Taylor Swift was lauded for dodging an FTX sponsorship. Michael Lewis’s latest book says that isn’t the full story
New details have emerged about a potential multimillion-dollar sponsorship between Taylor Swift and FTX that broke down last year after months of negotiations, according to the latest book by The Big Short author Michael Lewis.
In the book, Lewis confirmed previous reporting by the New York Times that claimed Swift’s team had signed a deal with FTX after earlier reports credited her with dodging a landmine. The deal would’ve reportedly paid Swift between $25 million and $30 million annually, Lewis wrote in Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon, which debuted on Tuesday. The deal, according to Lewis, didn’t go through only because Bankman-Fried dragged his feet.
“‘[Swift] wanted to do it,” Natalie Tien, a former FTX employee and Bankman-Fried’s personal scheduler, told Lewis. “But Sam kept postponing on response to her team.”
Lewis added: “Another person intimately involved with the negotiation between Swift and FTX said, ‘Taylor did not turn it down. They were waiting for Sam to sign it when he didn’t.’”
When the failed tour-sponsorship deal was revealed publicly earlier this year, Swift was hailed for her business savvy. Adam Moskowitz, a Florida attorney who’s representing plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against celebrities and influencers who promoted FTX, said in an April podcast interview that Swift walked away from the deal after she asked whether the exchange was listing unregistered securities. Moskowitz later clarified that he had no inside information on the negotiations between Swift and FTX.
It also was reported later that Swift hadn’t actually shut down the deal and that former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, whose trial began Tuesday, had been the one to walk away after “a group of FTX executives” convinced him to back out, according to CNBC.
Now, it seems that the deal falling apart may have had less to do with either party’s business sense than SBF’s strange personality—this “ghosting” behavior being common for Bankman-Fried, Lewis writes in the book. SBF was quick to change priorities and could still bail at the last second if he suddenly deemed something else a greater priority.
Following this logic, SBF at the last minute decided not to attend the Met Gala, much to the chagrin of fashion icon Anna Wintour. He also bailed on a Time magazine party to honor the world’s 100 Most Influential People at which he was scheduled to give the keynote address.
Before FTX collapsed last year, the company had poured millions of dollars into advertising and celebrity sponsorships. In a matter of months, the company paid to emblazon its name on the Miami Heat’s home arena, in addition to striking deals with Major League Baseball and a Formula 1 team.
