The estate starts liquidating memorabilia after shutting down fakes and other unauthorized sales. Every star planner needs to digest the details here.
Kobe Bryant left behind a substantial collection of souvenirs, including jerseys and a lot of autographed material.
A lot of stars do that. Every high-profile career generates a mountain of stuff that’s worth a lot more than replacement value.
Celebrity itself is a currency. And that means that controlling access to the products of that celebrity becomes big business in itself, especially when the star is gone.
Memorabilia needs to become part of every estate plan for any client with a famous name.
After all, when you’re Kobe Bryant’s survivors, every pair of shoes left behind is a lot more than trash.
Kobe’s widow Vanessa has authorized an auction of some of the choicest pieces in his closet. It’s on track to bring in at least $3 million.
That’s not a lot by Bryant standards. Maybe $150,000 of that money will go to the family’s sports education foundation.
The rest will go back to the estate. Think of it as a trial run and not a final act.
Test the future
Vanessa needs to test all the systems of posthumous merchandising. Kobe’s image and “endorsement” act like an autograph, validating products and projects she thinks are worth his name.
He could be the first of a new wave of beyond-the-grave influencers. And if not him, then someone watching Vanessa’s moves will undoubtedly figure out how to keep the sponsorship engine humming after the star is gone.
All that’s required is a reasonable way to determine which contracts the star would have signed. What are the criteria? How did the decision processes flow?
Someone who includes those parameters in their estate documents can instruct the estate’s use of postmortem posterity rights. Naturally, the courts will decide how far they apply, but getting the instructions on record is crucial.
Then it’s a matter of someone deciding to market the licenses with the guiding hand of the celebrity behind them.
Think of what’s happened with stars like Prince and Frank Zappa. The rights to the recordings are so muddled that the estate needs years to sort out a way to turn them into money.
Turning genius into algorithms that can then be re-licensed to create derivative material is the next step beyond that. Every maestro has a method.
If an investor can patent a methodology, other intellectual property is on the table. The rights to copy Kobe’s signature moves and style of play are theoretically open now.
There are people selling these techniques on YouTube right now.
Work them into a video game. Make a video or a hologram from them. Play virtual NBA tournaments. He’ll never play another flesh-and-blood game, but we live in an increasingly virtual world.
The hologram can star in commercials and lend its aura to any product that the estate decides to endorse.
Lock out competitors early
Of course rights require exclusivity. These auctions have been relentless when it comes to exposing rival sellers with unauthorized fakes.
Kobe himself was very strict about his parents selling his memorabilia when he was alive. Vanessa and her advisors have taken an even stricter approach.
If it doesn’t come with authentication from the estate, it’s not investment-grade merchandise. The estate controls access to the standard.
It’s worth thinking about, with messy family feuds like the one over Jimi Hendrix as cautionary tales. As this preliminary auction reveals, there’s real money in this stuff every star leaves behind.
In the past, much of the money in these auctions has gone to charity in order to conserve the estate’s liquid assets for the heirs. The donation creates a tax offset.
That seems to be going on here. But it’s also about creating a legacy by funding the foundation for the long haul.
Vanessa wants the family name to remain vibrant. Giving the non-profit organization the equivalent of a few boxes of old stuff is how she does it.
It’s just that in this situation those few boxes of old stuff are incredibly valuable to fans who are in mourning too. Now’s the time to convert it into cash.
As long as people remember his name, it's worth something.
