Floyd Mayweather, Keylor Navas or Lance Armstrong? Who charges more for a virtual greeting

In times of the coronavirus pandemic, encounters between fans with their sports idols decreased or in some cases disappeared due to latent fear that they would contract the disease. For this reason, in the United States they created Cameo, an application in which, paying a certain amount of euros, fans can contact the athletes, who send them a warm greeting. Keylor Navas, Floyd Mayweather, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Lance Armstrong are just some of the athletes featured in the App.

The range of celebrities is wide on Cameo, the American platform that connects celebrities with their fans in which, like many other athletes, Jabbar registered. The public does not hesitate to pay a few euros, even several thousand, to get a personalized video of their idol, whatever the activity. The French sports newspaper L’Equipe maintains that there are television stars there, such as David Hasselhoff, the actor from “Baywatch”; musicians, celebrities from social networks or reality shows, journalists and athletes such as Lance Armstrong or Floyd Mayweather, who indulge in these virtual dedications for a price set at 820 euros. 

The idea for this surprising market came to mind from Martin Blencowe, a 34-year-old Englishman who has lived on the west coast of the United States for a decade. In 2016, this film producer who is also the agent of NFL player Cassius Marsh asked him to record a video to congratulate a friend on the birth of his son. "My friend loved it," Blencowe recalls from his home in Los Angeles. “I told a colleague (Steven Galanis) about it and we got to thinking about this idea. In October of that same year, we told the athletes and emphasized the potential new source of income for them off the court”.

Blencowe has just joined the Costa Rican goalkeeper Keylor Navas, from PSG, and dreams of attracting the 1998 world champions. “I grew up in England, I watched the France-Brazil final of the World Cup in 1998 ... It can only be fan of that team, with Barthez, Leboeuf, Petit ... But some are not comfortable with social networks, it can be a brake”.