🏟️ Angel Reese's Masterclass in Branding

Welcome to this week’s edition of Sports Industry Weekly as we share insights from the top business headlines in the sports industry, including:

🍫 The perfect collaboration between a WNBA superstar and a candy brand.

🎧 A leading audio brand invests heavily in NIL deals with college football’s top quarterbacks and their universities.

🏀 Team USA Basketball continues to make viral headlines after returning home from their Paris Olympics gold medal.

⚽️ The most followed person and athlete in the world launches his own YouTube channel.

ANGEL REESE AND REESE’S PIECES DROP THE PERFECT COLLABORATION

Angel Reese is has been teaching a marketing masterclass for years now.

Her latest course, showed us the importance of social listening.

A few months ago, she tweeted at her fans:

"Reese’s pieces where yall at?????"

Yesterday she announced her partnership with the Hershey’s chocolate brand.

The marketing team at Reese’s Pieces saw and listened to Angel’s social media message as an authentic opportunity to build a relationship with the WNBA superstar, leveraging her act of branding her super-fans and fan clubs.

Network and build authentic relationships with sports industry executives from industry leading sports brands like Nike, NBA, WNBA, adidas, NFL, ESPN, Bleacher Report, MLB and others.

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🎧 Beats By Dre announced their second “Beats Elite” NIL class of 11 premier college football student-athletes, including Shedeur Sanders (Colorado, QB), Jalen Milroe (Alabama, QB), Dillon Gabriel (Oklahoma, QB), and Carson Beck (Georgia, QB). This year they worked with Learfield to secure IP rights for each student’s university, allowing the brand to show team logos and marks throughout their marketing campaign and content.

⚽️ Louisville native Jack Harlow joins the Soccer Holdings ownership group for the Racing Louisville and Louisville City soccer clubs. Jack is one of the latest celebrities investing in women’s soccer, with Disney’s CEO Bob Iger and his wife, Willow Bay, recently making headlines for their purchase of Angel City FC.

🕶️ USA Football and Oakley agree to a multi-year partnership leading into Flag Football’s debut at the LA2028 Olympics. The brand continues their investment into football as they already are an NFL league sponsor.

🥇Team USA Basketball is dominating the social media spotlight following their gold medal victory, with Anthony Edwards and Kevin Durant’s epic conversation at Fanatics Fest; Devin Booker’s “I’ll Do It” camcorder vlog achieving 8 million views in 24 hours; and Stephen Curry having the internet in a frenzy of speculation as he changed his Instagram bio from "Guard for the @Warriors" to "Olympic Gold Medalist."

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📺 Cristiano Ronaldo is the most followed person on social media and he just launched his own YouTube channel. He’s hoping to bring his 917+ million followers across platforms to learn more about him, his family, and his views on many different subjects.

🏈 NIL tactics continues to innovate as Oklahoma State revealed their new football helmets that feature a 1.5-inch QR code on the back, linking to an NIL fundraising campaign. It’s exciting to continue to see the growth and evolution of NIL creativity!

⚽️ FC Barcelona shared a preview of Spotify Camp Nou, their newly renovated $1.6 billion stadium, which includes an aerial walkway and a total capacity of 104,000. They are expecting to be fully operational at the start of the 2026-2027 season.