SpringHill – More Than a Startup

LeBron James and Maverick Carter’s SpringHill Company has become a media and branding juggernaut that empowers communities and is built for the future.

- By Nicole LaPorte and Jeff Beera

The morning of January 8, just a day and a half after a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, the nonprofit More Than a Vote released a response video. Less than a minute long, the montage depicts professional athletes taking a knee and wearing Black Lives Matter T-shirts and Black Americans casting votes in Georgia, alongside footage from the insurrection. With a sepia tone that evokes news footage of 1960s civil rights protests and dynamic graphics that convey urgency, the video presents a powerful contrast between peaceful political efforts by Black Americans and white barbarians at the gate.

More Than a Vote, which NBA star LeBron James and his business partner Maverick Carter launched last June, had initially planned a more celebratory piece of content for that day. It had partnered with Stacey Abrams’s Fair Fight Action and successfully mobilized voters in Georgia to elect Democrats Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock, the state’s first Black senator. But as the Capitol siege unfolded, James was reminded of playing basketball growing up. “There were always these entitled kids that would come to the park, and if things didn’t go their way, they would take their ball and leave and ruin it for everyone,” he recalls, a few weeks after the mayhem. “I began to think about what I can do, as an ambassador, as a leader, as someone who has a platform.” More Than a Vote promptly changed its video to offer a pointed commentary on the day. “We’re a 21st-century company, and in this time, you have to be able to react quickly or else you miss a moment,” Carter says, “and miss a chance to empower someone.”