Pablo Torre is most known for his presence in sports media, where he broke the story about the Los Angeles Clippers circumventing the NBA Salary Caps through a $28 million endorsement deal with Aspiration which won him a Pulitzer Prize and resulted in the historic penalties for the LA Clippers. Though a cradle Catholic, he is not known for his religious reporting except when it intersects with the sports world figures like Tim Tebow, Florida championship quarterback who has since turned motivational Christian speaker after a failed career in the NFL. Despite his quick slant playoff victory, he was still a first round bust for the Denver Broncos.
Torre released a video entitled “We Investigated the Christian ‘Scam’ Fronted by Tim Tebow” on his channel Pablo Torre Finds Out (PTFO) in coordination with Kiera Butler of Mother Jones, a notably feminist and progressive outlet. Contrary to certain Christian reactions to this story, Torre is surprisingly sympathetic towards Tebow in his presentation, instead using Tebow as a springboard to talk about Life Surge. If anything, he undersells Tebow’s culpability through his persistent participation in their speaking circuit.
Torre begins with the history of Tebow, from his cultural impact as the Heisman quarterback to his compelling motivational speeches. He is a fan. This is where Tebow’s Life Surge connection is made. Tebow has been a regular speaker for Life Surge since 2021.
Life Surge brands itself as a motivational speaker conference that markets to Christians. They recruit a list of big-name speakers to draw in crowds and then, in their conference, attempt to upsell them on courses. The first series of courses costs around $97 which is really a veiled sales pitch for the actual content which costs tens of thousands depending on the tier. They pitch this through language like “kingdom impact,” because slapping the word kingdom makes things Christianized to many unwise people. The ten-hour conferences feature the sales pitches throughout and goody bags for those who sign up. Headliners like Tebow are kept until the end. Like a timeshare presentation, the audience must sit through all the sales pitches before they can listen to Tebow.
The above picture features Priscilla Shirer, Tony Evans’s prosperity-teaching daughter; Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus on The Chosen; Nick Vujicic, a motivational speaker without arms and legs; Sadie Robertson Huff, the Duck Dynasty daughter who has become a quasi-female pastor; Craig Groeschel, false teacher of Life.Church who has peddled “money back guarantees” for tithes; Sarah Jakes Roberts, and TD Jakes daughter and female prosperity pastor. Though they will insist that they are not selling prosperity gospel, several of their speakers are prosperity gospel figures. They also feature Christian Contemporary Music artists like Chris Tomlin, Brandon Lake, Crowder, and Maverick City Music, as worship music is often interwoven with their events. Other notable Christian figures include Lysa TerKeurst, who is a female pastor promoted by the SCB’s Lifeway; Kevin Sorbo; the other Robertsons of Duck Dynasty; actress Candace Cameron Bure; and Dr. Ben Carson. They even have the investors from Shark Tank listed.
As an aside, Patrick Bet David ran People Helping People, a multi-level marketing (MLM) firm that sold life insurance and other financial products. He would hire famous speakers for his corporate events whose speeches and panel discussions became the early content for Valuetainment. This is how PBD became a huge brand. Life Surge does the reverse strategy of using their conferences to upsell the “education” packages. It should be assumed that the speakers most frequently associated with Life Surge are being compensated for their time. Torre and Butler found that Tebow’s speaking fees range from $50-100K per event, so even at a discounted rate for the volume of speeches, Tebow is easily being compensated at least six figures by Life Surge, and he was scheduled to speak at twenty events in 2026 alone.
Life Surge Predation
The tickets to the main events operate on a tiered pricing model, with basic tickets being discounted as low as $14 and the ultimate experience selling for around $400, which includes selfies with Tebow and some of the other speakers. Though they typically host in arenas and conference centers, their upcoming October 24th event will be at Dream City Church in Phoenix, the church of Charlie Kirk, which also hosts TPUSA Faith events.
But these cheap conferences are merely a lead funnel for the infinite margin upsell. Through SurgeU, Life Surge sells courses that are get-rich-quick schemes dressed with Christianized language about maximizing the kingdom impact. They sell the Trade Surge, which is a stock market course that promises a proprietary algorithm designed to help Christians enrich themselves through day trading. Then they sell the Real Estate Surge, which sells real estate investment courses. The courses are more expensive than community college alternatives, ranging in the tens of thousands.
They further employ high-pressure sales tactics to upsell the courses, which, according to Butler, include borrowing or expending 401K accounts and home equity loans. The worst tactic they employ is credit card stacking, where a broker called Copper Rock Financial will apply for 0% interest credit cards to help attendees finance the expensive courses. Once the 0% period expires, the remaining principal receives a usurious interest rate, so instead of helping Christians achieve wealth creation, the courses financially ruin them with debt. People gullible enough to fall into these traps should not be engaging directly in the stock market.
They then talk about the figures behind Life Surge, most notably its CEO Joe Johnson, who previously ran Get Motivated, which did the same thing, targeting the Fox News audience with Bill Cosby, Bill O’Reilly, and even George Bush. Like Life Surge, Get Motivated sold courses powered by Online Trading Academy (OTA). Back in 2012, the FTC settled a case against OTA requiring debt forgiveness for thousands impacted by their predatory tactics. Steve Champa was the brain behind OTA while Joe Johnson led Get Motivated. Life Surge is a rebranded, Christian version of Get Motivated.
Basically, the minds behind Life Surge have a history of selling shady courses through motivational speaker circuits. When the first scam fell apart, they moved on to the next one. There were probably other financial games being played to prevent personal liability, as they were unable to pay the judgements levied against them by the federal government, yet somehow could afford to relaunch the same business under a different brand.
Often, Prosperity Gospel targets the poor, which is why it is a growing problem in Africa. Tebow is monetizing the proliferation of scams towards a Christian evangelical audience. Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) scams are also an underdiscussed threat impacting churches as (predominantly) women will sell a range of products to those in their church communities. Common MLM scams include supplements, essential oils, financial education (like SurgeU), cosmetics, and other health and wellness products.
Tim Tebow made a response on Friday to the reporting that Pablo Torre made surrounding Life Surge. Tebow said that the allegations were “extremely serious” and that his team would investigate the matters. He further said that he was pausing his relationship until his team understood all the facts. Tebow claimed that his intent in associating with Life Surge was to share the gospel.
Given that he is likely being compensated for his many speeches, his association was probably more than merely sharing the Gospel. Whether he was cognizant of the underlying marketing scam being played by Life Surge remains to be seen, but Torre’s video did provide evidence that he was aware of the fact that the conferences were selling the initial impact courses that cost around $97. Whether he was aware of what happens after the impact course- that is, the upselling of the expensive courses with possible credit card stacking- remains unknown at this time.
Regardless, his association with Life Surge is negligent, and he bears moral culpability for his participation in their activities, as he was a regular headliner at their events. It remains to be seen if other speakers, like the Robertsons of Duck Dynasty, will disassociate from Life Surge.
The video ends with Torre and Butler questioning how much Tim Tebow knows, believing that he must know something but perhaps not the full extent of the damage Life Surge is doing. They contrast Tebow’s work fighting on behalf of the most vulnerable being sex trafficked with his hypocrisy in partnering with a firm that is scamming Christians. Perhaps they are being too soft on Tebow. The rank hypocrisy makes his participation worse: without a sports career, he requires these speaking circuit gigs to sustain his lifestyle. For years, Tim Tebow has leaned in this Prosperity Gospel-adjacent direction. It comes with shady partners and excellent compensation.
