Vevo Fuses Artists and Athletes in New Web Series

Vevo—the online home of music icons like Britney Spears, Lady Gaga and Jay-Z—is looking to dial up its star wattage by cozying up to basketball stars.The Web video site, a joint venture between Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and investor Abu Dhabi Media Company, is planning to launch a new video series. Artists vs. Athletes will feature professional athletes interviewing major recording artists. To kick off the new series, Vevo has partnered with the National Basketball Association and began taping its first Artists vs. Athletes segments this past weekend, during the league’s All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles.Among the 10 20-minute interviews scheduled was a session between New York Knicks rookie Landry Fields and rapper Fabolous ("You Be Killin Em"). The list of other participants was still in flux at press time.Vevo plans to roll out Artists vs. Athletes sometime around the NBA playoffs in April and May. The site is also in talks with TNT to run portions of the interviews while promoting its playoff coverage.“This allows both sides to do lots of cross promotion,” said David Kohl, Vevo’s evp of sales and customer operations. Vevo is also having preliminary conversations with several of the NBA’s top advertisers about sponsoring Artists vs. Athletes. “This is a $7 million-$10 million opportunity.”Vevo’s plans for Artists vs. Athletes go well beyond the NBA, however. The company said it's in active discussions with the National Hockey League, National Football League, Major League Baseball and the U.S. Olympic Committee to conduct similar interviews throughout the year, and potentially launch other music-meets-sports content.“This is our time to move into other areas, like lifestyle, fashion and sports,” said Kohl. “If 2010 was about building our association between fans and artists, 2011 is about amplifying it. This is a significant franchise series for Vevo. ”Vevo, which debuted in late 2009, enjoyed a strong 2010. Backed by a partnership with Google—which places Vevo as the default music video outlet on YouTube—and distribution deals with CBS and AOL, Vevo has soared to more than 50 million unique users, per comScore. It's now the second largest video site on the Web.Kohl said the site is a natural fit with major sports leagues, which are constantly trying to appeal to younger fans. In the case of the NBA, the league has “deep ties to music, particularly hip-hop,” he said.Beyond sports, Vevo’s plan is to aggressively court other content partners as it looks to expand its brand. Kohl hinted that it may include distribution deals with some “core fashion publishers” down the road. Kohl added, “We are a music platform. We want to continue to be that place for premium original music content, and we are looking to build on top of that platform.”

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Vevo Fuses Artists and Athletes in New Web Series

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