Sports Stars' Branded Apps Hit the Mobile Market

John Shahidi’s five-employee startup, RockLive, wasn’t expecting a call from the world’s fastest man. The summer before last year’s Olympics, managers for Usain Bolt wanted the app developer to help enhance the sprinter’s brand for the London Games. With the Jamaican runner expected to win several gold medals (he ended up with three), his management wanted to make use of his online followers to increase his commercial value to sponsors such as Gatorade, Puma, and Hublot Swiss watches. Shahidi’s team built a simple action game, Bolt!, in which the athlete fights off pirates to claim his gold, with the occasional Gatorade energy boost. The free app has been downloaded more than 3 million times.

From Tiger Woods and former Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner to Ultimate Fighting Championship’s Georges St-Pierre, current and former sports stars are contracting with software developers to launch branded apps and expand their marketing reach. “We’ve been approached by a ton of different athletes,” says Shahidi, whose first app, RunPee, tells filmgoers the ideal times to take bathroom breaks based on lulls in movies’ plots. He’s also built a soccer app for Real Madrid forward Cristiano Ronaldo and a boxing app for Mike Tyson. “With their growing numbers on social media, they have the power to build something that they can co-own vs. just giving their name out as part of a licensing deal,” he says.