BOSTON — Payton Pritchard and Aaron Nesmith were both drafted in the first round by the Celtics in 2020.
Today, more than five years later, the duo is jointly kickstarting a social media app, the Off-Court app, the first social media app build by and for basketball players, which seeks to transform the way athletes are able to monetize their influence on culture.
It all began with Nesmith’s former Vanderbilt basketball teammate and roommate, Mac Hunt, who initially came up with the idea. Hunt built
a following as a musician on TikTok, and quickly observed a striking gap between creator platforms and athlete influence.
On TikTok, he saw how quickly artists could grow when platforms empowered them.
In basketball, however, he reckoned with the reality that players drove culture, but had no ownership or real way to monetize their reach.
That’s where the Off-Court app comes in.
The app, which officially launched on Friday, October 17th, is an athlete-owned form of social media that gives fans direct access to athletes through vlogs, podcasts, and behind-the-scenes content. Players can drop merch, run subscriptions, and post exclusive content, while also sharing podcasts and day-in-the-life vlogs.
In addition, athletes are equity owners in the platform.
“This isn’t just about posting,” Nesmith said. “It’s about ownership. Athletes have never had that before.”
Shortly after Hunt brought his idea to Nesmith, he worked to recruit two fellow NBA players, Pritchard, and Cleveland Cavaliers guard Darius Garland.
Plans for additional NBA players to join — as well as stars from the WNBA, college basketball, and other sports — are in the works.
Pritchard said that joining the endeavor was a no-brainer due to his deep-roooted friendship with Nesmith, now a guard on the Indiana Pacers.
“He’s the one that started it, and he asked me to join in and be a part of it,” said the Celtics guard. “That’s like my brother. I love Aaron.”
NBA players are beginning to take storytelling into their own hands
Pritchard is not the only Celtic that’s leveraging the influence he’s accrued
This past summer, Derrick White launched a podcast, the White Noise podcast, with his best friend, Alex Welsh. It’s a chance for the two to share their lives and behind-the-scenes moments wirth the world, and for fans to get to know White on a deeper level.
“People only know the very surface level of him,” Welsh told CelticsBlog. “And that was a lot about what we talked about — he is really funny, and he is outgoing, and he’s a good storyteller. He’s just a very light-hearted person. And I think the Celtics community that supports him knows that to some extent, but they don’t know the real him completely.”
Similarly, Jaylen Brown has cultivated a following streaming on Twitch; over the past few months, he’s partnered up with big-time streamers like iShowSpeed, while also livestreaming Celtics Media Day and breaking down film, live for tfans.
For a long time, players’ stories were told by reporters and newspaper writers, and fans rarely heard from the athletes themselves, on their own terms. Little was known about athlete’s off-court lives.
The Off Court app is part of a broader basketball player-led movement to change that — and Pritchard is thrilled to be on board.
“It could be an unbelievable thing for athletes to just show their life outside of ball in a different perspective,” Pritchard said.
