The business of Angel Reese: acting, modeling, branding and, of course, basketball
When it came to one of Netflix’s most popular shows, Angel Reese had no chill.
After finishing the streamer’s surprise summer hit, “The Hunting Wives,” Reese shared her admiration on social media: “Nglllll The Hunting Wives is a CRAZYYYY but good watch”
Reese’s tweet thrilled Rebecca Cutter, creator of the series.
“I am DEAD on the floor!!!” Cutter responded, “thank you for watching our lil ol show @Reese10Angel !!!”
Reese has shown a knack for turning her interests and hobbies into lucrative opportunities. She had an open look, and she took her shot.
“(J)ust let me know,” Reese tweeted, “if you need me for season 2 😉”
Maybe it was Reese’s direct, self-assured offer. Maybe it was the winky-face emoji. Or maybe it was cool that a WNBA star, albeit one who has her eyes on superstardom, showed interest in a surprise hit show.
Whatever the reason, Netflix announced in January that Reese would be cast in Season 2 of “The Hunting Wives.”
It was just another property to add to Reese’s growing portfolio of projects outside of basketball.
“ I literally manifest my entire life.”
Reese, 23, has manifested a busy life on and off the court as she establishes herself as a multi-hyphenate: basketball star, model, businesswoman, actor.
“Angel’s 24 hours are much different than a normal person’s 24 hours,” Jeanine Ogbonnaya, the founder of the agency The Clearview Group, told The Athletic.
Through her company, Ogbonnaya is the most visible member of “Team Angel,” as she calls it, and has been working with Reese since the star played at the University of Maryland. (Reese later transferred to LSU, where she won a national championship in 2023.)
Since her “season 2” tweet from last August, Reese has been busy building a wide-ranging collection of media appearances and business partnerships. Last October, she took another step on the runway of her future.
At the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in New York, Reese joined supermodels Bella and Gigi Hadid and Adriana Lima. With a fixed gaze and long flowing hair, Reese looked poised and confident. Wearing a pink keyhole T-shirt with “Angel” printed across the front in silver and a matching pink lace bra and panty set, Reese made the turn at the end of the catwalk showing off her Angel wings. As the crowd cheered, the song transitioned to “Angel” by Irish singer and songwriter Gavin Friday.
Reese became the first professional athlete to appear in the famous fashion show, adding yet another major manifesting milestone to her growing resume.
“I have a video of me, when I was younger, dancing in Victoria’s Secret sweatpants and a hoodie,” Reese told Vogue Magazine a day before the show. “It’s a full-circle moment for me.”
Off the court Reese is using hoops to build an empire.
She announced her decision to enter the 2024 WNBA Draft in Vogue, attended the Met Gala, and has accumulated a list of partnerships, endorsements and investments that includes brands such as Cash App, Juicy Couture, Reebok, Reese’s, Beats by Dre, Playstation, McDonald’s, Amazon, TOGETHXR, DC Power FC, and skincare brand Topicals.
Reese voiced the character Propp, a polar bear, in the animated movie GOAT, which premieres Friday and is produced by NBA star Steph Curry. She also made a cameo in the Netflix political thriller “House of Dynamite,” starring actor Idris Elba, and went viral while attending the Canelo Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford boxing match. Oh, and Reese’s new Reebok colorway “Rose Dust” drops the same day as the animated movie.
For decades, WNBA players often spent the offseason playing in other countries to supplement their salaries. Recently, they’ve joined leagues such as Unrivaled, Athletes Unlimited and the newly formed Project B. According to Spotrac, Reese signed a four-year, $324,383 rookie contract with the Chicago Sky in 2024. Under the 2020 WNBA collective bargaining agreement, Reese’s salary would not reach $100,000 at any point during her current rookie deal.
Including her non-basketball endeavors, Forbes lists Reese’s value at $9.4 million — the most for a Black woman basketball player — noting 72% of the top 20 female athletes’ income came outside their sport.
With the Chicago Sky, Reese’s rebounding ability allowed her to etch her name in the record books in just one season. Her 446 as a rookie sits at No. 2 on the list of WNBA single-season rebounding leaders behind four-time MVP A’ja Wilson.
Last offseason, Reese was one of 36 players who participated in the inaugural season of Unrivaled, a new professional league founded by WNBA stars Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier. Reese won a championship with Team Rose and was the Defensive Player of the Year. In Year 2, Reese opted not to participate for the first half of the season. But on Wednesday Unrivaled announced Reese would return to Rose BC later this month. Next month, she’ll play with USA Basketball’s Women’s National Team in FIBA’s Women’s qualifying tournament.
While she wasn’t on the court, Reese was expanding her business.
And that business is lucrative and growing.
“When it comes to brand partnerships, they need to reflect who I am on and off the court,” Reese said in an email through her publicist. “I look for partners that share my values, empower young women, and allow me to show up authentically.”
Since the beginning, the Baltimore native’s goal has been elevating women’s sports and giving other women platforms for success. Reese’s direct investment is her way of ensuring her strides down the runway will serve as a guide for others to follow.
One of the first college stars of the NIL (name, image, likeness) era, Reese, whether you like her or not, is social media savvy and has used her large following to turn herself into a brand.
Reese has amassed 155,000 YouTube subscribers, 721,200 followers on X (formerly Twitter), 5.2 million Instagram followers and 6 million TikTok followers. That’s more social media followers than the population of the city of Chicago (2.72 million). She had the second-most-viewed WNBA player page on Basketball Reference in 2025.
“Everything that the public gets to see has 100% of Angel’s footprints all over it, and that’s what makes everything that we put out so special,” Ogbonnaya said. “She is so involved, from set designs to products to really every element of every partnership that she does, and so I think that’s what makes her business so successful, is because that signature Angel touch is on everything.”
In a sport in which scorers are typically the stars, Reese breaks the mold. Her rebounding, combined with her “it girl” influence, has her at the intersection of sports and culture in a unique way in women’s basketball. She’s taken barbs from critics — NBA star Draymond Green was trolled by a fan using Reese’s name as a pejorative — and it hasn’t stopped her motion.
Reese’s popularity expands how her fans view basketball. As they follow her career, they’re looking beyond scoring and at her other abilities. Her fan base is wide and includes WNBA fans both old and new. But most importantly, women from different backgrounds — especially Black women — see themselves in Reese.
While also praising Reese’s business acumen, BET had this to say about why Reese won the publication’s Sportswoman of the Year for a third straight time: “Whether it was NIL deals, race in sports, or body image, Angel kept it real. She never backed down from the mic, and fans — especially young Black girls — felt seen.”
Her love of pink — she is the basketball Barbie after all — Y2K fashion and being a “girl’s girl” are at the center of her persona. With so much attention on her, Reese is making her mark in a way she feels is true to her story.
After Reese and LSU women’s basketball won the championship in 2023, “our lives changed overnight,” Ogbonnaya said.
She and Reese decided it was necessary to bring in a strategic communications team.
With Reese’s quickly growing portfolio, Ogbonnaya decided to focus solely on Reese and not take on other clients. Ogbonnaya has been a marketing and public relations professional since 2014, and together they’ve developed a strategy for Reese’s goals with strong input from Reese and Reese’s mother, also named Angel (Webb) Reese. Ogbonnaya handles all things off the court for Reese, including public relations, branding and marketing deals.
During that championship game, Reese made a gesture that became an iconic moment in women’s basketball. She celebrated the Tigers’ impending national championship in the waning minutes by waving one hand in front of her face — a move popularized by wrestler John Cena — and tapping her ring finger while walking toward and looking directly at Iowa Hawkeyes guard Caitlin Clark.
The moment went viral, and backlash against Reese was swift. Clark had done Cena’s “You can’t see me” wave days before in the same tournament after making her sixth 3-pointer in an Elite Eight victory against Louisville.
But along with some criticism, Reese’s popularity grew as she prepared for the WNBA Draft. That’s when Reese and Ogbonnaya invited Jaclyn Reilly and Kirsti Yess, founders of Ethos Group, to join Reese’s team.
“It is such a male-dominated world (of) sports marketing and building these athletes’ brands off of the court (and) on the field, but one of the main reasons that we have found so much success with Angel’s brand is because we’re doing it differently,” Reilly said. “And because we are women, we really do understand what she wants to build and grow long term. … It’s definitely a factor, but it’s not something that we sought out to do. It just happened very naturally.”
All three women have previous experience in sports marketing from big agency backgrounds and say they’re “all in” on creating a long-term brand with Reese.
“I think that she has a real superpower and (that is) being able to authentically connect with her fans,” Yess said. “She’s been consistent, she’s been authentic, unapologetically herself.”
In a game against the Minnesota Lynx in July, Reese wore a “Mebounds” shirt after trademarking the term originally intended to mock her for grabbing her own offensive rebounds. Reese had made a TikTok video addressing the intended insult and flipping it on its head. She sent it to Ogbonnaya on a Saturday afternoon.
“I think she just started seeing (the term and) getting tagged in it 24/7, and she was like, ‘That’s kind of cute, to be honest.’”
Ogbonnaya called Reese’s trademark attorney, and paperwork for “Mebounds” was filed within the hour, she said. Reese’s team immediately went to work on merchandise that was ready to drop the following Monday.
Reese later said the T-shirt sales were a financial success.
“So the ‘Mebounds,’ if you know, you know, they tried to clown me for rebounds, and what did I do? I made a bag off it,” Reese said on her “Unapologetically Angel” podcast in October. “Six figures-plus, thank you. So y’all can try again, because I do need an idea for some more colorways, so just keep it coming.”
A portion of the profits from the shirts went to the Angel C. Reese Foundation to help fight cyberbullying.
“She just saw an opportunity, and she really seized the moment, and we took advantage of it,” Ogbonnaya said. “We thought the best way to go about something like that was quickness. The reception on that has been incredible.”
Interest and investment in women’s sports are on the rise. Increased streaming availability has opened access to games. The 2024 NCAA championship game averaged 18.9 million viewers, marking the first time that the women’s title game had a larger audience than the men’s. The 2024 WNBA Finals averaged 1.6 million viewers.
Though women’s sports still don’t dominate the landscape, the growing number of fans has translated into an insatiable appetite for access to players and merchandise. For some athletes, that means a signature sneaker.
Reese initially signed with legacy sneaker brand Reebok in 2023 through an NIL deal while at LSU. Reebok’s roster of executives includes signature athletes and Hall of Famers Shaquille O’Neal (president of basketball) and Allen Iverson (vice president). O’Neal’s close ties to Reese as a fellow LSU alum made him influential in bringing her on.
“Angel represents everything this new era of Reebok basketball is about — power, confidence, and impact on and off the court,” O’Neal said in an email through representatives to The Athletic. “She’s a competitor, a leader, and she’s unapologetically herself. When Allen and I signed on back in the day, we helped make Reebok a statement brand. … Angel has that same star power. She’s the face of what’s next.”
Reese’s Reebok partnership began with early conversations with O’Neal about shared values and Reebok’s commitment to empowering athletes. After meeting with the full leadership group — from CEO Todd Krinsky to heads of product, community initiatives, and more — Reese decided Reebok was the brand she wanted to align with.
As a pro, Reese’s deal has become a multiyear sneaker contract, and she’s released the Angel Reese 1 in four colorways across two major drops. Both releases reportedly sold out within 24 hours.
“As we planned for Reebok’s return to basketball, signing a breakthrough athlete to lead the charge was our biggest priority and Angel was our top pick,” Krinsky said in an email through representatives.
A young athlete whose professional career is just starting isn’t typically the face of a brand with a signature sneaker, but nothing about Reese’s career has been standard. She wants to be in the business of setting new ones.
Reese worked on product design and campaign concepts, and the brand gave Reese space to lead in relaunching Reebok Basketball.
Reese also helped grow the brand’s reach into the highly coveted Gen Z audience, Reebok executives said.
“Our Angel Reese social media content is always our best-performing, bringing in new followers and massive engagement for our channels,” Krinsky said. “Her influence is remarkable.”
Reese has made it a point to connect with businesses that reflect her sensibilities, according to Jamel Barnes, president of DBA Management and Reese’s investment manager.
“Every investment opportunity we consider has to be something Angel genuinely believes in — something she’s passionate about and can authentically represent,” Barnes said. “Especially with each investment we think of how each opportunity will align with her foundation’s core pillars too: empowering women in sports, promoting financial literacy and supporting both mental and physical health.”
Since joining the WNBA, Reese has invested in TOGETHXR, a media and commerce company that focuses on women’s sports, and Power FC, a Washington, D.C., professional women’s soccer team in the United Soccer League (USL) Super League.
Though Reese isn’t involved in day-to-day operations, the club communicates with her regularly regarding future plans and creative opportunities.
Still, the focus for Reese remains basketball. The team behind her says its goal is to help Reese balance that and her off-the-court ambitions. After all, her on-court performance and popularity go hand in hand.
This offseason, Reese has been spotted on NBA sidelines supporting Orlando Magic center Wendell Carter Jr. At Madison Square Garden, Reese and fellow WNBA star Paige Bueckers united for a marketing campaign to promote the new Reese’s Oreo Cup. Reese launched her first collaboration with the Hershey’s candy in 2024 and has been the face of Reese’s since.
Bueckers’ Oreo partnership (owned by Mondelez International) began in 2025. The joint appearance marked the first time the two popular snacks have been co-branded.
As with nearly everything Reese does, the campaign went viral.
Reese’s power lies not only in the value she brings to hoops but also in her charisma and voice. She knows her audience and the influence she holds, and she is undeterred by detractors.
“I think the crown that Angel wears is incredibly heavy, and she goes about it in a very graceful way,” Ogbonnaya said.
“But to be 23 years old and deal with all the stuff that she deals with is no easy feat, and we’re all very proud of her every day for how she handles that.”
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