• by Les Luchter , Staff Writer, July 10, 2025

Novartis is moving rapidly into sports sponsorships.

In addition to becoming the NFL’s first-ever “corporate pharmaceutical partner,” the firm has also partnered with PlayersTV as its exclusive pharma/health advertiser.

The deal with PlayersTV, a lifestyle channel geared to sports fans, includes sponsorship of brand-new series “Health is Wealth,” in which former NFL player turned neurosurgeon Dr. Myron Rolle interviews famous athletes about their careers and health issues.

The first episode features Dr. Rolle talking with Sheryl Swoopes, the WNBA pioneer who’s now an active breast cancer awareness advocate and spokesperson for RadNet, which operates outpatient diagnostics services such as New York’s Lenox Hill Radiology.

I watched the “Health is Wealth” premiere on-demand on YouTube and can report that Swoopes did thank RadNet for allowing her “to spread the word and talk to people about why you should go have a mammogram.”

“I don’t feel like God put me here to play basketball,” she stated during the show. “I feel like he put me here so I could use basketball as a platform for something bigger.”

And she does that quite well in the program. While Rolle spends much time talking to Swoopes about her fabled career, he always smoothly pivots back to discussing health and wellness topics.

And Novartis? In addition to the pharma firm’s name appearing in “sponsored by” credits at the start and end of the show, a commercial for the pharma giant’s Kisqali drug for breast cancer patients was served to me during the episode’s opening -- and only -- break.

Novartis ads are “baked in and endemic,” PlayersTV co-founder Deron Guidrey told Pharma & Health Insider.

From PlayersTV, I also learned that pharma/health is the only category to have  an exclusive advertiser distinction. That’s specifically due to the “carrot” of Dr. Rolle’s show, Guidrey said. (Other PlayersTV advertisers include Meta, Walmart, Dairy Queen, Sony and UBS.) 

Novartis declined to speak with Pharma & Health Insider about PlayersTV and “Health is Wealth,” but the pharma firm’s head of U.S. Media Katie Ford posted on LinkedIn earlier this week that “We are super proud of our partnership with PlayersTV and Dr. Myron Rolle and all the players featured in "Health is Wealth."

Those other players, to be featured in seven more episodes that start premiering July 24 through Oct. 2, will include such greats as Alonzo Mourning and Ken Griffey Sr.

And next week, Guidrey hopes to seal up a deal for another eight episodes that would take “Health is Wealth” straight through the NFL season.

That would play nicely for Novartis, which now has a five-year-deal to as the NFL’s first-ever “corporate pharmaceutical partner,” with participation at such activities as the NFL's Crucial Catch initiative with the American Cancer Society, and the league’s Health & Safety Summit.

The PlayersTV “360-degree integrated ad partnership” also promises activations, as well as commercials and content, although Guidrey said he couldn’t talk specifics at this point.

He did say, however, that since the premiere episode’s debut three weeks ago, it had garnered some 3.4 million total impressions and 3.1 million total views.

In addition to on-demand showings, “Health is Wealth” can be found on PlayersTV’s 24/7 linear FAST channel, availalble on DirecTV, YouTube TV, Fubo, Amazon Fire TV, Philo, and on playerstv.com/watch.   

PlayersTV, founded five years ago, bills itself as the “first athlete-owned media network.”

Guidrey noted that “athletes are the biggest influencers in the world…Now they finally have their own network to highlight their own interest or passions: cooking shows with athletes, 'Shark Tank' shows with athletes, healthcare shows with athletes.”

He added: “We’re not sports content. Sports content is where the fan is watching a live game, with the player in a uniform. We are focused on bringing you that athlete beyond the game, beyond the uniform in a much more impactful way by showcasing their creativity.”