Marketing Tu(Tour)ial: What We Can Learn from Will Smith’ Album Launch 🎶
Distribution today is about tapping attention rather than buying space. And creators are the infrastructure that makes that possible...
On today’s episode, I’m joined by Vansa Chatikavanij, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Present Ventures, a firm investing in emerging leagues, media, and fan-driven technology.
In this conversation, we explore the investment thesis behind Present Ventures, why community is increasingly the engine behind commerce, and what the rise of alternative leagues and women’s sports tells us about the next generation of fans.
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BIG IDEA
Marketing Tu(Tour)ial: What We Can Learn from Will Smith’ Album Launch 🎶
Will Smith recently launched his first album in nearly 20 years, but his approach was far from old school.
Instead, he invited a dozen creators to The Lighthouse, a creator campus in Venice, California, and let internet word-of-mouth take over.
“This was the new press tour,” said Vansa Chatikavanij, Partner at Present Ventures, on the Sports Pundit Podcast. “Rather than doing a global tour… he invited a handful of creators to spend 90 minutes with him and reached over half a billion audience. And that was it.”
Smith’s campaign provides us more than a glimpse of where media is heading.
Distribution today is about tapping attention rather than buying space. And creators are the infrastructure that makes that possible. To leverage that, Smith made himself the centre of gravity rather than going from outlet to outlet.
Creators came to him, each producing something suited to their own style, from comedy sketches to lip-syncs to behind-the-scenes reels. It looked spontaneous, but the coordination behind it was deliberate. The goal was to show up natively, where audiences already spend their time: TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat etc. etc.
“How you market 10 years ago, five years ago, versus how you market to fans today can be so much more cost effective,” Chatikavanij said. “You don’t need to show up in 100 places. You need to show up on 100 pages.”
The venue, in many ways, epitomised the strategy. The Lighthouse was built by Whalar as a hybrid between studio and clubhouse. Its limited creator cohort is overseen by a council co-chaired by Colin and Samir. It’s designed for the next generation of storytellers and really showed Smith’s intentions.
This mindset is starting to shape sport too, where creator-led distribution is beginning to define how new leagues launch and grow. It’s central to Chatikavanij’s thesis as a co-founder at Present Ventures.
She calls this ‘Sports 3.0,’ a model that puts community, content, and commerce at the centre of the industry.
Their investment in Good Good Golf is a great example.
“YouTube golf had more than 4.3 billion views in the last 90 days,” Chatikavanij said. “It’s a massive white space that people are just starting to understand how to monetise.”
Good Good started as a group of friends filming casual golf challenges. Today, their YouTube channel has over 1.7 million subscribers. They’ve launched their own product line, partnered with Callaway, and now sponsor PGA Tour players like Michael Block and Joel Dahmen. They've become one of the most influential brands in golf without any traditional media footprint.
In February, the creator collective became part-owners of TGL’s LA Golf Club, bringing their audience and content instincts into one of sport’s newest league formats. It’s no coincidence that that format is also backed by Present Ventures, both at the league level and more recently through their investment in expansion franchise Motor City Golf Club.
You can already see how this plays out. As well as being investors, Good Good will likely be a key part of how LAGC, and the league more broadly, gets introduced to fans. That’s the difference between reach and resonance. You can advertise to people, or you can invite them in.
This model has particular potential in women’s sport, where budgets are smaller but digital fluency runs deep.
“The money coming into women’s sports is small compared to the men’s,” said Chatikavanij. “But having this technology and being able to be influencer-athletes opens up that world and opportunity.”
Alongside Unrivaled, a new 3x3 women’s basketball league, Present is backing TOGETHXR, the media and commerce brand co-founded by Alex Morgan, known for its viral “Everyone Watches Women’s Sports” t-shirts.
Each of these investments reflects the same belief: when content, identity, and community align, people don’t only consume, they participate.
Like Will Smith’s album drop, the opportunity lies in rethinking distribution. It means loosening the reins from the old guard and trusting in new methods of delivery. Ones that don’t simply sell your story, but help people to tell their own.
As Chatikavanij surmised “The way to reach a young audience is to reach out and really borrow the influence of the other people that have these kids' eyes and ears and attention.”
SP PODCAST
#57 Vansa Chatikavanij [#57]: Investing in a New Era of Sports and Entertainment at Present Ventures ⛳️
On today’s episode, I’m joined by Vansa Chatikavanij, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Present Ventures, a firm investing in emerging leagues, media, and fan-driven technology.
Vansa’s background is as global and multidisciplinary as it gets, from advising on water and climate projects at the World Bank, to building billion-dollar web3 infrastructure in Asia, to now shaping the future of sport through investments in companies like Togethxr, Unrivaled, and Good Good Golf.
In this conversation, we explore the investment thesis behind Present Ventures, why community is increasingly the engine behind commerce, and what the rise of alternative leagues and women’s sports tells us about the next generation of fans.
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