It’s solely been 5 months since future hall-of-famer Candace Parker unexpectedly retired from the WNBA, the place she gained three championships with three totally different groups, and earned the league’s most useful participant award twice. Since then, her future profession path has been quickly coming into focus.
A month after asserting her retirement, Adidas made her president of girls’s basketball, giving her energy over product design and the duty to curate the following era of gamers the German shoe big indicators to contract.
Talking on Wednesday on the Goldman Sachs Builders and Innovation Summit in Healdsburg, California, Parker confirmed that her objectives in enterprise are as formidable as these she had as a participant. “I might like to personal a WNBA crew and an NBA crew,” she instructed Goldman Sachs’ co-head of worldwide banking and markets, Dan Dees, and an viewers of about 200 Goldman Sachs bankers, traders, and entrepreneurs.
To tug off such an acquisition Parker must proceed breaking down boundaries as she has since highschool when she beat the boys on the 2004 McDonald’s All American highschool slam dunk competitors. Although Parker was reportedly the best paid ladies’s basketball participant on the earth final 12 months, with an estimated $8.1 million, she nonetheless earned $3 million much less than the bottom paid NBA participant.
Meaning she’d must make up fairly a niche to purchase even the most affordable pro-basketball groups. The bottom valued WNBA crew is the Atlanta Dream valued by Sportico at $55 million. Essentially the most reasonably priced NBA crew is the Memphis Grizzlies at $2.4 billion, in accordance to Forbes.
In October 2023 Parker took an enormous step in the direction of closing that hole when she joined Stephen Curry, Michael Strahan and Lindsey Vonn as a part of billionaire investor Marc Lasry’s Avenue Sports activities Fund. Earlier that 12 months Lasry offered his stake within the Milwaukee Bucks for a reported $3.5 billion, making him an amazing mentor, in accordance with Parker, as she pursues her personal acquisitions. In June, Lasry’s Avenue Capital printed paperwork that confirmed it had raised $445 million for the fund, and it’s reportedly in search of $1.5 billion.
“Once I began working with Avenue Capital, I stated, I want a promise that we’re going to put money into ladies’s sports activities, and we’re going to do it not as a charity or help,” she instructed the Goldman viewers. “We’re going to do it as an precise funding. We’re going to present it an opportunity to succeed.”
This work is a part of her bigger enterprise ambitions, which embody serving to one in all Adidas most essential enterprise strains and angel investing.
A cornerstone for Adidas
At Adidas, her present expertise roster consists of rising feminine star athletes Aliyah Boston, Hailey Van Lith, Kahleah Copper, Aaliyah Edwards, Chelsea Grey, Betnijah Laney, Alysha Clark, Nneka Ogwumike, Chiney Ogwumike, and Erica Wheeler.
Already, Adidas is displaying indicators of progress, yesterday releasing its quarterly numbers—a 46% enhance over the identical quarter final 12 months—two weeks early. However Adidas’ urgency to get these numbers out so quick belies a deeper impediment on the firm.
In some ways Adidas’ star has risen in tandem with Parker’s. After they employed her in 2008 Adidas inventory was buying and selling at $32 and Parker was just about unknown outdoors the then-insular world of girls’s basketball. Over the course of her profession Adidas launched three footwear constructed round her. This culminated within the Candace Parker Half III Assortment, which included Adidas’ new Exhibit Choose footwear, their first designed from the ground-up for ladies’s toes. Adidas’ inventory peaked in July 2021 at $189, the identical 12 months Parker gained her second championship.
Nevertheless, that month was a actuality test for the quickly rising firm. In October 2022, its inventory plummeted 73% to $50, a stage it hadn’t seen in six years. A Reuters report earlier this 12 months blamed decrease demand that led to overstocked shops.
Although a part of that decreased demand definitely ties again to decreased reputation of the way more profitable males’s basketball— the ultimate sport of the NCAA ladies’s basketball event was reportedly considered by 24 million individuals in comparison with 14.82 million for the boys—the agency additionally reduce ties with Kanye West in 2022, following a sequence of antisemitic remarks, and stopped promoting his money cow Yeezy sneakers.
Regardless of the dropping inventory costs, the corporate barely held onto constructive income till this March, when the German shoe big posted its first annual loss in 30 years…the month earlier than Parker introduced her retirement.
Girls’s sports activities slated for enormous progress
Adidas seems to be seeking to capitalize on ladies’s basketball’s rising star. However there’s nonetheless an extended strategy to go. The WNBA final 12 months reportedly made $200 million in comparison with the NBA’s $10 billion, and the common WNBA wage is $119, 590 in comparison with the NBA’s common of $11.9 million. With Parker’s new authority at Adidas she’s ready to vary that.
Although Parker isn’t simply the face of Adidas ladies’s basketball—as she insisted she wouldn’t be earlier than she joined—she is the face. And a really nicely paid one, all issues thought of. However her youthful rivals embody Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark who reportedly signed an eight-year deal $28 million cope with Nike—who outbid Adidas—and the Chicago Sky’s Angel Reese who reportedly signed a $1 million cope with Reebok.
Such competitors stands to create worth for future generations. Earlier this 12 months accounting agency PwC stated 85% of consultants it polled predicted double-digit progress within the subsequent 3-5 years and in June Fortune reported that rich Goldman Sachs purchasers have been exploring ladies’s sports activities as a brand new funding class.
Parker’s curiosity additionally extends past simply basketball. Final 12 months she joined NBA professional Kevin Durant to put money into League One Volleyball, which is constructing knowledgeable volley ball league. At this time Parker instructed the viewers why: “My daughter’s a volleyball participant.”
