John Sloss’s Cinetic Media has launched Vertical Leap, an investment vehicle and producing pathway for professional athletes.
The initiative is designed to give athletes/members “a working seat inside Cinetic’s slate, with access to rough cuts, creative input, and the same industry guidance the company provides the filmmakers behind its most successful projects.”
The end goal is for member athletes to build a production career off the back of their training in the program.
Cost for athletes to become members is $25,000 per year with participants pitched a minimum of 10 documentary projects “vetted from established, profitable directors and producers”.
Investors are then able to back additional projects should they get the bug. The opportunities are in docs for now, but Sloss told Deadline that members are already asking about potential investment in non-doc projects.
Sloss says he has signed up 10 “prominent” athletes, with plans to expand the pool up to 50 current and former players. He’s keen to attract athletes from different sports — including tennis, hockey, cricket, darts etc — but says so far the biggest demand has come from NFL and NBA. Deadline understands that three college footballers — from the Michigan Wolverines — are pooling part of their NIL together for a membership.
To fuel the new initiative two people have been repositioned from the Cinetic team and Sloss says he expects to add a few more employees for the label. The program was trailed in Puck yesterday and Sloss will discuss it publicly for the first time on stage at today’s Zurich Summit.
Said Cinetic founder and CEO, John Sloss: “Vertical Leap offers a pathway for elite athletes to support commercial, impactful documentaries, while learning the ins-and-outs of film production from the most experienced storytellers working today. It is also a way for them to build something lasting beyond their playing days, expanding their brand, deepening their creative voice, and putting real equity behind the stories they believe in.”
He continued: “For the documentary community, Vertical Leap brings the adrenaline jolt of a new class of collaborators, athletes with real creative instincts and the reach to bring documentary storytelling to audiences who might not otherwise find it.”
