The Las Vegas Royals already lead the entire MLS in one category, before a single minute of soccer has been played. That category is star power. From top to bottom, the Las Vegas Royals are loaded with star power. The owner, Mike Tyson, has almost 20 million followers on Instagram, almost 6 million followers on Twitter, just shy of 5 million followers on TikTok, and almost 3 million subscribers on YouTube. No other owner has that kind of social media presence to assist in growing their team’s socials. Royals’ manager Gerard Pique has over 20 million followers on Instagram, and new signees Bukayo Saka, Paul Pogba, and
Hector Bellerin have 62 million combined followers on Instagram, with Bellerin garnering one of the most unique personal brands in all of soccer.
Here in Las Vegas, we have an incredibly unique advantage that no other club has for growing their social media presence. Whereas other organizations have to build their players’ name value through social media and marketing strategies, we get to grow our brand using our stars’ existing social media presence. We have the opportunity to lean into the strengths of our stars and to bring their tens of millions of followers to our pages. So what are these strengths and how do we plan to lean into them?
Mike Tyson is one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time, and although his stardom is marred with controversy, his iconic status will certainly bring attention to the team. Tyson will not just be the owner, he will be a prominent face of the franchise. The same goes for Pique- our goal is for the duo not to fall into traditional manager and owner roles as far as public relations and social media go. We want to utilize their unique star power and leverage them to gain social media traction, which is usually difficult as an expansion team.
Similarly, we want to lean into Hector Bellerin’s fashion-oriented personal brand to create unique branding opportunities on the Royals social media pages. Having fashion-oriented branding opens up limitless opportunities- including new sponsorship avenues, untapped fan-bases, and merchandising. This emphasis on fashion will separate the Royals from their competition in term of merchandise, as most MLS teams just have their logo slapped on to the same hoodie.
Using Bellerin’s personal brand to lean into an increase in fashion-related social media content will allow us to tap into fan bases that other MLS teams (and sports teams in general) are missing out on. Additionally, this gives Royals players- not just Bellerin- more opportunities to grow their personal brand by showing off their fashion sense. This will make Las Vegas a more desirable location for players, similar to how high school recruits often decide their college based off of certain universities’ unique NIL opportunities.
Our star power provides us with different social media opportunities that we plan to leverage to create a social media presence unlike any other sports team.
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