Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart built a league where the players hold about 30% of the equity, and investors just priced it at $650 million anyway. Drake sold majority control of OVO to Authentic Brands, the same company Shaq took equity in instead of a Reebok payout. Harrison Barnes finished a year of banking school, then bought a bank in an Iowa town of 220 people. Welcome back to The Closeout. Let's get into it.

Unrivaled closed an oversubscribed Series C last week at more than $100 million, led by Ten Pillars Sports Fund, which is backed by UC Investments. The round values the 3-on-3 league at $650 million, nearly double the $340 million it reached after its Series B in September 2025. CEO and co-founder Alex Bazzell said the round is larger than every prior raise combined.

The player equity pool is now worth close to $200 million, roughly 30% of the whole company, and it has grown more than 550% since the league started. At least 95% of players hold some form of equity. All 36 who signed for the inaugural season got ownership stakes. Everyone has been on a guaranteed six-figure salary since the 2025 debut.

Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart founded Unrivaled in 2023 with Bazzell, and that structure was the point from the beginning rather than a later concession. Stewart framed the raise around players holding a real stake in the value they create.

This is the second week running that the same idea has shown up in this newsletter. Issue #15 had Nneka Ogwumike leaving the WNBA after negotiating a CBA that significantly increased player pay and revenue sharing, headed for Project B, where players also receive equity. Two separate leagues, built by players, both selling equity on top of a paycheck. That is a change in the market, not a coincidence.

The cap table has been filling in for two years. Serena Williams came in around the Series B, alongside Trae Young, Franz Wagner, Moritz Wagner and Warner Bros. Discovery. This round brought reinvestment from Carmelo Anthony, UConn coach Geno Auriemma, Alex Morgan and Trybe Ventures, Trae Young again, and Ashton Kutcher. 

More than 90% of the 2027 roster is already signed, with Olivia Miles and Gabby Williams among the newcomers. The league has a six-year media deal with TNT and tips off its third season in January. Bazzell has said expansion will focus more on where Unrivaled plays than on adding teams.

The honest note is that last season's ratings were down, running against the Milano Cortina Olympics and the College Football Playoff. Investors doubled the valuation anyway.

Collier and Stewart are still playing. They own a piece of the league they play in, and so does almost everybody they compete against.

Ryan Clark is taking The Pivot to Netflix on September 8, two episodes a week, with a first-look deal for his Pivot25 Productions covering Netflix-exclusive bonus episodes. ESPN cut him in a layoff earlier this year and he found out while on the air. He owned the show, so he took it with him and cashes out anyway.

Josh Allen launched Out of Pocket Studios as CEO with executive producer credit on everything it makes. It extends the Skydance Sports alliance he signed in January of last year, and Lindsey Cohen, formerly of Meadowlark Media and DAZN, runs it day to day. Three projects land inside two weeks. No ownership terms disclosed.

Russell Wilson and Ciara launched Three Brand Racing, named for Wilson's 3BRAND apparel company, and won with their first starter. Club Reign, bought for $475,000 at the OBS April sale and co-owned with Ribble Farms and Walmac Farm, took a $115,000 maiden race at Saratoga by six lengths on Travers Day.

Kevin Durant is reported to be sitting on a return north of $60 million from Hugging Face, against a $250,000 total investment made through Thirty Five Ventures with Rich Kleiman. The figures come from a single secondhand report, and neither Nvidia nor Hugging Face has confirmed the $12.9 billion acquisition, with one outlet reporting no signed agreement yet. If it closes as described, one seed check beats his $43.9 million salary this season.

Authentic Brands Group has acquired a 51% majority stake in the intellectual property of October's Very Own. Drake keeps 44%. Vince Holding Corp takes the remaining 5% plus global licensing rights, and will run production, merchandising, logistics and back-of-house while OVO's creative and design teams stay in Toronto. The price was not disclosed.

OVO was founded in 2008 by Drake, Oliver El-Khatib and Noah "40" Shebib, and currently runs 12 standalone stores across Canada, the US and the UK. Vince plans three more US locations next year and wholesale distribution starting in 2027.

Regular readers have watched this brand from two directions now. Issue #14 covered OVO putting five MLB teams into a capsule, and Issue #1 covered Drake hiring Venezia's front office, with NOCTA taking over the club's kit. Both were stories about an artist expanding what his label could reach.

The buyer is the part that closes a loop. Issue #13 covered Shaquille O'Neal turning down a Reebok payout and asking Jamie Salter to put it into Authentic Brands Group instead, which made him the second-largest individual shareholder in a company doing roughly $42 billion in annual retail revenue. That is the company that now controls Drake's brand. Salter's model has always been to buy the IP and license the operations out, and OVO is the newest entry on a list that already includes Shaq's own name.

Drake spent 18 years building something worth a majority stake. He now owns 44% of it and none of the operations.

Harrison Barnes has a finance degree from North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School, which is not the interesting part. What matters is that he went back. He enrolled in the Iowa School for Banking, a two-year program run by the Iowa Bankers Association, and completed the first year in 2025 while playing an NBA season. He has also served as a bank director twice.

Then he bought one. Barnes has put $25 million of his own money into Community State Bank in Paton, Iowa, a town of about 220 people in Greene County, through Barnes Bancorp, an entity he chiefly controls. He is listed as an executive officer and director. The bank has been open since 1956 and turns 70 this year. Its name, staff and management team all stay in place. As reported, the transaction is still moving through regulatory review and a shareholder vote, so treat it as in progress rather than closed.

Paton sits about 45 miles from Ames, where Barnes grew up and was the top-ranked high school recruit in the country. He is 34, entering his 15th season, back with San Antonio on a one-year deal worth $8 million, with career earnings around $224 million.

Issue #13 opened with DeAndre Hopkins enrolling in finance classes at Clemson after realizing he had been writing checks into businesses he didn't understand. Same instinct, different order of operations. Barnes did the coursework first, then wrote the check.

New Era x TEAM FIFTY5. Carlos Sainz launched his first apparel collection Tuesday, built around the fan community he has run since early in his career and which he founded. The Fall/Holiday range covers 9FORTY, 9TWENTY and 9FORTY A-Frame caps, hoodies, and relaxed, oversized, slim and cropped tees, in outdoor green, off-white, white, faded blue and red. Selected pieces carry a red chili pepper, embroidered for the nickname.

The one to look at is a yellow 9FORTY with red details, made for fans sitting in the TEAM FIFTY5 Grandstand at his home race in Madrid, pulling from the yellow in the Spanish flag. The campaign was shot in Mallorca over the summer break. Selling through New Era, Sainz's own channels, the New Era store on Gran Via 15, and select wholesale. Pricing wasn't announced.

A grandstand full of fans became a customer list.

Issue #15 argued that Dolly Parton's ownership started with the publishing company she founded at twenty. Runcie makes the case that the park ended up being the bigger asset. He walks through the Herschend family buying Silver Dollar City in 1977, Parton investing for a 50% stake, the 1986 rebrand, and a first year that lifted attendance 75% to 1.3 million. The park drew 3.8 million visitors in 2025, and he cites a Forbes estimate putting more of her wealth there than in the catalog. His read on why it held up for 40 years: she brought the brand and the creative direction and left the operating to people who already knew how to run a theme park. Worth the listen even if you read our version first.

Unrivaled is worth $650 million and the players hold about 30% of it. Should the WNBA be doing the same thing, or does that only work when the players build the league themselves? Hit reply. See you next week.