The new short-form streaming service Quibi launched last month, and is generally understood as having gotten off to a terrible start. None of its shows have gotten much buzz, while its app has dropped off the App Store charts. While the coronavirus quarantines have benefited most streaming services, that wasn’t the case for Quibi, which is meant to live only on mobile devices.
But now, there’s been a bit of news involving Quibi, LeBron James, and a star baseball player which may very well represent Quibi’s largest impact on the world to date.
As reported by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, Houston Astros outfielder Alex Bregman has announced that he’s firing his agents and seeking new representation. Why is he doing this? Bregman’s previous agent recently joined up with Klutch Sports, the firm with which LeBron James is associated.
LeBron, through his media company Uninterrupted, recently announced plans to produce a documentary series, for Quibi, about the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal. That scandal, in which the Astros were found to have cheated when they won the World Series in 2017, took place with Bregman on the team, and led to the suspension and firing of the Astros’ manager and general manager. Bregman was not personally implicated in the scandal; no current Astros player was punished by the team or by Major League Baseball.
The documentary is expected to be titled “Sign Language.”
“One source, however, said Bregman felt angry and betrayed [agent Rob] Scoffield put him in a position in which a fellow Klutch client — the biggest star in the NBA — would help develop a series focusing on the darkest moment of his career,” Rosenthal reported. The report also said that Bregman may have been unhappy with certain clauses in the $100 million contract that Scoffield negotiated for him with the Astros.
LeBron had tweeted about the scandal at the time when it was on the news, which now feels like years ago:
Listen I know I don’t play baseball but I am in Sports and I know if someone cheated me out of winning the title and I found out about it I would be F*^king irate! I mean like uncontrollable about what I would/could do! Listen here baseball commissioner listen to your…..
— LeBron James (@KingJames) February 18, 2020
The documentary, assuming Quibi remains financially solvent long enough for it to be produced and released, isn’t the only intriguing project about the Astros scandal.
Ben Reiter, a longtime writer for Sports Illustrated, covered the team for many years, and even wrote a book, Astroball, about how the Astros built their championship team, while specifically lauding many of the team employees later linked to the scandal.
After weeks of silence after news broke of the cheating, Reiter announced that he’s working on a podcast about the scandal, with a TV adaptation also in the works.
