August 3, 2021

And now, here's the app for college athletes to cash in on their fleeting moment of personal marketability.

We were just talking about Fuck You Pay Me, the app for "influencers," touted in the New York Times. Now, here's Cameo, the app for college athletes, touted in The Washington Post — "College athletes are finally allowed to profit off their own images. So, of course, they’re turning to Cameo." 

At the beginning of July, the NCAA said college athletes could profit off their name, image and likeness.... [N]ot every college athlete will be able to snag a big-name deal. For them, Cameo has turned into a potentially profitable alternative.

The social media platform’s concept is simple: Users pay celebrities to create short, personalized videos. The buyer outlines a request, and the celebrity fulfills it however they see fit.... The athletes’ prices... range from $5 to $177 per video....

Sedona Prince... [t]he University of Oregon basketball forward already had a massive social media following... currently charges $63 per video, the requests came pouring in.... Someone else asked Prince, a tattoo aficionado, what ink to get. She frequently dances on her coffee table in her videos.

Words that don't appear in the WaPo article: "nudity," "sex," "pornography." I had to look up Cameo to see that it is "not the place to send or solicit pornographic, indecent, obscene, objectionable or sexually explicit content." Apparently, the requests for videos are going to be relatively wholesome. There are other apps for that sort of thing

The WaPo article doesn't delve into such alternatives. It's keeping it cute, concentrating on wholesome players with good sense like this UT running back, Bijan Robinson, who forgoes the $110 someone offers him to sing the fight song of his school's rival:

2 comments:

Ann Althouse said...

Tom writes:

"There are a lot of reality show participants on Cameo. If my wife and I were to want an autographed knickknack from one of the people on 90 Day Fiance, for instance, that's where we'd go."

Ann Althouse said...

Leora writes:

“ Cameo has been around awhile. You can get birthday wishes form Cedric the Entertainer or Kevin Sorbo (Hercules from TV) or even real estate broker Barbara Corcoran will congratulate on your sale. I think it predates Only Fans by quite a bit. Don Johnson, Malcolm McDowell and Gilbert Gottfried are on there. Don Johnson gets $500 donated to a charity for his fee.”