LeBron James Launches YouTube Golf Channel
“Welcome to the LeBron James golf YouTube channel! Today the channel launches with its debut episode that follows LeBron and members of the storied 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers championship team as they celebrate the 10-year anniversary of their historic comeback that brought the Cavs franchise its first title with a memorable golf trip to Scotland. LeBron hits the links with Kevin Love, J.R. Smith, Richard Jefferson, Tristan Thompson and Channing Frye at Castle Stuart Golf Links at Cabot Highlands. Come along the elite reunion trip where the reminiscing, wine and hilarious commentary are flowing.”
A little over four months on from his inaugural YouTube golf appearance, LeBron James has officially launched his own channel. Aptly named ‘LeBron James’, the channel’s first video dropped on Saturday, August 15, documenting the much-publicised Cleveland Cavaliers championship reunion in Scotland.
The debut video is titled ‘The 2016 Cavs 10-Year Anniversary Golf Trip to Scotland’ and comes in at a little over an hour and a half. The golf, it’s safe to say, is of varying quality – LeBron claims to be a 22-handicap and most of the others aren’t much better, though JR Smith is a legitimately good player. But as Bobby Berger has demonstrated, you don’t need to be a great golfer to make a popular YouTube golf channel.
What can we expect on the channel?
If you’re thinking, “Hang on a second, LeBron James is still an active NBA player trying to finish off perhaps the greatest career in the history of the sport with a fifth championship, in Philadelphia, while managing his family of five living on the other side of the country – how often is he going to be posting YouTube golf videos,” then you’re probably not alone.
The new channel will launch a new episode monthly, dropping on Saturdays. As for what sort of content we’ll be getting, the description from the inaugural video gives us some good insight:
“Follow along as LeBron brings his friends and fans along for the journey as golf takes him to some of the world’s greatest courses. Come for the game, stay for the great local food, wine, and a whole lot of laughs along the way.”
Sounds good to us. Whether LeBron will be filming during the NBA season or has some pre-recorded content ready to go remains to be seen, though clearly he’s not going to be sitting at home editing them himself. All he really needs is a few spare hours and an interesting enough playing partner, and he’ll have himself a video.
Wait, why does LeBron have a YouTube golf channel?
LeBron’s budding interest in golf, and more specifically YouTube golf, has been simmering away for a while now. He first picked up the game when he turned 40, wanting to try his hand at something that he would find a little more challenging than basketball (and based on his swing, he does).
Naturally, that interest in golf eventually led him to YouTube, and after a little bit of online flirting with Horvat and the Bryan Bros, the 41-year-old Sixer (that’s right, Sixer) made his debut appearance in the space alongside Bob Does Sports. That video has amassed over 3.5 million views to date, around 2.5 times more than the average video on that channel.
Watch out Bryson!?
As that video showed, LeBron James has plenty of pulling power. The guy could start a knitting channel and would likely get millions of subscribers, so in an already popular space like YouTube golf, it’s safe to assume that his videos will be pretty popular. At the time of writing, that debut video was launched 18 hours ago, and already it has hit 800,000 views. By the time you read this, it will be a lot more.
The channel itself has 350k subscribers and growing fast – for reference, he’s already gone past plenty of big YTG names, including Taco Golf, and is closing in on halfway to Peter Finch and the Bryan Bros. All this within the space of less than one day. This is a sentence I never thought I’d write – give it a few weeks, and LeBron could have one of the biggest YouTube golf channels going around.
