In the only recent year in which Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs were not participating in the Super Bowl, the NFL star was driving around Los Angeles in early February with his representatives, André and Aaron Eanes, marveling at the signs . advertisements in which Dwayne Johnson, the actor and presenter better known as “The Rock,” appeared.
“I don’t think he’ll ever be as famous as The Rock,” Kelce said.
Their representatives looked at each other. “We said, ‘Yes you can,’” André Eanes said.
The twins knew, ever since Kelce was at the University of Cincinnati, that the six-foot-tall athletic star with a Marvel character’s physique, blue eyes and good-natured charm had the potential to transcend the sport.
But we are honest. Nobody imagined this.
this It was a year even The Rock could envy. Kelce, a tight end, won the Super Bowl (his second) in February. In March, he was host of Saturday night live. She has starred in seven national television commercials. The podcast she hosts with his brother Jason is one of the most popular on Spotify. She launched a clothing line with his team.
And he’s also dating the most famous pop singer in the world. Maybe you’ve heard something about it.
The regretful conquest of the spirit of the age for Kelce — putting himself on the map, so to speak — has taken even the most die-hard football fans by surprise. The reality is that most of his rise was years in the making, the result of a carefully crafted business plan by the 34-year-old Eanes brothers that blossomed at just the right time.
The Chiefs have spent the last few years being the most unstoppable force in football, and along the way, Kelce’s other team has grown to include a creative strategist, a community outreach coordinator, a Los Angeles-based publicist, a chef . staff and a coach. Kelce has four football agents, led by Mike Simon at VMG. In the spring, she also became a client of Creative Artists Agency to foster her budding curiosity in acting.
The Eanes brothers coordinate everything and manage the increasing flow of incoming traffic seeking a piece of Kelce Inc. Movie scripts have circulated among the team. Television game shows have been considered. Maybe a few less commercials.
“People tell me, ‘It’s been a crazy year,’” Aaron Eanes said. “When I say, ‘Actually, he’s not that crazy,’ people look at me funny. It’s because it’s easy when you have a plan. “We are executing that plan.”
Before I ran to YouTube and TikTok to investigate conspiracy theories, no, the plan didn’t include Taylor Swift.
Between the end of the Super Bowl in February and the start of training in July, Kelce representatives have a window to develop their plan for the Kelce brand. Once the season starts, Kelce manifests what he wants on his own.
But while Kelce’s transition to more mainstream fame was planned before he met Swift, there’s no doubt that as his potential audience doubled—from mostly men ages 18 to 49 to a much larger group largest — driven largely by Swift’s female fans of all ages — has changed the calculus of where the plan goes from here.
“Travis is much more recognized now and has an even broader audience,” said Richard Lovett, president of Creative Artists Agency. “He has accelerated what was probably inevitable in terms of his level of recognition and appeal.”
André Eanes, who manages Kelce’s portfolio of 28 investments, met his client through Kelce’s college roommate, DJ Woods, a childhood friend of Eanes’ who grew up near Cleveland. They became close when Eanes, still in college, started an event management business that booked venues and hosted various DJs throughout Cincinnati. Eanes became Kelce’s go-to person for a VIP pass.
“He was always the life of the party,” André Eanes said of Kelce. “Everyone 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 grow their careers. But he had no interest in becoming a traditional sports agent.
“Agents are contractual advisors,” Eanes said. “I thought, instead, of a model like that of the music industry and of building a business in which there is coordination with all its external suppliers.”
Eanes hadn’t even graduated when he began offering college football players representation services in addition to traditional agent services. It was an unusual proposition for most players, whose main goal was to get their first professional contract. But Kelce seemed to understand the picture his friends were painting. He became the second client of A & A Management, the company still run by the Eanes brothers.
“It was unusual,” said Simon, Kelce’s agent. “I think what he thought at the time was, ‘We’re going to do this together, and we’ll figure it out as we go.’
Kelce’s first glimpse of mainstream advertising came in a 2015 article in Complex magazine, in which she stood on a pool table in a burgundy velvet Versace ensemble and Gucci sunglasses. Shortly after, Aaron Eanes received a call from a producer at E! for a reality dating show. “My reaction was, ‘Of course not!’” Aaron Eanes said.
The brothers finally relented, thinking that a television show could open other doors. despues de Catching Kelce, which lasted eight episodes and never found Kelce’s true love, they agreed they would never do reality shows again. Instead, Kelce, a lifelong comedy fan, gave her representatives an ambitious goal: She wanted to be in Saturday night live.
Aaron Eanes reached out to the show’s producers during the 2020 season, but showed little interest, to put it kindly. That changed in October 2021, after Kelce attended a party following the recording of Saturday night live before a game in Philadelphia and got to work, chatting with (and impressing) Lorne Michaels.
The day after the Chiefs defeated the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl in February, Aaron Eanes’ phone rang at 9:00 a.m. Saturday night live.
“I don’t think Kelce hasn’t even gone to sleep yet,” Aaron Eanes told the booking agent.
After taking the stage at Rockefeller Center’s Studio 8H on March 4, less than a month after winning the Super Bowl, Kelce choked up during the show’s opening monologue. She had fulfilled a childhood dream and had brought her family to share it with them: her brother Jason, the Eagles’ center, as well as her parents, Ed and Donna, whom the Eanes brothers help to represent free of charge.
despues de Saturday night liveThe Eanes brothers began interviewing with Hollywood agencies that had stronger connections in the entertainment industry.
“We’re just two guys living in Ohio,” Aaron Eanes joked.
Lovett and Tom Young, co-director of sports media at Creative Artists Agency, said Kelce had a laid-back charisma and coachable nature that made producers want to work with him. “The decision makers and the people who are supposed to be visionaries about who the next potential movie star is, those people had already come into contact with Travis coming out of Saturday night liveLovett said. “And probably before.”
But they didn’t precipitate anything, Aaron Eanes said. That’s not Kelce’s style. And Eanes had already been laying the groundwork for his client’s path to the most exclusive list. Throughout 2022, Eanes had focused on sponsorship deals with companies that were not traditional NFL partners, such as vaccine promotion for Pfizer, for example, or a new Experian debit card. The purpose was to build Kelce’s resume as an independent brand, 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 Kelce’s rep team after 14 years at Viacom, said she has taken marketing lessons from her work with music artists like Harry Connick Jr., who was constantly willing to reinvent herself to reach . to new audiences.
“The ability to continue to evolve your image and stay current, but at the same time exceptional, being already a global star,” Salzedo said, “is an ability that I think Travis has.”
Kelce’s inner circle insists that his time as a viral celebrity hasn’t changed him. His personal chef, Kumar Ferguson, has been friends with Kelce since they played basketball together for fun in fourth grade. He brings home-cooked food (usually wild rice, chicken and vegetables) to Chiefs practices every day so he and Kelce can eat lunch together.
Despite the increasing number of distractions, Kelce’s longtime coach, Alex Skacel, said the star football tight end’s dedication is stronger than ever.
Skacel likes to tell the story of a visit to Paris Fashion Week a few years ago, when he and Kelce went for a late-night run around the city because Kelce was eager to exercise after being out for a day. . whole sitting next to the catwalk. “It’s midnight and we’re running on the bridges over the river,” Skacel said. “No matter where you are, you’re going to find time to do what you need to do.”
Although 2023 was a near-perfect year for Kelce, Aaron Eanes said the increased attention has caused his team to consider a potential area of concern: oversaturation. Does Kelce’s image appear too much on television and in the news, and could fans become desensitized to it? The plan for next year revolves around one word: selection. Fewer agreements. Quality over quantity. Authenticity above all.
After a midweek visit to New York to speak at a sports business conference, the Eanes brothers rushed flights to Ohio to spend a few days with family before returning to Kansas City, where the Chiefs faced the Buffalo Bills in a clash between two great teams.
The game was decided in the final moments by a foul that nullified what would probably have become an iconic play in Kelce’s career.
Trailing by three, Kelce caught a pass in the open field. Then, as he was about to be tackled, he showed off the arm he had used as a quarterback in high school, throwing a perfect pass to a teammate who ran in for what appeared to be the winning point. The only problem was that the teammate had lined up wrong before the play, which nullified the score.
The Chiefs lost the game, but once again Kelce found a way to be in the middle of it all.
“We positioned Travis to be world famous,” André Eanes said. “We didn’t know how it would happen, or when, or what would help drive it. But we always had that idea in mind.”
