COLLEGE PARK, GEORGIA – MAY 4: Angel Reese #5 of the Atlanta Dream poses for a portrait throughout media day at Gateway Middle Enviornment on Could 4, 2026 in School Park, Georgia. NOTE TO USER: Consumer expressly acknowledges and agrees that by downloading and/or utilizing this {photograph}, Consumer consents to the phrases and situations of the Getty Pictures License Settlement. (Picture by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Pictures)
We will go forward and say it: Angel Reese will be the most business-savvy twenty-something in ladies’s sports activities proper now. Bayou Barbie turns 24 right this moment, and the strikes she makes off the sphere deserve their very own celebration.
Until you’ve got been dwelling beneath a rock, you realize that Reese has spent the final two years being one of the crucial talked about athletes within the nation. Within the phrases of our good sister, Beyoncé, “you realize your self, that bitch whenever you trigger all this discuss.” And as we now have seen, loads This dialog had nothing to do with basketball, a lot much less his enterprise. However she nonetheless saved constructing, quietly and intentionally, as black ladies do, and all of it paid off, honey.
She’s additionally all the time been sincere about how a lot the WNBA pays its gamers, and simply as sincere about how she wasn’t going to take a seat round ready for that to alter earlier than she began securing her personal purse. And it was secured!
The $1.8 million NIL portfolio
Earlier than enjoying a single skilled minute, Reese had already constructed an NIL portfolio valued at $1.8 million throughout his time at LSU, with offers spanning Goldman Sachs, Beats by Dre, Airbnb and Amazon, amongst others. When the Chicago Sky drafted him seventh general in 2024, do you suppose enterprise slowed down? No means. In truth, it has solely gotten greater. She has since been traded to the Atlanta Dream, the place she enters the 2026 season with a portfolio that almost all veterans twice her age have did not construct.
She has been open about how a lot she loves the sport itself, telling ESPN: “I play as a result of I like basketball. » However she was equally open about understanding {that a} love for the game and constructing long-term monetary safety are two completely totally different conversations, and she or he supposed to have each on the similar time.
Purchase in DC Energy FC
In Could 2024, Reese was named a founding investor in DC Energy FC, a Washington, D.C. ladies’s soccer membership that competes within the USL Tremendous League, making her the primary particular person outdoors of the group’s management to publicly take an possession stake within the membership. For a Maryland native who grew up simply outdoors Baltimore, the choice was as a lot private because it was strategic. “I wish to contribute to the event of ladies’s sports activities and the elevation of feminine athletes in any respect ranges,” she stated on the time, including that with the ability to put money into ladies’s soccer inside the DMV particularly meant one thing to her. The CEO and co-president of DC United known as her determination to affix the possession group revolutionary. On the time, she had been knowledgeable basketball participant for just a few months.
Be part of the TOGETHXR possession group
In 2025, Reese joined the possession group of TOGETHXR, a media and commerce firm co-founded by Alex Morgan, Sue Fowl, Simone Manuel and Chloe Kim. Reese’s addition to that group places her in a room with a number of the most embellished and business-minded ladies in sports activities historical past, and it indicators one thing vital about how she views her legacy. “She brings a confidence and management that provides to the legacy we’re constructing,” Fowl stated of Reese’s addition to the group, and given every thing Reese put in place earlier than her twenty fourth birthday, Fowl clearly is not improper.
The Reebok AR1
What began as a NIL deal at LSU in 2023 has develop into one of the crucial talked about sneaker launches in latest reminiscence. When the Angel Reese 1 was launched in September 2025, all three colorways, “Diamond Mud,” “Mebounds,” and “Receipts Prepared,” offered out inside hours in all sizes. The CEO of Reebok reportedly introduced ahead the launch a full 12 months as a result of the momentum round it was too robust to take a seat on. She turned the quickest participant in 20 years to get a signature shoe and the primary WNBA participant to put on a Reebok since Rebecca Lobo in 1997. Demand was robust sufficient that Reebok expanded its line to youngsters’s sizes quickly after.
The Reese x Hershey deal
The partnership with Hershey started as a result of Reese known as his fan base “Reese’s Items” on social media. The sweet model responded publicly, and its staff turned a Twitter second right into a licensed clothes assortment with one of many nation’s most recognizable sweet manufacturers. For those who want a case examine for figuring out your personal cultural energy and monetizing it with out promoting your self quick, that is it.
The staff behind the model
Reese has been selective, in contrast to most younger athletes, and far of that credit score goes to her agent Jeanine Ogbonnaya. Ogbonnaya has publicly acknowledged that they “turned down extra presents than they accepted” early on, particularly to guard how manufacturers perceived Reese and to make sure that every partnership actually mirrored who she is. The result’s a portfolio that spans Goldman Sachs and Mielle Organics and Hershey’s and Bose, and all of it seems to be prefer it.
At 24, most individuals are nonetheless fascinated about their profession. Angel Reese already has two stakes, a sold-out signature shoe, and over 20 model offers deeply rooted in her personal.
