Journal article
More Than an Athlete: LeBron James, the Sports Star as Production Company, and the Entrepreneurial Politics of Empowerment
JCMS : Journal of cinema and media studies, Vol.64(5), pp.321-341
2025
DOI: 10.1353/cj.2025.a967490
Abstract
This article critiques and contextualizes LeBron James’s branded media enterprises—through analysis of several key productions and the industrial discourses surrounding them—to consider the shifting nature and uses of the sports star in contemporary media culture. It specifically explains how James’s expansive and increasingly corporatized media concerns fuse empowerment and entrepreneurialism. It connects scholarship on the politics of sports media to more general critiques of branding to demonstrate how James, as an image-conscious celebrity and entrepreneur, illustrates sports media’s ability to illumine a broader conflation of collectivist enfranchisement and individual capitalist enterprise in neoliberal culture.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- More Than an Athlete: LeBron James, the Sports Star as Production Company, and the Entrepreneurial Politics of Empowerment
- Creators
- Travis Vogan
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- JCMS : Journal of cinema and media studies, Vol.64(5), pp.321-341
- DOI
- 10.1353/cj.2025.a967490
- ISSN
- 2578-4900
- eISSN
- 2578-4919
- Publisher
- Michigan Publishing
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2025
- Academic Unit
- School of Journalism and Mass Communication
- Record Identifier
- 9984944722802771
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