Derek Jeter made waves when he founded The Players’ Tribune 11 years ago. The move earned Jeter headlines about his entrepreneurial turn, and it kick-started a slew of athlete-driven media start-ups.

Along the way, the site has survived rapidly shifting business models for internet content. The digital media start-up graveyard is full of publications that didn’t make it, like Sports on Earth, The Cauldron, The Messenger, The Classical, and many more.

The Players’ Tribune is still here—under different ownership, but in most other ways the same site that first grabbed so much attention when it debuted.

The path was not without obstacles. In 2019, Digiday published a story titled “What Went Wrong for The Players’ Tribune,” saying that the outlet “produced too little content to thrive in a crowded digital media landscape” and that “the startup also failed to keep its costs under control.” The New York Post reported that the platform was “hemorrhaging money” and Jeter was not expected to remain in the event of a “soft landing” sale. 

And yet, Jeter does remain involved, even after the 2019 sale to Minute Media, which also owns the international soccer platform 90min, FanSided, Mental Floss, and a 10-year license from Authentic Brands Group to publish Sports Illustrated. Players’ Tribune videos are distributed across Minute’s other platforms. Minute raised funding at a valuation of more than $1 billion in early 2024, according to Axios. 

Jeter’s original vision for the publication, Players’ Tribune editor-in-chief Sean Patrick Conboy recalls, was to break through in a “chaotic media environment” where athletes felt “misunderstood” and wanted a different filter through which to tell their own stories. At its launch, Jeter, along with Kobe Bryant, an early investor and frequent contributor to the site, stressed to the editorial team that they had a “blank page,” Conboy tells Front Office Sports. They pushed editors to go directly to athletes to find “authentic” stories instead of “imposing” narratives on them.

Earlier this year, a post by the young Turkish Real Madrid star Arda Güler, “A Letter to the Kids of My Country,” lit up The Players’ Tribune’s traffic meter. Reaction videos on social media drew substantial views across several languages. 

That global reach, Conboy says, is what the publication strives for and can still achieve.

“What’s so cool about the platform is that we can tell these stories in such depth and humor and authenticity but do it in the native language of the player, and then translate it not just into English, but also specifically where he’s playing in Spain,” Conboy says. “The piece, which was, like, 6,000 words about his entire life and journey, ran in Turkish, Spanish, and English, and so you see the traffic light up all literally all over the world.”

The athlete-narrator model has also inspired enormous competition, particularly in audio/video content, as legions of athletes have launched their own podcasts. 

One of the constants at Players’ Tribune has been Conboy, who has been the outlet’s editor-in-chief since its launch. He tells FOS many athletes now approach them first because they grew up reading the outlet and trust the editors to tell their stories. 

Conboy says audiences still have a hunger for long-form written content. “You know people say people don’t read anymore—we can show you our stats, they will absolutely read if it’s compelling,” Conboy says. “They’ll read for 9, 10, 15, 20 minutes, and hundreds of thousands of people all around the world will consume that in the long form, but then millions of people will consume the chunks of it in the short form.”

There is not a one-size-fits-all approach to how the stories come together at the outlet. “Sometimes athletes have an idea already in mind, and they share a rough draft with us, and we sit with them to help bring it to life in edit. Other times they prefer to start with a deep conversation, sometimes over many hours, and we start with that as the raw material,” Conboy says. “The cool part of it is the collaboration, because we’ve had athletes working on edits in a Google Doc after a game during the playoffs, because their story means that much to them.”

Players’ Tribune has about 30 to 40 employees across editorial and business; the exact number is hard to pin down, as several employees work across multiple Minute Media brands. A spokesperson for Minute Media declined to share revenue numbers or specify whether Players’ Tribune is profitable as a stand-alone entity.

For more on The Players’ Tribune and Derek Jeter’s role in the outlet’s success, read Ryan Glasspiegel’s full story here.

Now we know the answer to what’s next for Bruce Pearl: The former Auburn Tigers coach is coming to sports television.

TNT Sports is poised to announce the four-time SEC Coach of the Year as an analyst for its new college basketball studio team Thursday morning.

Pearl will team up with fellow studio analysts Jalen Rose and Jamal Mashburn, along with host Adam Lefkoe for TNT’s coverage of the Big East and Big 12. Once the regular season wraps up, the team will also join TNT’s coverage of the NCAA Men’s Division 1 Men’s Basketball Championship, which is jointly produced with CBS Sports. Pearl has TV experience—he worked at ESPN as an analyst for two years before joining Auburn in 2014.

Chris Webber, Rose’s former “Fab 5” teammate at Michigan, is also returning as a contributor to TNT’s college coverage. Webber will weigh in at key moments during the season, such as the Players Era tournament during Thanksgiving week. 

“Our studio shows have always had a certain DNA that is unique to TNT Sports, and we take great pride in assembling the right blend of personalities capable of extending that culture,” said TNT’s chief content officer Craig Barry in a statement. “We believe we’ve found a distinctive balance with this college basketball team and we’re confident fans will be entertained by their perspectives, the storytelling and access they provide from their experiences in and around the game.” 

When the 65-year-old Pearl revealed he was stepping down as Auburn coach in September, there was speculation he’d run for the U.S. Senate to succeed Republican Tommy Tuberville, who’s running for governor of Alabama. But Pearl decided against a political bid. Like many former coaches, he’s transitioning into sports TV.

The outspoken, charismatic Pearl seems like a natural for TV. The enthusiastic coach led the Tigers to the Final Four in 2025 and 2019. Over his career, he won 706 games at four schools. Pearl, who is Jewish, has been a staunch supporter of the state of Israel, particularly since the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks by Hamas. 

Pearl may have been too outspoken for some of his contemporaries in sports media. After announcing he was leaving Auburn, ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption cohost Michael Wilbon said he “had become a divisive person, it seems to me, intentionally. And I hope there was pressure to just get him out,” said Wilbon.

For more on Bruce Pearl and his response to Michael Wilbon’s take, read Michael McCarthy’s full story here.

• Nick Saban and ESPN better get used to it. Because every time a big-name college football coach like James Franklin gets fired, the Alabama coaching legend turned College GameDay star will be one of the first names that come up. (Penn State fired Franklin, who had been football head coach since 2014, on Oct. 12.) Joel Klatt, Fox’s top CFB analyst, said the Nittany Lions’ first call should be to Saban, whether he’s interested in the job. “If I was [athletic director] Pat Kraft, I would start with the biggest swing possible,” Klatt told Colin Cowherd. “I know this sounds crazy, but I think the first call I would make is Nick Saban.”
• Rising hoops media star Kenny Beecham is joining NBC Sports’s upcoming coverage of the NBA. Three podcasts from his Enjoy Basketball digital company—including the flagship Numbers on the Board podcast—will stream weekdays on NBC Sports Now on Peacock from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. 
• Apple continues to take an all-or-nothing approach to sports media rights. Talking to CNBC sports media reporter Alex Sherman, Apple SVP of services Eddy Cue said the tech giant will keep looking for partnerships with leagues where it controls all rights à la Major League Soccer. Apple is finalizing a deal worth $140 million a year with Formula One for U.S. rights. “We don’t have to do sports the way that they are. There’s plenty of people doing that,” Cue told Sherman.
• Looks like Mark Schlereth will replace Mark Sanchez on Fox’s NFL game coverage for the second straight week. A post on X/Twitter from Fox lists Schlereth calling Sunday’s Panthers-Jets game with Chris Myers and Sarah Kustok.

4.17 million

That was MLB’s strong average viewership for the division series round. It was up 17% from last season, and the best figure since 2011. Fox Sports’s telecast of the Mariners’ 15-inning victory over the Tigers in Game 5 drew 8.72 million viewers—making it the most-watched LDS game on any network since 2015.