Beyond Athlete Management, Chicago, IL
This summer, I interned with Beyond Athlete Management, a full-service NBA and NFL sports agency. Beyond represents a number of NBA players, including notable players such as Patrick McCaw, Mac McClung and Jae’Sean Tate, as well as numerous overseas professional basketball players. Beyond’s agents strive to distinguish themselves from other agencies with their personalized attention to each athlete on their roster. While many agencies attempt to sign as many players as they can each year, Beyond manages fewer players in order to ensure that they are able to be completely hands-on with all of their players’ needs, both on the court and off.
With Beyond, I was a member of the social media team, where I handled the planning and design primarily of Instagram stories and posts—as well as video content that would be used for the exposure of their players, both with prospective teams and on social media. I also created graphic posts highlighting tweets that mentioned Beyond athletes, such as those that praised their play during the season or shared news updates. Using Final Cut Pro to edit, I would add music and rearrange the clips to both match up with the music and showcase the players’ most translatable skills. For the social media versions of the highlight videos, I would focus on the players’ most exciting plays and moments as well as using B-roll to give each video a cinematic feel.
During NBA Summer League in July, I created daily schedule graphics with different players being spotlighted each day. This opened my eyes to the relationship aspect between agencies and their players, as our social media director, Andrew Canavos, and I had to be sure that certain players were showcased early on. The relationship between the agency and players is extremely important to retaining clients as well as attracting new ones because of the social aspect of the league. Players are always talking to each other, and both sides know that there are other agencies that would be sure to recruit them if given the opportunity.
My internship experience has allowed me to continue to explore my passions of sports, media and art and has shown me a glimpse into the professional sports landscape. I have been able to make connections not only with those at the agency but also with NBA team personnel and other agents. While in L.A. I was able to meet with an overseas professional basketball agent to hear more about their work and the differences between working in the NBA and with international basketball. This internship also showed me that I would love to work in a creative environment after graduation. Whether it is in the basketball world, music industry or in television/film, I really enjoyed being able to exercise my creativity in a professional setting.
Finally, I would like to sincerely thank Martha Williamson ’77 and Peter Nelson ’76 and the ’68 Center for their support in making this experience possible for me. I look forward to seeing where my work this summer leads me in my future career.
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