Latest news with #ToddKrinsky
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Reebok CEO's Opinion of Angel Reese Made Clear With Strong Comments
Reebok CEO's Opinion of Angel Reese Made Clear With Strong Comments originally appeared on Athlon Sports. Chicago Sky forward Angel Reese was the first basketball player Reebok signed after the company relaunched its basketball brand. Advertisement Reese's first signature shoe will be coming out later this season, Reebok CEO Todd Krinsky told Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic. During his interview with Vorkunov, Krinsky opened up about why Reese is the basketball player he's building around. "If you think about when we've really been successful, it's been having these bigger-than-life personalities that are embracing on- and off-the-court culture," Krinsky said. "Shaq was like that. He was larger than life. He wasn't just a center. He transformed the game. And he had this bigger-than-life personality." "Allen Iverson, we signed him in '96. Obviously, he changed the way players look and dress. He changed the culture of the game. And I think that's what Angel is." Angel Reese agreed to a multi-year endorsement contract extension with Reebok in Krzaczynski-Imagn Images Reese has over five million followers on Instagram and over 690,000 followers on X. Advertisement The former LSU forward made the All-Star team last year as a rookie and won the rebounding title. In 42 career games with the Sky, Reese is averaging 12.9 points and 12.9 rebounds. She has already established herself as one of the top rebounders in WNBA history. "Angel is a provocative disruptor," Krinsky said. "But she doesn't do it just for clicks or whatever. She does it because she really has this very, kind of unique, rebellious attitude. And those are the type of athletes that — athletes have something to say. "Athletes are more than just athletes, away from the court. That's the formula of what's really worked for us in the past, so we can build these icons, and she's definitely one of them. She fits the Shaq/AI mentality." Advertisement Reese signed a four-year, $324,383 contract with the Sky last year after getting drafted in April. The 23-year-old then agreed to a multi-year endorsement contract extension with Reebok in October 2024. Related: Claressa Shields Breaks Silence on Angel Reese, BET Awards Controversy This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jun 13, 2025, where it first appeared.
New York Times
2 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
Reebok's basketball revival strategy: CEO Todd Krinsky on Angel Reese, Shaq
Todd Krinsky's life's work has been to make Reebok a preeminent shoe company. It's no exaggeration. He has spent almost 33 years at the company, working his way up from the bottom to the top, where he now sits as the CEO of Reebok. Last year, the company announced that it was relaunching its basketball division, marking a return to an industry it had once been a vital part of. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Reebok was a significant player in the basketball sneaker market, buoyed by its relationships with Allen Iverson and Shaquille O'Neal. Then it went dormant for nearly two decades after it was sold to Adidas and went through a retrenchment. Advertisement Now, Shaq is back as president of the basketball unit, and Reebok is trying to become a force again, starting with a high-profile endorsement deal with Angel Reese. Krinsky spoke with The Athletic about how it's trying to do that, why it's trying to take a different approach to gaining customers and where NIL and Reese fit into that picture. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Basketball is a crowded sneaker and apparel ecosystem right now. Do you think you can be successful here? What does success look like? The brand has always been a little more irreverent. We take a little bit more of a not-so-serious approach to the games. We embrace the culture of the game more. We embrace the lifestyle of the games. It's what we (are) historically known for. And I think this is something we want to get back to. I think we've also really been good at building icons. We're not going to have half the league wear Reebok. That's not our goal. Our goal is to really sign some unique personalities and build an icon business with a few athletes. So I think it's crowded. I think we've got great innovations. I think we've got a really strong institutional knowledge on building great product for athletes. And then I think we're going to really break through with our kind of tone and the way we tell stories around the culture and the game. So we wouldn't be getting back into it if we didn't see a sharp line of sight. But what success looks like for us is to be a major player again. We just launched the Netflix show, and one of the things Shaq says is, we were never No. 1, but we weren't three either. We were right up there. And I think that's our goal, to get back to being a major, major player again. When you're talking about tone and the players that you want to sign that have personality, how does that translate into selling shoes? Intuitively, the brands that sell the most shoes are the ones that have the strongest connection with the consumer. And I think with today's consumer, storytelling is so important. Cultural currency is so important. It's not just about signing a player and hawking a shoe. That worked in, like, the '90s. I think it's more now you have to be creative with what you're saying, about why you signed the player and how the shoe came about, and what's the story behind the product, and why these brands and the player got together. Storytelling is the most important currency in our industry today. Angel Reese is the first basketball player you signed after relaunching the basketball brand. And she's getting her signature shoe. Has that been announced when that's coming out? It's going to be later in the season, this season. Why is she the basketball player that you're building around, and how does that fit into the larger storytelling and business arc? If you think about when we've really been successful, it's been having these bigger-than-life personalities that are embracing on- and off-the-court culture. Shaq was like that. He was larger than life. He wasn't just a center. He transformed the game. And he had this bigger-than-life personality. Allen Iverson, we signed him in '96. Obviously, he changed the way players look and dress. He changed the culture of the game. And I think that's what Angel is. Advertisement Angel is a provocative disruptor. But she doesn't do it just for clicks or whatever. She does it because she really has this very, kind of unique, rebellious attitude. And those are the type of athletes that — athletes have something to say. Athletes are more than just athletes, away from the court. That's the formula of what's really worked for us in the past, so we can build these icons, and she's definitely one of them. She fits the Shaq/AI mentality. She dominates the paint. Now she's redefining style. Introducing the Angel Reese x Reebok collection—a bold mix of performance and unapologetic personality. Hoops meets high fashion. Game on. — Reebok (@Reebok) May 1, 2025 How much is the WNBA and women's basketball a part of your core strategy? I think back when we were in basketball before, it was like: You do the NBA, and WNBA may be a little bit of an afterthought. You have a player or two. I think the WNBA now is right in the center of everything we're doing. It's not like one or the other. WNBA, NBA, male, female athletes — we're looking at the whole landscape of basketball. What's going to move culture the most? I would say the WNBA is right at the core of what we're doing. We've got Angel, we've got the other athletes, like Dijonai (Carrington), we've signed. We're going to sign more WNBA players as we go. I just think it's an interesting time where the people are really, finally, respecting the play more than ever. And I think the players are embracing it with their own tunnel looks, and their own stories, and their own shoes now. That there's so many signature shoes now in the women's game, it's awesome. When my daughter played, it was like, there's one or two choices or you were wearing a men's shoe. And now it's a totally new game now, which is great for the next generation of young girls as well. With Shaq in particular, he is the president of your basketball division. And as you said, he is a TNT analyst, and he's also the GM of basketball at Sacramento State. I see him in a commercial for I don't even know how many things on TV. What's the realistic commitment that he's able to make to Reebok? To be honest with you, it's been unreal. I don't know how he has enough time in the day, but I know he's really passionate about this. And his name's on it. We do FaceTime calls almost every week. He's talking to a young player every two to three weeks. He's calling me and saying, 'Hey, we're going to FaceTime this kid's parents.' And he's in meetings. I mean, he really, really is committing time to this. And you'll see it in the show, in the Netflix show, you see that he's really engaged in meetings with the team. Advertisement Sometimes I say to him, I don't know where he gets the time because he's like, 24/7. I think it's because he's passionate about Reebok. I think it's because his name is attached to this publicly that he's really putting a lot of time into it. I think your only NBA endorser right now is Matas Buzelis, right? Yeah. We also have Tre Mann, who wears Iverson's product. He's a big Iverson fan, so we decided for him to wear Iverson's product. But, yeah, that's who we have right now. We've got a couple of young kids that are going to play in college this upcoming year, like Nate (Ament) and Darius (Acuff), and then we're still looking for some other players, too. With all due respect to Matas and Tre Mann, they don't scream like great endorsers. Or I doubt someone you throw into a commercial, right? What's your roadmap for adding more NBA players? I think it's a fair statement. Listen, the first thing we were trying to do was to emotionally connect again and to get young. So the players that we've signed, like Nate Ament and Matas, these are young kids that we really feel speak to who we want to be as a brand. We didn't want to go out right away first day and sign some big NBA player. We wanted to connect a little more emotionally with some of the work you're seeing, have younger players wear the product first and then start to build the roster. We're hoping that a lot of the young players we're signing: Grow with us and become big NBA players. But we're in year one of a pretty long journey, and the goal was to be young. You're saying you want to be associated with the young players. You want to build these almost grassroots relationships and position yourself a little bit differently. How do you go about doing that in terms of marketing Reebok? We're going to have marquee players wearing our shoes, but we may not have the traditional 30-second TV ad with the shoe. We believe that young basketball players today are consuming content a lot differently, and so we want to bring them along (on) the journey with us. Even when we launch signature products, it's going to be a little bit different. It's going to be more through the TikTok angle and more through these young players that we're signing helping us tell the story. So our first move was to sign Angel, who we feel is a great story, who has a backstory with Shaq, and to start with her as the first player. And now we're signing more players, but the content is just going to be a little bit different. We're going to be doing 10-second, 15-second, 20-second stories, versus a typical 30- or 60- (second) ad. And we're going to build up to something. We just feel like when you re-enter something like basketball, the idea of going out and spending $7 million on a player and then doing the shoes is so, I think, predictable, and I don't think that's where the young kid is today. We want to take it slow. We have some time to build this. We want to create the cultural currency with the athlete again. Advertisement What do you actually get out of the NIL deals with high school and college basketball players? I think you definitely see results when they're in high school and college. I think that the community of basketball today, through social media, is so small that all the young players that we're trying to connect with — meaning the ones who will buy our shoes — they all look at Nate (Ament), they all follow Nate. They follow Darius (Acuff). They follow their stories. We know this when we talk to kids. When you sit around about 10 (or so) 16-year-old kids, you say, 'Who are you really following right now?' They're going to mention a bunch of high school kids or freshmen in college, maybe before an NBA player at the time, or with NBA players. So I think the business is getting younger and younger. And if you're a great high school player or a great freshman or sophomore in college, you are influencing a culture maybe as much, or in some cases, close to some of the best NBA players. When you're signing Nate Ament or Darius Acuff or you're getting into this NIL space, how does the cost of signing a high school or college player compare to the cost of signing an NBA player? Are they earning the same in a shoe deal? Or are they earning half as much? How do those numbers compare? If you are a big-time signature NBA guy with a Nike or Adidas or a Puma, you're definitely making a lot more money. That's definitely a different stratosphere. But if you are a kind of good NBA player that has a shoe deal, and you are a really good NIL player, the numbers can be very similar. Then a lot of times what happens is you sign an NIL player, and then you can sign him while he's in school, but you can also sign when he gets to the league. You can have one deal, and you have all types of stipulations about what will happen when he gets to the NBA. So you lock him up when he's in high school or college, and then when he turns pro you have an agreement with him. It becomes like a new agreement with different stipulations, but you have like a long-term contract you can do. You don't just have one from college. … If New Balance signs Cooper Flagg, who went to Duke, they've already figured out when he becomes a pro. We're doing those deals as well. But the NIL deals are very lucrative deals now. Again, it gets back to what I said earlier: Why would it be? Because a young, top-10 high school player that has highlights every week and is being recruited by the best schools in the country can be as influential as a starting-five player in a major market in the NBA.
