How Ted Lasso Became A Multi-Million-Dollar Business
Huddle Up is a 3x weekly newsletter that breaks down the business and money behind sports. If you are not already a subscriber, sign up and join 94,000+ others who receive it directly in their inbox each week. Today’s Newsletter Is Brought To You By Sorare!
Sorare is one of the fastest-growing companies in sports. Backed by superstar athletes like Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé, Rudy Gobert, Aaron Judge, and Serena Williams, they have built blockchain technology that allows fans to collect officially licensed NFT-backed player cards. Sorare, which started in Europe with fantasy football games, recently launched exclusive licensing deals with the MLB/MLBPA and NBA/NBPA to create a custom fantasy game for each sport. The concept is simple: Sorare lets you buy, sell, trade, and earn digital trading cards of your favorite players. But rather than just looking at them as a digital collectible, you can use these trading cards to enter fantasy sports competitions for prizes & rewards. So use my link below for a free limited card — it’s free to get started! Friends, Ted Lasso Season 3 premieres today, Wednesday, March 15. The show initially launched during COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, and the Apple TV+ comedy has since experienced a meteoric rise in the world of entertainment, sports, and pop culture. The show’s plot is simple: An American football coach is unexpectedly hired to manage a fictional English Premier League soccer team, AFC Richmond, despite having no experience coaching soccer. The team’s owner, Rebecca Welton, wants the team to fail so that she can get revenge on the previous owner, her unfaithful ex-husband. But the coach’s charm, personality, and humor eventually take over, and everyone falls in love with his goofy, unapologetic coaching style. And the results speak for themselves. For example, Ted Lasso was renewed for a third season before the second season had even debuted. The show has also been nominated for forty Emmy Awards over the last two years — they won eleven, including Outstanding Comedy Series in 2022 — and lead actor/writer Jason Sudeikis now makes $1 million per episode. But here’s the most interesting part: Ted Lasso co-creators Jason Sudeikis, Brendan Hunt, and Joe Kelly have been best friends for 20+ years, and they initially came up with the Ted Lasso character while performing comedy together in the early 2000s. The Ted Lasso character then became the focal point of an NBC marketing campaign in 2013. And with the show’s success over the past few years, the character has become a multi-million-dollar brand, signing merchandise and licensing deals with companies like Nike, the Premier League, EA Sports, and FIFA. So today’s newsletter breaks down the history of Ted Lasso, including how the character was initially created and its impressive commercialization since.
The Ted Lasso story starts in the early 2000s. Brendan Hunt was living in Amsterdam while working for an improv comedy group called Boom Chicago. He was a Chicago Bears fan who despised soccer and its “archaic rules” — but he quickly fell in love with European football after being swept up by the sport’s culture in Amsterdam. Jason Sudeikis then joined Boom Chicago in Amsterdam and, like many Americans at the time, knew nothing about European football. So he bought a PlayStation, and Sudeikis and Hunt played the soccer video game “FIFA” before and after every show. Hunt would create American-based analogies for each team that came on screen, and Sudeikis quickly fell in love with the sport too. And it was during these backstage video game sessions that Sudeikis, Hunt, and Kelly came up with the idea of an American football coach coaching an English football team while knowing nothing about the sport — and the Ted Lasso character was officially born. Well, kind of. The Ted Lasso character marinated in their minds for more than a decade before the opportunity to bring him to life came in 2013. NBC Sports had just signed a $250 million deal to broadcast English Premier League matches in the United States, and they asked Sudeikis, who was finishing a 10-year stint at Saturday Night Live, to create a promo for the network. So Sudeikis, Hunt, and Kelly used the Ted Lasso character to create an NBC promo called ” An American Coach in London.” The idea was simple: Sudeikis played Ted Lasso, an American Coach named the new manager of Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur F.C., despite having no clue about the rules of European football. And the commercial was a massive success. For example, the two Ted Lasso promos — the initial one in 2013 (19 million views) and the sequel in 2014 (9 million views) — have combined for 28 million views. And NBC even recently paid $2.7 billion to extend its Premier League broadcasting agreement for an additional six years.
The trio of writers — Sudeikis, Hunt, and Kelly — then sat down in 2015 and decided to turn Ted Lasso into its own show. They had a pilot and framework for 6 to 10 episodes done within a week, but the project fell flat and sat dormant for 2+ years. This is where Bill Lawrence comes in. Lawrence is a TV producer most famously known for creating the show Scrubs, and he agreed to partner with the writers after Sudeikis explained the idea to him during a pick-up basketball game in 2017. But there was one caveat: “He basically pounded the table and shouted at a very early writer’s session ‘This is not a soccer show. This is a workplace ensemble comedy.’ Still, studios didn’t jump at the idea. Sudeikis and Lawrence pitched the show to every streaming service you could imagine, and Apple TV+ finally took a chance in 2019. “If anybody claims that they thought this show or they knew this show was gonna work, they’re fibbing a little bit,” says producer Bill Lawrence. “No one was sure.” The first season of Ted Lasso premiered on Apple TV+ on August 14, 2020, and the show was an immediate success. For example, Apple TV+ doesn’t release hard viewership numbers. But season 1’s premiere episode was the streaming service’s most-watched premiere episode ever — and after the show was renewed for season 2, the premiere episode of season 2 was 6x bigger than the premiere episode of season 1. And those viewership numbers have translated into awards, too, with Ted Lasso being nominated for a record 20 Emmy nominations in back-to-back years in 2021 and 2022.
But more importantly, Apple TV+ and the show’s creators have quickly turned Ted Lasso into a commercial success. For example, Nike recently signed a sponsorship deal to become the official kit supplier of the show’s fictional team AFC Richmond, and they are now selling AFC Richmond gear on their website, including $35 t-shirts, $50 scarves, and $105 jerseys.
Ted Lasso has also signed a partnership deal with EA Sports, allowing people to use AFC Richmond and its players in their video game FIFA 23. And they even signed a $680,000 licensing agreement with the Premier League last year, enabling Apple TV+ to use archive footage, logos, club kits, and the league trophy in season 3. The show has also collaborated with ice cream brand Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams on a “Biscuits with the Boss” flavor, and Airbnb is now offering fans the chance to stay at The Crown & Anchor (the local pub that they use in the show) for just $13 per night. 
Airbnb is offering fans the chance to sleep at the local pub from Ted Lasso for just $13 a night 🔥 They’ll select three winners, who can each bring four guests, for a one-night stay on October 23-25.
And this commercial success has translated into big money for the Ted Lasso cast. For example, Jason Sudeikis will earn $1 million per episode this season after making $250,000 to $300,000 for seasons 1 and 2. Hannah Waddingham, Brett Goldstein, Juno Temple, and Brendan Hunt will earn $125,000 to $150,000 per episode after making $50,000 to $75,000 for seasons 1 and 2. And showrunner Bill Lawrence signed a new 5-year deal with Warner Bros. Television worth nine figures, according to Variety. Fun Fact: Brett Goldstein, who became a 2x Emmy winner for his role as Roy Kent, was initially hired to write on the show, not act. But after feeling a connection to the character he created, Goldstein put together a tape of himself acting as Roy and sent it to Bill Lawrence — and Lawrence immediately gave him the role as an actor too.
So while Ted Lasso was conceived in a backstage comedy room in Amsterdam more than 20 years ago, the fictional character has since turned into much more than that. Jason Sudeikis previously hinted that the show would end after its 3rd season, saying, “this is the end of the story that we wanted to tell.” But co-creator Brendan Hunt has publicly admitted that their decision to end the story after three seasons “did not include the reaction the show would be getting” and that spinoffs might be coming. But regardless, Apple TV+ has a hit on its hands. Ted Lasso has captured the imagination of people worldwide, whether they like soccer or not, and it’s doubtful that Apple TV+ would just let one of its most popular shows fade into darkness. If you enjoyed this breakdown, please consider sharing it with your friends. My team and I work hard to create high-quality content, and every new subscriber helps. I hope everyone has a great day. We’ll talk on Friday. Interested in advertising with Huddle Up? Email me. Your feedback helps me improve Huddle Up. How did you like today’s post? Loved | Great | Good | Meh | Bad Extra Credit: The NHL Brings 3D Animation To Disney ChannelThe National Hockey League (NHL) partnered with Disney Channel to produce its first-ever game in real-time 3D animation yesterday. The broadcast utilized the chips embedded within each puck and player’s jersey to recreate the footage in real-time, and it gives us a glimpse into how sports leagues will try to attract younger fans.
The NHL partnered with Disney to broadcast its first-ever game in 3D animation yesterday. The broadcast used tracking chips embedded within the puck and player jerseys to recreate a real-time animated version of the game on Disney Channel. Pretty cool 🤯
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