In the only recent year that Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs weren’t playing in the Super Bowl, the NFL star was driving through Los Angeles in early February with his business managers André and Aaron Eanes, admiring billboards featuring Dwayne Johnson . , the actor and entertainer better known as Rock.
“Man, I don’t think I’ll ever be as famous as the Rock,” Mr. Kelce said.
His co-directors looked at each other. “We’re like, yeah, you can,” André Eanes said.
The twin brothers had known since Mr. Kelce was at the University of Cincinnati that the 6-foot-1 athletic star with the Marvel character’s physique, blue eyes and likable charm had crossover potential.
But let’s be honest. No one imagined This.
This it was a year that even the Rock could envy. Mr. Kelce, a tight end, won the Super Bowl (his second) in February. In March, he hosted “Saturday Night Live.” He starred in seven national television commercials. The podcast he co-hosts with his brother, Jason, is one of the most popular on Spotify. He launched a clothing line with his team.
And he’s dating the most famous pop singer in the world. Maybe you’ve heard.
Mr Kelce’s sudden takeover of the pair — putting him on the map, if you will — has taken even die-hard football fans by surprise. The reality is that most of his ascent took years – the result of a carefully crafted business plan developed by the 34-year-old Eanes brothers that blossomed at just the right time.
The Chiefs have spent the past few years as the most unstoppable force in football, and along the way, Mr. Kelce’s other team has grown to include a creative strategist, a community outreach coordinator, a Los Angeles-based journalist, a personal chef and a coach. It has four football agents, led by Mike Simon at VMG. In the spring, he also became a client of Creative Artists Agency to feed his budding acting itch.
The Eanes brothers coordinate it all, managing the growing flow of inbound traffic for a Kelce Inc. track. Movie scripts have been shared among the team. Game shows are a thing. Maybe a few less ads.
“People tell me, ‘Man, it’s been a crazy year,'” Aaron Eanes said. “When I say, ‘Actually, it’s not that crazy,’ people look at me funny. It’s because it’s easy when you have a plan. We execute this plan.”
Before you run to YouTube and TikTok to investigate conspiracy theories, no, the plan did not involve Taylor Swift.
Mr. Kelce’s managers have a window of time between the end of the Super Bowl in February and the start of training camp in July in which to unfold their plan for the Kelce brand. Once the season starts, Mr. Kelce manifests what he wants on his own.
But while Mr. Kelce’s shift to a more mainstream form of celebrity was planned before he met Ms. Swift, there’s no doubt that the doubling of his target audience — from mostly male 18- to 49-year-olds to a much larger group — has been greatly enhanced grade from Ms. Swift’s female fans of all ages — changed the calculus of where the design goes from here.
“Travis’s reach is much greater and with an even wider audience,” said Richard Lovett, CAA co-chairman. “It accelerated what was probably inevitable in terms of its level of awareness and impact.”
André Eanes, who manages Mr. Kelce’s portfolio of 28 investments, first met his client through Mr. Kelce’s college roommate, DJ Woods, a childhood friend of Mr. Eanes who grew up near Cleveland . They became close when Mr. Eanes started an event management business while still in college that booked venues and hosted DJs in Cincinnati. Mr. Eanes became Mr. Kelce’s go-to guy for a VIP pass.
“He was always the life of the party,” Mr. Eanes said of Mr. Kelce. “Everybody wanted to hang out with Travis.”
At the same time, Aaron Eanes was studying sports management and entrepreneurship at Bowling Green State University in northern Ohio. He wanted to help athletes develop their careers. But he had no interest in becoming a traditional sports agent.
“Agents are contract advisers,” Mr Eanes said. “I thought instead of a music model and creating a business where there is coordination with all their external providers.”
Mr. Eanes hadn’t even graduated when he began tagging college football players for the services of a manager other than a traditional agent. It was an unusual proposition at the time for most players, whose focus was primarily on getting their first professional contract. But Mr. Kelce seemed to grasp the bigger picture his friends were writing. He became the second client of A&A Management, the company still run by the Eanes brothers.
”It was unusual,” said Mr. Simon, Mr. Kelce’s agent. “I think his thought process at the time was, ‘Let’s all do it together and we’ll figure it out as we go.’
Mr. Kelce’s first glimmer of mainstream publicity came in a 2015 film on Complex magazine, in which she stood on a pool table wearing a burgundy velvet Versace jumpsuit and Gucci sunglasses. Moments later, Aaron Eanes called a producer from E! for a dating reality show. “I was, absolutely not!” said Mr. Eanes.
The brothers eventually relented, thinking a TV show might open other doors. After “Catching Kelce,” which ran for eight episodes and never found Mr. Kelce true love, they agreed reality TV was one and done. Instead, Mr. Kelce, a lifelong lover of comedy, gave his co-directors a lofty goal to chase: He wanted to be on “SNL.”
Aaron Eanes reached out to show producers during the 2020 season, but their mutual interest sounded lukewarm at best. That changed in October 2021 after Mr. Kelce dropped an “SNL” after party before a game in Philadelphia and went to work, chatting up (and impressing) Lorne Michaels.
The day after the Chiefs beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl last February, Aaron Eanes’ phone rang at 9 a.m. It was “SNL”
“I don’t think he’s slept yet,” Mr Eanes told the booking agent.
After taking the stage in Rockefeller Center’s Studio 8H on March 4, less than a month after the Super Bowl victory, Mr. Kelce choked up during the show’s opening monologue. He had fulfilled a childhood dream and brought his family along for the ride: his brother, Jason, the Eagles’ center. and his parents, Ed and Donna, whom the Eanes brothers help manage for free.
After “SNL,” the Eanes brothers began interviewing Hollywood agencies with stronger connections in the entertainment industry.
“We’re just two guys living in Ohio,” Aaron Eanes joked.
Mr. Lovett and Tom Young, CAA’s head of sports media, both said Mr. Kelce had an easy-going charisma and coaching nature that made producers want to work with him. “The decision makers and those who are meant to be visionaries about who the next potential movie star is, those people were already tapping into Travis even coming off of ‘Saturday Night Live,'” Mr. Lovett said. . “And probably before.”
But nothing was rushed, Aaron Eanes said. That’s not Mr. Kelce’s style. And Mr Eanes had already laid the groundwork for his client’s path to the A-list. Throughout 2022, Mr. Eanes had targeted endorsement deals with companies that were not traditional NFL partners — such as vaccine promotion for Pfizer, for example, or a new debit card from Experian. The intent was to build Mr. Kelce’s resume as a stand-alone player, rather than just another interchangeable player in a commercial for one of the NFL’s partners, building on a foundation built by the league.
Danielle Salzedo, a veteran brand strategist who joined Mr. Kelce’s management team after 14 years at Viacom, said she has taken marketing lessons from working with music artists like Harry Connick Jr., who was always willing to reinvent itself to reach new audiences.
“That ability to continue to evolve your image and stay current, but stay high, from someone who’s already a global star,” Ms. Salzedo said, “is something that I think Travis has the ability to do. does”.
Mr. Kelce’s inner circle insists that his time as a viral celebrity has not changed him. His personal chef, Kumar Ferguson, had been friends with Mr. Kelce since they played recreational basketball together in the fourth grade. He drives home-cooked meals (usually wild rice, chicken and vegetables) to the Chiefs’ office every day so he and Mr. Kelce can have lunch together.
Despite the mounting pile of distractions, Mr. Kelce’s longtime coach, Alex Skacel, said the star’s dedication to football has never been stronger.
Mr. Skacel likes to share the story of a visit to Paris Fashion Week a few years ago, when he and Mr. Kelce went for a late-night run through the city because Mr. Kelce was itching for a workout after a full day of sitting. . from the runway. “It’s midnight and we’re sprinting over the bridges over the river,” Mr. Skacel said. “Wherever he is, he finds time to do whatever he needs to do.”
While 2023 was a near-perfect year for Mr. Kelce, Aaron Eanes said the increased attention is prompting his team to look at a potential area of concern: oversaturation. Is too much of Mr. Kelce on TV and in the news, and could fans get numb to seeing him? The plan for next year revolves around one word: curation. Fewer offers. Quality over quantity. Authenticity first.
After a midweek visit to New York to speak at a sports business conference, the Eanes brothers rushed to catch flights to Ohio for a few days with their family before returning to Kansas City, where the Chiefs were playing the Buffalo Bills in a clash two top teams.
The game was decided in the final moments by a penalty kick that overturned what would likely have become a highlight of Mr. Kelce’s career.
After three, Mr. Kelce caught a pass in the open field. Then, as he was about to be tackled, he showed off the arm he’d used as a high school quarterback, throwing a perfect pass back to an open teammate who ran in for what appeared to be a game-winning score. The only problem was that the teammate had lined up incorrectly before the play, which erased the touchdown.
The Chiefs went on to lose the game, but once again, Mr. Kelce had found a way to be in the middle of it all.
“We positioned Travis to become world famous,” said André Eanes. “We didn’t know how it would happen, or when it would happen, or what would help propel it forward. But it was always the thought in the back of our minds.”
The sound is produced by Tally Abecassis.