Forced by the NCAA to choose between playing college football or his YouTube channel, kicker Donald De La Haye made the tough decision to pursue his online video career.
"Honestly, the best advise anyone gave me was make the choice with your heart, and decide based on what you wanted to do," De La Haye said. "That turned out to be making content that people enjoy."
The decision to choose YouTube may already be paying off. His channel is skyrocketing in popularity, with more than 197,000 subscribers and 9.65 million views. it caught the attention of Whistle Sports, who signed him onto their network of creators in August. Whistle, which has more than 375 million followers across social media, has raised $80.5 million in funding from sports greats Peyton Manning and Derek Jeter, as well as Tengelmann Ventures, NBC Sports Ventures, Emil Capital Partners and Sky.
"We want to take his really unique point of view and sports and bring it to the forerefront, and give him a chance to express himself 24-7 and be the voice of the next generation of sports fans," said Whistle Sports co-founder and chief marketing officer Jeff Urban.