Kobe Bryant announced 2015-16 will be his last season in the NBA.
Where did Kobe Bryant announce retirement?
He announced it on The Player's Tribune with a short poem.
Kobe Bryant announcement on Facebook
He posted it to his 20M Facebook audience.
Dear Basketball: playerstribu.ne/dearbball #KB20
Posted by Kobe Bryant on Sunday, November 29, 2015
Kobe Bryant announcement on Twitter
And to his nearly 8M followers on Twitter
Dear Basketball: https://t.co/KDecft6BO2 #KB20
— Kobe Bryant (@kobebryant) November 29, 2015
Nice touch by Lakers for fans at tonight's game.
All 18,997 in attendance tonight will receive a copy of @kobebryant's "Dear Basketball" letter. pic.twitter.com/iV1V7V0i2E
— Los Angeles Lakers (@Lakers) November 30, 2015
Nothing on Instagram
Surprisingly nothing on his Instagram @KobeBryant
Kobe Bryant retirement traffic stats
One of the first things we did after seeing the announcement is check out much traffic he drove to The Players Tribune by a simple check you can use to check the stats of a Bit.ly link.
Sports Geek Tip: How to check traffic on a Bit.ly link
Simply add a plus to the end of the Bit.ly link to check it's traffic.
Kobe shared http://playerstribu.ne/dearbball to check the Bit.ly stats go here http://playerstribu.ne/dearbball+
First of all he crashed The Players Tribune website
Looks like @kobebryant has crashed @PlayersTribune website as Editorial Editor is is yelling at Jeter or Durant? pic.twitter.com/Ivg62Qh2Rk
— Sean Callanan (@seancallanan) November 30, 2015
But look at the numbers in just over 2 hours. Get live update here (look at what happened when LeBron joined Twitter)
![Kobe Bryant shows how athletes can drive web traffic Kobe Bryant shows how much power athlete wield online](https://sportsgeekhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/KobeBryantTraffic-2-483x1024.jpg)
Checking in on the stats and reports one day later this article on Forbes raised some good points on lack of technical infrastructure on The Player's Tribune but I disagree they should be using Medium as a publishing platform. Why build an asset on someone else's land when you can built it on your own?
Missed opportunity
Kobe now selling merch on his website, how many T-shirts would have been sold if the Dear Basketball letter included a link?
Kobe Announcement 24 hours on
24 hours later Twitter still drove over 50% of traffic on the original link shared by Kobe on Twitter & Facebook, now at 1.5M clicks. Twitter wins the breaking news smackdown here. Get live update here
![KobeBryant24HourTraffic Kobe Bryant drove 1.5M clicks via his own social media channels](https://sportsgeekhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/KobeBryant24HourTraffic-2-479x1024.png)
Kobe Bryant retirement explodes on Twitter
Sports Geek Take on Kobe Bryant Announcement
Again this shows the power that athletes hold now with their own social platforms:
- Athletes remain the most coveted celebrities by Facebook & Twitter
- Athletes can rival media platforms and can drive traffic
- Athletes who understand and leverage social media will be highly sought after by sponsors
- The Players Tribune is driving the “own the platform” model giving athletes a voice
- Missed opportunity for Kobe to build his own database to truly own the platform
- Why not offer a email sign up to get a copy of the Dear Basketball letter in PDF form?
- With a follow up opportunity to buy a hard copy like they handed out at Lakers game?
- If Cards Against Humanity can raise $71K selling nothing no doubt this would have raised $100K+
More on Kobe's retirement on next Sports Geek Podcast.