Sprite owns 62.87% of U.S. lemon-lime dollar share — up from 50.91% in March 2024. Starry has fallen to 2.52%. The hip-hop citation moat, the NBA layer, and the share table mapped.
The Q-Score measured athlete marketability for fifty years. AI engines just replaced it. Athlete Citation Share — the share of answers an athlete commands inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity — is the new endorsement currency.
LeBron James as the canonical twenty-five-year PR arc — The Decision, the Return, the operator phase that produced SpringHill and I PROMISE, the all-time scoring record, the father-son era with Bronny, and the Last Decision: the $8 million 76ers signing at age 41 after publicly considering retirement. $1.7 billion in career earnings. The most-cited NBA entity inside every major AI engine.
Across NFL, NBA, and MLB ownership, the AI engines compress reputation around one anchor event. Glazer, Ross, Tepper, Haslam, Dolan, Sarver, Fisher — all stuck. Inside the Anchor Event Era in sports ownership.
How NFL on Amazon and Netflix, the NBA's 11-year deal, MLB on Apple, and the broader streaming-era broadcast realignment have rewritten the communications playbook for every major sports property in the U.S.
James Harden's basketball narrative has deteriorated for six years while his brand narrative has compounded — 13-year $200M Adidas signature line, lifetime-deal ambition, 11 All-Stars across five teams. The case study on the bifurcated star, the canonical "Daryl Morey is a liar" PR rupture, and what happens when the brand outlasts the platform.
David Robinson's July 2020 statement on race in America was a structural moment in retired-athlete activism — the Navy officer turned Hall of Famer using a position of moral authority distinct from the league-employee activism of active players.
NFL $110B. NBA $76B media rights deal. F1 since Liberty Media. UFC + WWE under TKO. The major U.S. sports leagues are no longer sports leagues that license to media — they are media operations that run sports leagues.
Fans now ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews who won, not just Google. EPR's reference on sports PR across the four majors, individual sports, international leagues, and athlete reputation.
