Kobe Bryant’s Retirement Post Had 1 Million Clicks In First Two Hours

When Kobe Bryant decided to share his intentions to retire after this season, his 20th, the way he did it was…different. Even though he did a press conference later that evening, he chose to share the news via Twitter and Facebook.

Both posts linked to a heartfelt poem about his career. It was hosted by Derek Jeter’s site The Players’ Tribune and the site immediately buckled under all of the attention.

I spoke with the company today about just how much Kobe Bryant’s announcement drove to his original post, and it was about 1 million clicks in the first two hours. I wonder how many attempts failed when the site crashed on and off for the first hour.

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(PHOTOGRAPH BY WALTER IOOSS JR./THE PLAYERS’ TRIBUNE)

I’m told that it was the most trafficked post to date, with over 750 sites linking to it thus far. Without Kobe’s post, the site is seeing success with nearly 2 million uniques a month and 4-5 minutes spent on the site for each story.

This is good news for Derek Jeter’s venture, which raised $9.5 million in June, since it aimed to take out the layers between fans and athletes, allowing the latter to share news in their voice with no filter.