SpringHill Co., the entertainment company owned by basketball legend LeBron James and Maverick Carter, will be merging with British production company Fulwell 73. The merger is set to take place before January 2025.
The Merger
SpringHill Co. has produced sports content such as “Starting 5,” a ten-part docuseries and the comedic film “Hustle.” Fulwell 73 is a film and music production company responsible for shows such as “The Kardashians” and “Carpool Karaoke.”
The decision to merge companies was ideated by Carter and Fulwell 73’s co-founder, Ben Winston, who saw it as an opportunity to expand their respective brands’ reach in the entertainment industry. Winston was interested in SpringHill’s ability to consistently integrate content with branding, while Carter envied Fulwell’s ability to produce unscripted shows.
“We didn’t want to stand still and ultimately just be a production company where more and more you are in the services business,” Winston told Variety. “We’re producers for hire. It’s very, very difficult and the bar has changed a lot for us in a streaming-dominated world.”
The new company will have offices in Los Angeles, New York, London and Sunderland in the U.K.
The merger is coming with support from investors such as Fenway Sports Group, Nike, UC Investments, RedBird Capital Partners, Epic Games, Eldridge Industries, and Main Street Advisors. In addition, company shareholders will be able to invest an extra $40 million to support the newly branded company growth initiatives.
Carter and Winston first began talking about merging about 13 months ago in a parking lot after having dinner together, said Winston, who added he always admired SpringHill’s ability to blend branding and content. Carter and Winston began their professional relationship over ten years ago when working with television producer Tom Werner.
“We looked at SpringHill and the impact they have in the branding world. We looked at their commercials agency. We looked at Robot. And we also looked at the shows that they’ve done, like ‘The Shop,” which is a show that starts on Max, and then moves to YouTube, where they control the rights,” Winston said. “There are brands involved in that show in a meaningful way, and now it has ended up in a load of products that you can buy in Walmart. If we’d had that mentality back in the ‘Carpool Karaoke’ days, it would have been a very, very different outlook for us.”
“Although the entertainment world is changing and moving, the one thing that will never change, no matter how it gets distributed … is that if you make great content with amazing talent and great stars, viewers will want it,” Carter told Variety. “We believe we now have best-in-class capability to do that, and we have the best relationships with talent.”
