John Sloss stepped into Deadline’s Zurich Studio this weekend to discuss his new initiative Vertical Leap, which the Cinetic Founder and CEO announced at the Zurich Summit last weekend.
The new investment vehicle is a producing pathway for professional athletes and Sloss said it will give its members access to rough cuts, creative input and industry guidance to a select menu of docs on offer from Cinetic’s slate each year.
“The way it works is each member pays a relatively nominal amount each year for membership and that’s their only obligation,” he said, taking inspiration from U.S. company Impact Partners. “In return they receive pitches of between ten and fifteen documentaries a year, pitch packets or it could be a zoom pitches – any form that’s appropriate.”
Sloss went on to explain that each member pays $25,000 per year for membership. Each athlete then gets the same menu per project and then has the option to invest different amounts of equity for various tiers of production involvement and production credits. Or, if the project doesn’t appeal to the member, they don’t have to invest at all.
“No one has made an effort, in an organized way, to pull [pro-Athletes] into our space, yet they are curious about it,” Sloss said.
He’s targeting top-tier global athletes, a group he says consists of about 1,000 people that are typically between the ages of 21 and 36 with an average net worth of $100M to $600M. “Virtually every one of them has at least two million social media followers,” he said adding that he’s casting his net wide. “I want cricketers, I want dart throwers…I don’t really care but I’d love it to be across all sports globally.”
Vertical Leap currently has 10 members and Sloss is looking to get that number to 60. Each member pays $25,000 per year and then has access to the documentary projects, with an aim to build a production career for those members off the back of the program.
“As the head of a major sports league said to me when I pitched this idea, he said, ‘John, none of these guys will show up anywhere without being paid’ and I said, ‘I know that’s true of a lot of them, but I don’t believe that’s true of all of them,’” Sloss said. “I think they are curious about storytelling. Their careers don’t last forever and if we can create a resource for them and a way in to learn from the highest level, then we’re going to benefit everybody.”
He went on to say that because athletes have a direct route to their audience with their preexisting social media followers, if they were willing to promote their projects on their channels, that would help propel their projects to market.
“I could certainly see a future where there’s a Vertical Leap YouTube channel where many of these films live and actually can be profitable.”
Check out the full interview above.
