Travis Scott has accumulated several highly lucrative sponsorships this year, with ‘Fortnite’ earning him big V-Bucks and PlayStation projects in the works.
A recent Forbes 30 Under 30 report on Houston rapper Travis Scott focused on his commercial appeal rather than his musical output. While Scott — real name Jacques Webster II — did put out two number one singles this year in The Scotts and Franchise, he also secured partnerships with Epic Games, Sony, and McDonald’s, as well as building upon his existing Nike portfolio.
With the Macca’s collab, Scott became the first celebrity since Michael Jordan in 1992 to endorse a meal. The extremely unique meal of a Quarter Pounder with lettuce and bacon, a Sprite, and fries with BBQ sauce promptly sold out.
The Grammy-nominated rapper also released the usual run of merchandise in t-shirts and chicken nugget body pillows, with Forbes estimating that US$15 million in revenue was made from that drop alone, plus $5 million from the traditional endorsement part of the deal.
However, it is his gaming partnerships which are of particular importance. Back in April, Scott hosted the Astronomical tour in Fortnite which resulted in the game’s second-highest concurrent player count of all time – a monstrous 12.3 million.
Scott never visited Epic Games’ Raleigh, North Carolina headquarters, with company representatives instead being sent out to his Hollywood studio. Despite this, the deal reportedly grossed US$20 million including merchandise sales for t-shirts and Nerf guns.
For comparison, a single concert from last year’s Astroworld tour grossed around US$1.7 million, with the full tour grossing US$53.5 million.
Travis Scott is expected to earn more than 100M this year from corporate partnerships, via @Forbes. 💰💰 @trvisXX pic.twitter.com/OkuvdXqOPf
— Nice Kicks (@nicekicks) December 2, 2020
Scott’s Fortnite concert set a precedent for the rest of the industry, which has been hampered by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. With live performances all but a distant dream, many artists have taken to online to be able to perform. Following Scott, Epic Games booked Dominic Fike, Anderson .Paak, and BTS. Meanwhile, Roblox got Lil Nas X in the most memetic way possible.
The other gaming collaboration Travis Scott had this year was with PlayStation. The Sicko Mode rapper was employed by Sony as a “strategic creative partner” and featured in numerous advertisements, including one based on the “Blown Away Guy” commercials from Maxell. Merchandise has been released as well, including an extremely limited run of Nike SB Dunks.
The multi-year deal is allegedly worth only US$1 million, but could include a cobranded console and even a Travis Scott-designed video game which is expected to bring in around US$20 million. I, for one, welcome our new corporate overlord in Travis Scott.
