IS BILLIE JEAN KING CRACKING THE SPORTS CODE AGAIN?
Billie Jean King's legacy is currently getting strengthened by something we rarely talk about: its business. Right on time for the women's sports boom.
Welcome back! Happy to see you here, as usual :)
Today, I’m bringing you a special edition about how Billie Jean King has also ensured her legacy with her business choices and how BJK Enterprises is now meeting women’s sports at the right time. It’s also interesting in tennis in the context of other tennis icons going down the business road as recently as Naomi Osaka or Coco Gauff, while Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, and the Big 4 have been at it for some time already. You can aim for the Michael Jordan path, but you can also have a look at how Billie Jean King has succeeded in using business to both stay relevant and open doors for others.
This TSS special edition is free, so you can see the range of the content (reports, features, essays, exclusive interviews, series, news curation, etc.) that will be regularly offered in the newsletter in the paid package. I’m soon heading to the ATP and WTA 1000 of Madrid, so you can look forward to some nice reporting with shorter pieces, interviews, and long-form stories..
As usual, if you want and can support my work, don’t hesitate to subscribe (or spread the word). Don’t hesitate to like the posts and/or send a comment, as it helps the newsletter's discoverability. Thanks!
BJK ENTERPRISES SHOWS OTHERS HOW IT CAN BE DONE
Billie Jean King, the sports icon. Billie Jean King, the one who fought all the fights for female athletes. But also Billie Jean King, the businesswoman. I feel the latter is the least talked about part of the BJK Legacy and its impact, but as women’s sports are booming, it has become the perfect storm for BJK Enterprises to become an integral part of the Legend’s legacy. BJK and her wife Ilana Kloss, the CEO of BJK Enterprises, spent decades preaching and investing in what she believed was coming: women’s sports becoming a huge business. And she was right, ahead of her time again.
It was, by the way, nice to see her receive a star on the Walk of Fame, joined by her whole team and also surrounded by Magic Johnson, Maria Sharapova, and Jamie Lee Curtis. She’s the first woman to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the new Sports Entertainment category and will, by the way, be on a Sesame Street episode this summer. Also, did you know BJK was finishing a degree? No? Keep reading.
We’ve talked here many times recently about how sports stars want to turn their name into a brand and/or an empire. Well, it happens that BJK has been doing that for eons, quietly, and that today, the women’s sports frenzy is giving her much bigger wings. There are not a lot of sports icons who have successfully turned into lasting business tycoons, but there’s a case to be made about Billie Jean King. When I read that BJK Enterprises was the negotiating company behind the E.l.f deal and the NSWL, it triggered my brain, and I realized I didn’t know a lot about the company launched by BJK in 2018. So I talked to Marjorie Gantman (Chief Operating Officer of BJK Enterprises) and Barbara Perry (Senior Vice President of BJK Enterprises), longtime business partners and friends of BJK, about how this family business has now become a major player in sports consulting, representation, and investment. It was even a wink of the generations to see Coco Gauff launch Coco Gauff Enterprises while I worked on that feature.
I love to talk with people who are genuinely passionate about what they’re doing and seem driven by something more than making money, despite all of it being professional sports where money is part of the DNA. It’s obviously a luxury in today’s job market, but it’s refreshing, and so these are also the voices I’m trying to bring through this newsletter.
“We wanted to teach the next generation about everything that she had accomplished, and we wanted to see if we could create a business where she could continue to make money and prosper.”
FINDING THE WHY
The company BJK Enterprises was launched in 2018 by Billie Jean King and Ilana Kloss. They were turning their World Team Tennis page but didn’t want to hear about retirement as they were looking for other ways to make an impact. So what’s BJK Enterprises' overall mission? What is the “why” driving it all for a sports icon whose standards are always as sky high as her beliefs in the power of athletes?
Marjorie Gantman:
“Billie never thought about the word retirement. It just wasn't part of the vernacular. And Ilana, by her side, really never either. We knew Billie wouldn't be a spokesperson for World Team Tennis as she had been, and truly everything up until that point, she had put into the league. So there was a period of letting go and adjusting through that change. But we kept saying, what do you want to do? And one of our ideas was, why don't you take what is seemingly a loan-out business for you? So if you have to make an odd appearance here or there, we will run it through Billie Jean King Enterprises. We did a handful of those things a year and said, why don't you take that and let's see what we can build.
Now, this wasn't without some sense of potential success because coming up, we had several anniversaries that were landing on their 50th year of things that she had attained: The 50th anniversary of the formation of the original nine, the 50th anniversary of the formation of the WTA, the 50th anniversary of her winning the battle of the sexes, the 50th anniversary of her lobbying and achieving equal prize money at the US Open, and then we had the 50th anniversary of Title IX and the 50th anniversary of her starting the Women's Sports Foundation. There was a roadmap here to 1) keep Billie Jean relevant, which was one of our missions because we wanted to teach the next generation about everything that she had accomplished and everything that they could ultimately accomplish, and 2) we wanted to see if we could create a business where she could continue to make money and prosper.
“To create a business that we believe is adding value to the women's sports space.”
Billie was never only a player: She was always interested in the business side. She owned her first tournament in 1968 while still playing, so she understood what sponsorship was and how a tournament has to operate. That broader perspective has stayed with her and Ilana as well.”
Barbara Perry:
“It has evolved from initially being a business that was very much focused on Billie Jean and what her post-World Team Tennis career looked like to now one that still engages that and manage her endorsements and partnerships and her brand, but what we have evolved to do is take everything that she did in tennis and for women's sports in general and create a business that we believe is adding value to the women's sports space. Because of all this knowledge and experience, we can now consult for brands, clients, and people. It’s a business that really capitalizes on Billie Jean's values and continuous drive for equality. But I think the tinkering was sort of finding a way through because we always felt like tennis and or women's tennis would have been very limiting.
THE BJK Cup triggered the growth of the company’s ambitions, as Gantman explains. “In working with them and selling sponsorships for them, we're introduced to this idea of if we can sell sponsorships successfully for the Billie Jean King Cup, what says we can't do the same for what then became the Professional Women's Hockey League, which launched in 2024. There are so many beautiful, amazing opportunities and stories to come out of each of these sports that I almost feel like we're just at the beginning, digging in and seeing where we can lend ourselves.
There’s also a more personal “why” that is dedicated to BJK: “It may sound like a joke, but it's real,” says Marjorie Gantman. “We've spent the last few years trying to fulfill her wishes and dreams because we all come with this incredible admiration for her and what she's done. So one of the things that we worked on for years, believe it or not, is the Wheaties cereal box, and then we did everything we could to get her into an episode of the children’s television show Sesame Street. We got her into, and it'll come out in August; you'll see around the US Open. She also wanted to be honored with the Congressional Gold Medal, which is different than the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a bipartisan effort that she got last year.”
EMBRACING THE WOMEN’S SPORTS BOOM
BJK Enterprises has evolved so that the company is now meeting the boom of women’s sports, which they weren’t thinking about back then.
Barbara Perry:
“The timing is great. There are always goals and things that she wants to accomplish, but the difference right now is that everything she's been working for for over 50 years is coming together. Women's sports- that's all you hear about now. I mean, the NFL just had their owners meetings, and they have a women's sports part of it, where they had Caitlin Clark and other key notable women athletes at this event. It just shows you what's going on. Billie Jean is seeing this: She’s seeing what she dreamed of 50-odd years ago coming together. That's overall been very powerful and very helpful to us when we're out there pitching her or pitching properties or ideas that she has.”
“It's just like the floodgates opened a couple of years ago.”
Can they feel the shift daily? “Definitely. Definitely feel it. There's just so much. There aren't enough hours in the day for the companies you can talk to, the ideas, the opportunities. I've really never seen anything like it. It's just like the floodgates opened a couple of years ago. And then you have some of these transitional figures, like a Caitlin Clark, who just make all the difference. It just takes the sport to another level and lifts everything. It's just amazing how a single person can do that, just as Billie Jean did.
M.G: Quite frankly, the fact that women's sports has exploded right now has just been like the icing on the cake because it's seen Billie Jean have an opportunity to sort of see everything that she believed in and dream about. But we didn't know it was going to happen, right? You believe, and you hope, and you keep trying.
“We still wanted to find a way to affect the broader industry of women's sports.”
TENNIS REMAINS THE FOUNDATION
I was intrigued by the E.l.f deal negotiated by the BJK Enterprises with the NSWL (National Women's Soccer League), and so I wondered if there were maybe other sports nowadays that were more interesting to get into for the company than tennis. I stood corrected real quick as I had forgotten that E.l.f first got into… tennis, as a BJK deal that expanded into the BJK Cup when the brand signed with the tournament.
M.G.:
For us, it all starts with tennis because the first relationship we helped create for E.l.f in their sort of expansion from wanting to work with Billie Jean was their partnership with the Billie Jean King Cup. So they are in tennis first. All of this is rooted in the relationship with Billie Jean and tennis, and we are trying to expand where we can.
It’s a broader space for us now. Women's sports beyond just tennis. But tennis is a huge part of it, and Billie's contributions and legacy are a huge part of it. We still wanted to find a way to affect the broader industry of women's sports, and part of this shift came from realizing that Billie wanted and wants to have a business beyond herself. She wants this business we started to carry on and succeed when she's no longer a part of it. And where would she invest? She'd invest in her passion, which is in women's sports.
Are other sports still helping them grow more nowadays?
B.P.: “I think that could be true, you know, in terms of the other sports and different athletes that we're working with right now. It’s important for our company to stay ahead of the curve in terms of what the next big things that are happening are. How can we make these new sports better? What can we do to bring in good partners?
M.G. :
So for the E.l.f deal with the NWSL: It began with a relationship that we built around their interest in doing something with Billie Jean and getting to know them, understanding that they had similar values and interest in growing women's sports in general. Over time, they entrusted us as their partner in overseeing what their women's sports portfolio would look like. They were very interested in soccer, and we had previously developed a very nice relationship with Jessica Berman and in her new role at the NWSL (Commissioner), so we thought that this would be great. We had also done some consulting for the NWSL, so we knew both sides and were able to bring these two together for what will be a really nice deal.
Billie Jean and Ilana have been giving advice within women's sports for much of their careers, and now we’re trying to create a business that can carry on in that. So there's the consulting business that we have a handful of clients that we work with, there's Billie Jean's business as she's like an ambassador for multiple brands, and then there's the investing business where we have invested in companies that have some touch on women and sports.
As they keep making business with other sports as niche as tennis, I’m wondering if there’s not a feeling around that tennis is losing a step in the sports culture and so at risk to lose one in the business too.
B.P.:
You know what? You can never stop. You can never say, we've arrived, we've got these great tennis tours, and there's all this money and great stars. With anything, you have to keep changing and adapting. And I think tennis needs to just make sure they're doing that because there is so much competition now. Now, you're competing for the entertainment dollar. Now, you've got the WNBA and the NWSL and the WHL. So all of a sudden, there's all this other stuff, and it didn't used to be like that. Tennis needs to stay ahead of the curve.
It's always been a challenge for tennis with the media piece: They would always say with golf, you turn on your television at three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon and golf is on, and you'll notice that the new leagues, the NWSL is a great example, are putting their games on at a set time. So it's very, it's very smart. There are things like that that you need to be mindful of because the media piece is obviously so important, and tennis is global. So how do you keep it top of mind when the tours are open to the world? When you have these combined events, like Indian Wells, Miami and Madrid, the 1000s thousands, that have been so great for the game: How do you keep things like that?”
Athletes today are also much more prone to think of themselves as brands and businesses, no?
B.P.:
Athletes are very sophisticated in a lot of ways. They know a lot now, probably because of social media. If you read a sports section these days, at least half of it is about the business. Sometimes I'm reading for fun, and I just want to read about the game, you know. Athletes know a lot in that regard, and some of them are very sophisticated in how they manage or try to monetize their social media. When I started representing athletes, it was pretty cut and dry, but now there's a lot more to it to make it work for parties, and you need to stay on top of it. The media world is also moving so fast, so you have to keep up with that.
A LEGACY STORY:
It’s a perfect storm right now, but when you bear responsibility for putting the BJK name and its legacy on the line, it’s real pressure. Yet, turning to business is how the BJK name is not only being kept relevant but also growing. That’s how her legacy is being cemented. So, the risks taken paid off, and more have to follow to keep the pace in a professional sports world in mutation.
B.P.:
Well, as Billie Jean says, Pressure is a privilege, right? Her name is so important to the sport of tennis, as well as the bigger picture of sports in general. For me, growing up, she was an idol, someone I looked up to and respected. And so then to have the opportunity to work for her is a pretty powerful responsibility. Also, she just doesn't stand still, so there's always another challenge, whether it's just making something better or getting into something new. That's very inspiring on a day-to-day basis.
M.G.:
All of this serves to further Billie Jean's brand and legacy in the future. And really, we want that for her. I feel we're probably more protective of BGK than Billie wants us to be. But we are very, very protective. And we spend a lot of time talking through, right or wrong, friendly debating whether something is worth that connection and that relationship because she is such a force. And when she gets involved in something, she gets involved, like the title of her book, she's all in. We wouldn't ever want to do anything that would jeopardize her. And so much of what we've done has been things that fulfill her passion.
So anything that she's invested in or any brand that she's been representing, like the personal care company, Dove, around the Super Bowl in February as they were leading a campaign all around body confidence for women, that's just very naturally something that Billie stands for and believes in and feels passionate and strong about. We're leaning on things she's passionate about and that we feel she can lend her voice to in an authentic way.
She loves history. She is currently studying to finish her degree in history. She was a little bit shy of her earning her college degree when she left to go full-time professional. And so she's finishing her degree in history right now, where she started in California, Cal State L.A. She says the more you know about history, the more you know about yourself and the present and how you can shape the future. And so it is our job and our obligation to tell these stories and to share the history. I just think we feel obliged. My guess is she started it in the 1970s, and she stuck with her belief. Maybe one could say it was only a matter of time, but you need somebody to light the fire. Sometimes, we like to kid her that she's the OG of all of this.
B.P.:
It's crazy that she would think about this at that time, but you need people like that, who are way ahead of their time. Yeah. It's really amazing that she could have that vision. But I think what's really great, which I love to see, is that she's seeing all this. She's traveling the world right now, and it's almost like a victory tour, in a way.
WHAT’S NEXT
Business is a fast-moving creature, whereas a legacy’s ambition is to remain through the ages. How does one make both meet? What’s the pat for the BJK Enterprises to stay on? And so, what’s the path for the other tennis icons who also want to follow suit?
M.G.:
The goal is to continue to find ways to expand the business that's not predicated on her showing up for something. She wants to continue working and doing and representing companies that are like-minded and have shared strong values. However, this business of Billie Jean King Enterprises will succeed if it's able to not only capitalize on her but also find ways to do business and add value where she isn't showing up. That comes in investing and in the partnership marketing consulting area where we're, for example, working on women's sports strategy for Bank of America private bank or doing similar work for E.l.f. I think our expansion into more advisory and consulting roles will carry much of what we do going forward. And then, obviously, seeing these investments and what becomes of them, and how we can continue contributing to some of these companies to help them grow.
Billie Jean gets up every day with this sense of purpose that changes everything, and quite frankly, the handful of us that are fortunate enough to be working with her are ultimately just trying to continue to support that. If that means expanding beyond tennis and into women's sports, let's go.
Sounds like a family business to me.. “It's a family business. It is absolutely a family business. That is such a great way of putting it.” It remains to be seen how BJK Enterprises can keep inspiring and collaborating with what looks like a turning point for professional sports. Showing a way to cement a legacy to the other tennis icons who have been, knowingly or not, following in her activistic footsteps.
TO GO FURTHER ON THE TOPIC:
Ilana Kloss was invited on Courtside’s podcast to talk about BJK Enterprises, women’s sports, and women’s tennis
Serena Williams joined Caitlin Clark to talk women’s sports with NFL
This interview of Patrick O’Keefe, e.l.f.'s Chief Integrated Marketing Officer:
SOME BREAK POINTS…
❌ Zverev’s horrific stretch keeps going as the World No.2 lost in his opening match in Monte-Carlo against Matteo Berrettini. Well isn’t it timely with what I was telling you the other day about clay chaos (including Berrettini)?
❌ Holger Rune, finalist in 2023 and someone who’d really need to get going again, got sick again this year, this time in Monte-Carlo, where he had to retire down 6-2, 3-0 against Nuno Borges.
👀 Marat Safin is still in a league of his own without even trying here. #SorryNotSorry Also, his sister and former World No.1 Dinara Safina has now joined the coaching team of Diana Shnaider.
EDITOR’S PICKS
READ: Jack Draper about how his ambition has been on the rise this year, in a talk to The Guardian. “I always feel like I need to prove something. Always feel like I need to show that I belong at the highest level, not only to everyone else, but myself as well. So some of that never will go away,” said the British, who shows again he’s a very good chat. Draper really has things to say.
READ More: It’s not about tennis, but I’m curious about this Graydon Carter (famous Vanity Fair Editor) memoir called When The Going Was Good: An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines. This piece from The Yale Review put it on my radar because of this line: “I was once paid six figures to write an article,” and of course also because of the stories about the party culture.
READ French: If you happen to both read French and be interested in mental work at the highest level in tennis, you might want to check out these books from Ronan Lafaix. Ronan was, for example, the mental coach of Gilles Simon and has worked with professional athletes for two decades.
