him, and they follow him for that, too. That’s been part of his appeal for a while. You hate or love Tom Brady.”
One of the more remarkable aspects of Brady’s appeal is his everlasting ability to speak to multiple audiences. He’s one of the most bourgeoisie athletes around, buying $6 million yachts and hobnobbing with Oprah.
But he still built himself up from a measly sixth-round pick to the greatest of all-time. That never goes away, no matter how many Met Galas he attends alongside Gisele.
“He still has that appeal as a sixth-round draft pick that just grinded his way to be one of the greatest football players of all-time,” said Badenhausen. “That is why, despite people bashing Brady and the Patriots all these years, he’s still incredibly appealing from a marketing standpoint. He can hit both ends.”
Brady has been much more unfiltered since becoming a Florida Man. He got visibly inebriated at the Buccaneers’ Super Bowl parade and even called out an unnamed NFL team for sticking with “that mother—“ at QB instead of signing him in free agency. It’s all part of his liberation. The idea of Brady™ is more interesting now than it was two years ago.
Now the question is, where will he go next?
All of Brady’s peers are also only known by one name: LeBron, Tiger, Federer. They are all sports and cultural titans who can exert their influence wherever they wish. Maybe Brady will focus on his production company like Kobe, or get into venture capital like Kevin Durant.
His ability to accomplish anything he wishes extends far beyond the football field.
“Tom Brady probably has as good of contacts in the business world as anybody out there,” Badenhausen said. “I think really, Tom Brady can do whatever he wants.”
The Patriots dynasty may be over, but the Brady™ dynasty is just beginning.
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Wickersham’s explosive excerpts bring out tired pushback: Seth Wickersham is coming out with a book that contains explosive information about the Patriots. And once again, the Belichick avatar crowd is calling him a fabulist.
Maybe some of the information in Wickersham’s book is exaggerated or embellished. As Belichick correctly noted this week, the book is based off second- and third-hand sources. Think Tom Brady Sr. and others Brady’s and Belichick’s orbits.
Those folks are even more wrapped up in the melodrama than the two central figures themselves.
Journalists rely on their sources. Wickersham is an excellent reporter and all of the information was most certainly vetted.
Everything came from actual people. Enough with the silliness.
Belichick’s response to Wickersham book shows he cares: Belichick didn’t address Wickersham’s excerpts in full this week, but he did object to one detail: he refused to say goodbye to Brady in person.
“Yeah, that’s not true,” Belichick said. “I’ve heard a few things about this book and it sounds like it’s a lot of second, third and fourth-hand comments.”
If Belichick truly didn’t care about the media, he would’ve snorted a non-answer and moved on. Instead, he played the fake news card.
Belichick speaks out when his reputation is at stake. The same thing happened at the start of Deflategate, when he told us Tom is responsible for his balls.
Indeed.
What was Brady’s turning point?: There’s no doubt Brady became more terse with the press up here during his final seasons. Deflategate is commonly cited as the turning point, but for my money, it was Trump. One year before the 2016 election, Brady made some lighthearted remarks about how he would like to see Trump win the presidency, because then there would be a putting green on the White House lawn. There was also a MAGA hat in his locker.
In hindsight, it’s obvious Brady was speaking about Trump as a friend, and not politician. Yet, the story continued to swirl for more than a year. That’s when Brady really shut off.
