Especially around the holidays, things tend to slip by without any real thought or notice to what is actually going on. Here at The Liberty Line, we had one of our writers type up a quick post following the announcement of the Philadelphia 76ers new partnership with a company called “Color Star”.

BeercanBrain tends to write more of the comedic audience and heavily relies on sarcasm, so honestly, I didn’t really think anything of it. You can read that article here. 

Then, I stumbled across this Defector article titled “What the hell is this company the 76ers just partnered with?” and man, was I surprised to learn more about Color Star and all of the bizarre shit they claim to do. 

According to the company, Color Star focuses on the application of tech and artificial intelligence in the entertainment industry. In the press release from the 76ers, the team quoted the CEO of Color Star, Lucas Capetian and included a short video from the contract signing event.

Pretty standard, obviously. Capetian said that he was “thrilled to partner with the Philadelphia 76ers, a top-level NBA team” and Sixers President Chris Heck added “We think that alignment with Color Star is a great honor for us, and we’re very excited about our partnership this year and for years to come.”

All that is relatively normal for any press release. But as Defector noted in their article, any additional information on Color Star as a company or their CEO Lucas Capetian is pretty hard to come by on the internet. 

Here’s a quick rundown of everything super weird about Color Star’s CEO Lucas Capetian 

• Capetian took over as chairman and CEO a week before the partnership, replacing former CEO Basil Wilson, who resigned due to health reasons. 
• Color Star states that Capetian earned an Executive MBA from Harvard Business School, which does NOT award Executive MBAs. 
• Capetian promised to continue the company’s development of “metaverse and NFT products, however there’s no information on any work that he has done in the past in those fields. 
• The 76ers press release refers to him as “Sir Lucas Capetian” 
• Lucas Capetian’s LinkedIn is a picture of what appears to be a metaverse-like character. 

Obviously, a million questions start to arise when you read over this. Who is Lucas Capetian? Why do they call him Sir Lucas Capetian? What do the 76ers want to do with entertainment technology?

What does Color Star actually do? 

Back to the LinkedIn profile, Capetian has two certificates from online courses pinned to his profile. One from the World Health Organization titled “recognizing and managing anaphylaxis” and the other “guidance on developing a national deployment and vaccination plan for COVID-19 vaccines.” 

When you click on the links to the certificates, they lead you to a verification page that said they’d been issued to Xiaoyan Huang? Defector did a public records search on Lucas Capetian and it turned up ZERO RESULTS for anyone by that name. Capetian was not at the partnership signing but according to someone inside the Sixers organization that spoke to Defector, he does in fact, exist. “Their CEO does exist,” a Sixers spokesperson insisted. “I believe he’s based in Europe.”

At the partnership, signing there was someone by the name of Jason Heaps in attendance but reportedly no one knows why that happened. Heaps is the Vice President at a “merchant bank and advisory firm” called Veyo Partners and the Sixers deal with Color Star was brokered by Red Phoenix Entertainment, which sounds perfectly fine if you ask me. I’m sure all partnerships get a bunch of different people involved but as Defector continues, it’s not that cut and dry. 

They spoke to a representative from Color Star, a person by the name of Douglas Menelly, who serves as the Director of Communications for the company.

Here’s what the article says about Menelly: 

“Menelly’s involvement in Color Star is, itself, somewhat confusing: Menelly is identified as Director of Public Relations & Media at New York-based investor relations firm Skyline Corporate Communications Group, both on the company’s website and on his own LinkedIn profile, which makes no mention of a role at Color Star.”

Their conversation with Menelly didn’t get any better, as the self-proclaimed Director of Communication for the Color Star company thought Jason Heaps, the man at the partnership signing, was former CEO Basil Wilson. He then continued to say that he had NO KNOWLEDGE whatsoever of anyone named Jason Heaps? 

Back to the Color Star company. Apparently they have an app that has 600,000 registered Chinese users and it promises an international release at the end of 2020.

This is the only video on the Color Star App (lol)

Even if this company is currently just Chinese-based. Here’s the link to the website in China. Don’t worry, I clicked it and my computer still works so I think you’re safe: https://www.color-star.cn/ 

I encourage everyone to go read this Defector article, which dives deeper into Color Star and the people involved.

It’s a wild ride and by the end of it, the 76ers, Color Star, their representation, and Defector were all unable to provide any real answers on what this company is and their involvement in America and with the Sixers organization. 

To me, this has to be some kind of front or a Chinese Spy company. For whatever reason, they have Shaq all over their instagram and “training courses” from “big name celebrities” that you can sign up with on their app (that only has the video above) to learn out to play basketball or kick a soccer ball. 

The whole thing is incredibly bizarre and comes off as some type of low-budget Sci-Fi movie. Anyways, that’s all I got for you. Enjoy the holidays and have a safe and happy New Year.