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.”
Carter and James, who played high school basketball together in Akron, Ohio, have been improvising like this off the court for almost two decades. Their partnership has strengthened as each has matured—Carter as a thoughtful and strategic CEO; James as a professional athlete whose brand and identity extends into social justice. Together, they’ve built the SpringHill Company into a multipronged entertainment empire that furthers their goals to build a movement, empowering communities while striving for the excellence of Disney, Nike, and Apple. The company has married its mission of promoting people of color and other underrepresented groups with entertainment. “They want to make content that’s meaningful and rooted in the cultural conversation,” says Courtney Sexton, senior VP of CNN Films, which is a producer on SpringHill’s forthcoming documentary on Tulsa’s Black Wall Street and the 1921 race massacre.
Until recently, SpringHill was a loosely organized constellation of production and marketing arms, but last summer James and Carter unified the company under one banner, raising $100 million and intensifying its sense of purpose. In the months since, SpringHill has signed a flurry of deals with Amazon, Netflix, Sirius, and Universal, among others, cementing its position as a powerful player in Hollywood. “We’re always pulling that thread of our mission in everything that we do and bring to life,” says Carter, a boyish 39-year-old whose laid-back vibe belies what his many admirers describe as his deep commitment to understanding every aspect of the business.
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