LeBron James changed NBA free agency forever by signing with the Miami Heat in 2010. He earned rebukes from all parties because of the optics of how he announced his decision. However, the TV program – aptly titled The Decision – made over $6 million for the Boys & Girls Club.
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Taking up a primetime 9 PM slot with ESPN on Thursday, the show was a 1-hour telecast. James caused an upheaval across NBA fandom with these words, 28 minutes into the show:
“In this fall… this is very tough… in this fall I’m going to take my talents to South Beach and join the Miami Heat.”
“I feel like it’s going to give me the best opportunity to win and to win for multiple years, and not only just to win in the regular season or just to win five games in a row or three games in a row, I want to be able to win championships. And I feel like I can compete down there.”
Despite the terrible optics, LeBron James raised millions for the Boys And Girls Club
The idea of announcing his free agency decision through a live TV broadcast was initially floated via a fan mail to ESPN. Bill Simmons, who worked for their Grantland blog at the time, made the initial pitch. He, however, backed off after the Cavs’ playoff exit against Boston.
However, the idea was brought to fruition by others at ESPN. According to Brian Windhorst, ESPN’s resident LeBron James insider, they decided to host the show at a Boys and Girls Club because of how he’d benefited from that institution during his early childhood.
James’ camp agreed to the idea and raised funding from their camps. In all, a sum of $2.5 million was raised for the charity, while nearly $4 million more flowed in through advertisements:
“Nike was willing to make a donation but didn’t want to take a visible position on the show, which ended up looking like a shrewd decision. Coca-Cola and Microsoft did get involved, buying ad time.”
“VitaminWater and Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, became cornerstone advertisers. The only advertiser who was outside the LeBron universe was the University of Phoenix, which bough the most ad time but donated some of it to the Boys and Girls Club.”
“These sales were very good; in all, around $4 million was generated, which is tremendous for any hour, much less one that didn’t have a live sporting event.”
James’ camp regretted the decision to televise his decision
Despite the villainous role that James had taken up in the eyes of the NBA fandom, the King undoubtedly had a great financial year as his jersey sales and shoe sales touched all-time highs.
However, he privately regretted the wording of how he announced his decision. According to Windhorst in LeBron Inc, David Stern had tried to talk his camp out of the proposed broadcast, but to no avail.
James put out a tweet into the summer that summed up his feelings after the event.
