His app.
His audience.
Six numbers. One minute. What a fan app is worth to Damian Lillard.
Instagram followers. Rented, not owned.
Instagram decides who sees each post, and it keeps the data. An app is a direct line: a push alert on game night, his own list of fans, and numbers his team can see.
Downloads in year one
About 14,000 people open it every day by month 12. Past 1 million downloads by year three.
Views of his content in year one
Every one of them inside his app, not on someone else's platform. That is the inventory a sponsor pays for.
For fans. One partner covers most of it.
No paywall on anything fans came for. The money comes from three places, per year:
A year, after Apple and Google take their cut
Running it costs about $250K a year. It covers that and stays in the black from year two.
Celebrity apps have a graveyard
They didn't fail on demand. They ran out of things to show, and the star stopped showing up.
This one runs on his stories, his family, his music and every game night. There's a reason to open it every day of the season.
Three costs
A 90-day soft launch. Then we swap these guesses for real numbers.
The assumptions
- About 12 million people follow him across Instagram, Facebook and X, after overlap. 3% of them download the app in year one.
- 12% are still using it a month later. Fan apps for one person should beat the 3–9% that entertainment apps average.
- $300,000 in launch promo at about $3 per install, then 30% of that each year after.
- Normal seasons. No deep playoff run built in.
- 2% of monthly users buy the $29.99 Locker Pass. The presenting partner pays a $300,000 floor.
- Apple and Google take 25% of in-app payments, blended.
- Build, running and promo costs are US agency market rates. The full model shows every source and lets you change any of these.
