Branding
When Beyoncé sings about “rugged whiskey” and the “dive bar we always thought was nice” on her country album Cowboy Carter, she was definitely not talking about her whisky.
Launched this September in partnership with luxury giant LVMH’s Moët Hennessy, Queen Bey’s premium rye whisky SirDavis retails for $89 bottle and was inspired by her paternal great-grandfather’s legacy as a successful Prohibition-era moonshine maker.
It’s the latest product from Beyoncé, who, in addition to performing 56 shows for her $580-million-grossing 2023 Renaissance World Tour, also released a perfume called CÉ NOIR and a haircare line called Cécred over the past year.
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Fans are feverishly speculating on what genre she might reclaim next for a potential Act III album. So, why would she spend her precious time and invaluable brand power to release a whisky? And how much money might she make from it?
Billboard interviewed half a dozen alcohol industry experts and leading entertainment lawyers, and while they unanimously agreed that it is too early to guess at SirDavis’ sales — it only launched in August — they said the whiskey fits into a modern-day marketing strategy as multi-faceted as Queen Bey’s career.
“It’s an extension of the marketing push for her latest album, which has references to traditional Americana and American heritage,” says Spiros Malandrakis, head of alcoholic drinks research for Euromonitor, referencing Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, which came out in April. “What is one of the most iconic products that encapsulates American heritage? It’s an American whisky that has roots dating back to moonshine.”
Cowboy Carter debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart dated April 13 with 407,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending April 4. It has since racked up a total of 1,322,896 equivalent album units, according to Luminate, and marks her her eighth No. 1 album. Whisky comes up in the lyrics of several Cowboy Carter songs, as do Levi’s jeans — spelled “Levii’s Jeans” on the track that features Post Malone — and Queen Bey is currently featured in an ad campaign for the classic denim company.
But given the international nature of her brand, Malandrakis says, Bey’s whisky works to extend its appeal beyond a strictly Americana audience. SirDavis whisky dropped the e, as the Scottish do, and it incorporates grains often used in Scotch and Japanese whiskey.
“She kind of winks towards this international side of her brand,” Malandrakis says. “She is a black American icon. She is also equally, potentially even more so, an international icon.”
WORTH A SHOT
Celebrity liquor deals have the potential to make superstars into billionaires, like the sale of Casamigos Tequila did for George Clooney, and before that what Cîroc vodka and DeLeón tequila did for Sean “Diddy” Combs. Beyoncé’s husband Jay-Z did his first liquor deal in 2012 — D’ussé Cognac with Bacardi — and in 2021 he sold half of his champagne Ace of Spades to LVMH. As of May, Forbes estimated Beyoncé’s net worth to be $760 million.
Jordan Bromley, head of Mannatt’s entertainment transactions and finance practice, says that these kinds of deals can be highly lucrative, whether the talent receives an upfront check or sticks around for two or three years to build the brand and then negotiates a big payout when they exit.
Beyoncé x Sir Davis
Mason Poole; Julian Dakdouk
“This should be a tentpole of any icon’s business portfolio, and not just in liquor but maybe home goods, athletic goods or venues,” says Bromley, citing Rihanna’s Fenty as one of the most successful examples of an artist becoming a billionaire thanks to a business outside of a music career. “You’re not stressing out over a record label audit—which you should do every two or three years—because you’re a 20% owner in a billion dollar company.”
However, Bromely says, there is risk for icons in lending their star power to a product.
“Is there risk? Absolutely—only the entire trust you’ve created for your brand,” Bromley says.
The product has to be good and it has to sell, and the ingredients necessary for those two components are not the same with all products. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2023 that Beyoncé and Adidas AG ended their partnership, the “adidas x IVY PARK” collection, after disappointing sales.
With spirits, sources say success usually seems to follow when fans believe a superstar authentically enjoys drinking the spirit in their spare time.
The SirDavis story posits that Beyoncé has whisky-making in her blood, and followers of her social media accounts know she has frequently posted about tasting and collecting rare Japanese whiskeys.
It is not known if Beyoncé has an ownership stake in SirDavis, and LVMH, which owns Moët Hennessy, rarely breaks out sales for its individual products. But Malandrakis says most celebrities exit their liquor company partnerships within a few years with a sizeable check.
“Not because they lose interest but they realize these things have a timeline. At some point Beyonce will not be as relevant, as strange as that sounds,” Malandrakis says. “The longevity of products like that is ultimately down to how good they are and how much they create for the community.”
Money Makers is a new column in which Billboard unpacks one financial issue a week for an artist in the news. Thanks for reading, and if you have suggestions or tips, email me at ediltsmarshall@billboard.com.
Billboard‘s data partner Luminate has launched a new tool designed to measure artists’ influence for brand partnerships and more, the company announced Tuesday (Oct. 8).
Informed by Luminate’s industry-leading streaming data — which is pulled from all major music streaming platforms including Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music — along with its global consumer research insights, the tool, dubbed the Luminate Index, will provide “influence scores” for artists based on five areas: their music streaming footprint; their social media footprint; public awareness of the artist; their public appeal; and overall fan engagement in relation to their live shows and other events.
The tool was developed to allow brands, agencies, labels and others to help evaluate artists in terms of partnerships, endorsements, marketing campaigns, creative integration and more.
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According to Luminate, the 10 highest artist scores from the first iteration of the Luminate index for Q3 of 2024 are (out of 100):
Taylor Swift, 100
Adele, 92
Beyoncé, 91
Elton John, 90
Rihanna, 90
Eminem, 89
Shakira, 88
Ariana Grande, 88
Lady Gaga, 88
Dolly Parton, 87
In addition to the announcement of the index, Luminate revealed a new deal through which it will provide high-level insights and consultation to Sony Audio. According to a press release, Luminate has been “tasked with aligning deeper cultural connections between the [Sony] brand with relevant audiences across all forms of entertainment.”
“Existing at the center of all things entertainment and data, Luminate is uniquely positioned to see and analyze information that is invaluable in identifying cultural trends,” said Rob Jonas, CEO at Luminate, in a statement. “Beyond measurement, a job we take very seriously when it comes to verifying final data for the weekly Billboard Charts and the new Streaming Original Charts with Variety, we are a company that can extract insights across all areas of entertainment and fan engagement. Our goal with this new tool is to provide artists, brands, labels, talent representatives and more with intelligence that will allow them to make more informed business decisions.”
Added Jordy Freed, head of brand, business development & strategy, personal entertainment business at Sony Corporation of America: “As an audio brand heavily focused on music, entertainment, and culture, verifiable proprietary data has never been more important given the current speed of trends. Luminate is a proven leader in harnessing data and insights to demonstrate tangible customer behavior across music, film, and television. We are incredibly excited to be a ‘Day-One’ Luminate brand partner, which equips us with invaluable tools to strengthen our cultural compass and benchmark our investments connecting to fandoms.”
You can learn more about the Luminate Index here.
Did an upstart rival steal Britney Spears and her lucrative fragrance business from Revlon? Or is the cosmetics behemoth just upset that the star took her business elsewhere?
In a new legal filing last week, Give Back Beauty fired back at Revlon’s recent federal lawsuit, which accused the smaller company of working with four ex-Revlon execs to “sabotage” the company’s decades-old fragrance partnership with the Spears.
Revlon’s case called it a “carefully planned and executed” plot to steal the lucrative relationship. But in its response on Friday, Give Back said Revlon was selling that “false narrative” of espionage and corporate raiding simply because it was angry that it had been beaten by a competitor.
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“Revlon asks the court to accept that tale as the only possible explanation for why Ms. Spears decided to reject Revlon in favor of GBB,” the company’s lawyers write. “Revlon’s motion is more accurately an anticompetitive ruse to damage a competitor because Revlon, weakened in the market by its recent bankruptcy, cannot compete fairly with GBB, and seeks to frustrate GBB’s transition of Britney Brands, at the same time, sending a warning about future competition from an international rival that poses a growing threat to Revlon’s market share.”
In 2004, at the peak of her powers, Spears signed a deal with Revlon’s Elizabeth Arden to develop branded fragrances and other cosmetics. When she released “Curious” later that year, it quickly became the top selling perfume of the year and reportedly pulled in more than $100 million in sales. By 2013, “Curious” had reportedly sold more than 500 million bottles and the overall Spears-Arden partnership, featuring many other scents, was earning $30 million a year in sales.
Revlon sued last month, claiming its own staffers had destroyed that business by jumping ship to Give Back and taking the Britney account with them. Accusing them of stealing trade secrets and breaching their contracts, the case even claimed that one exec had “acted as a double-agent” – working with Give Back while ostensibly negotiating with Britney’s team to renew her Revlon deal.
“Revlon and Elizabeth Arden were completely unaware that Revlon’s own team was actively sabotaging one of their most valuable licensing relationships,” the company’s lawyers claimed at the time.
Though the case centers on the Spears account, she is not named as a defendant nor accused of any wrongdoing; at the time, a Revlon spokesman said the company wished her “all the best.”A spokesperson for Britney did not return a request for comment on the dispute.
Earlier this month, Revlon asked for an immediate injunction that would sharply restrict Give Back and the ex-employees while the case plays out. It claimed the defendants were “continuing to misuse Revlon’s trade secrets” and that “this wrongful conduct must stop.”
With Friday’s filing, Give Back responded to that motion — arguing there was no need for any kind of restraining order over Revlon’s “baseless” accusations and that the rival can’t show it will suffer the kind of “irreparable” harm required for such a drastic order.
“The court should not countenance plaintiffs’ thinly-veiled attempt to prevent GBB from safeguarding Ms. Spears’ valuable fragrance brand,” the company’s lawyers write. “Revlon’s Motion should be denied in its entirety.”
In making that argument, Give Back sharply denied many of the lawsuit’s allegations. On the “double agent” claim, it said the ex-employee had been “unaware that GBB was negotiating a deal with Britney Brands and had no involvement in negotiating the agreement.” It also denied that the staffers had stolen any proprietary information or that Give Back had used any such data.
The real purpose of Revlon’s request for the injunction? Attorneys for the defendants says it’s “entirely vindictive” – aimed at “thwarting Ms. Spears’ decision to hire GBB” and “keeping the option for the public to buy Britney Spears-branded fragrances off of the market so long as Revlon is not the distributor.”
A spokesperson for Revlon did not immediately return a request for comment.
In addition to Give Back itself, the lawsuit names the four employees — Vanessa Kidd, Dominick Romeo, Reid Mulvihill and Ashley Fass. They are all represented by the same legal team that filed Friday’s motion.
This weekend brought the offical end of brat summer, and Charli XCX is now a week into her 21-city North America arena tour with Troye Sivan. So how much was brat summer worth?
While it’s impossible to know how much Charli made in total from the groundswell around brat, a colorful concept built on spontaneity and living life to its fullest, we crunched the numbers around a few brat summer deals. According to our rough estimate, these deals — specifically her cut of the ticket sales revenue from her co-headlined Sweat tour and other shows, earnings from the revenue generated by her catalog and songwriter share royalties this year, and the H&M ad campaign deal — netted Charli around $9.62 million so far this year.
Brat, Charli XCX’s sixth album, which debuted at No. 3 on the June 7-dated Billboard 200, is the long-time London rave singer’s most commercially successful album by far. Its lime green album art, Charli’s candid, sometimes vulnerable lyrics, and the open-ended conversation about what it means to be “brat” resonated with audiences, putting Charli at the center of the cultural conversation with everyone from Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign for U.S. president to a vegan sausage company embracing “brat” culture.
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“She has got the attention of anybody that she wants right now,” says Jenna Adler, Charli’s agent at CAA. The album’s 23 tracks (including remixes) passed the more-than 1 billion streams mark on Spotify in late August, and, according to Luminate, her catalog has racked up around 2 billion on-demand streams globally. Charli announced brand partnerships with H&M and Skims, and her first North America arena tour with Sivan sold out shows in Boston, Chicago, New York and San Francisco immediately.
Touring
The momentum that built over brat summer helped the pair of Charli XCX and Sivan sell more than 97%, or 261,694 of 269,733, of the total tickets available for their Sweat tour, Adler says.
With an average ticket price of around $90, Billboard estimates the tour has grossed roughly $23.5 million. After touring’s various costs, including the artist manager’s fee, touring artists usually take home around 34% of ticket sales, or in this case about $8 million. If it is a co-headline tour, that would likely be split 50/50, with Charli earning $4 million.
To build excitement ahead of the arena tour, Charli headlined a handful of sold-out shows branded Charli XCX Presents: PARTYGIRL shows, that were intentionally small to allow fans to feel part of a Charli XCX-DJ’d dance party, Adler says.
Three of those shows — held in London, Los Angeles and Sao Paulo in June — grossed $377,300 from a combined total of 7,413 tickets sold, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. Billboard does not have data on two additional shows Charli headlined in Brooklyn and Chicago, and our calculations do not include Charli XCX’s many festival performances this year or revenue from merch sold at concerts — an area of touring that can be quite lucrative.
The Sweat tour marks the first time either Charli or Sivan will headline arenas in the world’s biggest music market, and tickets went on sale to the public on April 26. Roughly 70% were sold by the end of May, rising to 80% by mid-June and over 90% by the end of July, Billboard reported.
Total estimated touring income (for 3 party girl shows and Sweat tour): $4.1 million
Streaming
Kamala Harris’s campaign for president leaned into brat summer on July 21, the day President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Harris. Charli XCX posted on X (formerly Twitter) “kamala IS brat,” Harris’s campaign briefly adopted brat’s lime-green hue on social platforms, and the week of the 2024 Democratic National Convention, from Aug. 19 through Aug. 25, it was the sole sponsor of Spotify’s official “This is Charli XCX” playlist.
While Charli did not directly benefit from the sponsorship—the Harris/Walz campaign paid Spotify an undisclosed amount—the popular playlist with 2 ½ hours of her most popular songs got a boost in listeners and followers.
Roughly 127,000 Spotify users follow — or have saved — the Spotify playlist, which gained 12,400 new followers between Aug. 10 and Sept. 10, with around 5,000 users piling on during the Harris campaign’s sponsorship, according to Chartmetric.
Spotify monthly listeners of the playlist rose by 8.6 million, or 23.4%, to 45.5 million between Aug. 12 and Aug. 27. Listenership declined slightly during the three days that led up to Aug. 19, the first day of the DNC convention, but that trend reversed with the biggest single day boost occurring on Aug. 20. By Aug. 28, brat’s 23 official tracks, remixes and bonus tracks had nearly 1.08 billion streams on Spotify, Chartmetric says.
Globally, Charli XCX’s catalog has accumulated nearly 2 billion on-demand streams, according to Luminate. So far this year, her recorded music catalog has generated 722,000 album consumption units in the United States, as of Sept. 9, compared to an average of 216,000 album consumption units from 2021-2024, according to Luminate. Her songs have generated 781.13 million on-demand streams in the U.S. this year, primarily from audio on-demand streams. Programmed streams topped 10.73 million or double her three-year average.
That translates to nearly $6 million in revenue for her U.S. label and $13.4 million globally so far this year, based on Billboard estimates which were calculated by using RIAA U.S. data to determine wholesale rates, and per-stream rates provided by financial sources at major and indie labels. If Charli XCX gets traditional superstar royalties of 22% for “sale” formats like CDs, vinyl and downloads; and a 37% rate for on-demand streaming, Billboard estimates her take-home pay so far this year, minus the traditional 4% producer’s fee, would be nearly $4.1 million.
Charli’s master recordings have produced $1.52 million in royalty revenues for the publishers of the songwriters she has used and nearly $3.5 million in publishing royalties when extrapolating for global publishing revenue, according to Billboard’s estimates.
Billboard estimates Charli XCX has a 30% songwriter share for the songs on her album, which means her publisher would realize roughly $1.05 million for her catalog’s global activity so far this year. If Charli has a traditional 50/50 publishing revenue split deal, she would receive $525,000; if she signed a co-publishing 75/25 deal, she would net about $788,000; and if she owns her publishing royalties and has signed an administration deal, which can run from 85/15 to 94/6 with as much as 94% of the publishing revenue going to the songwriter and 6% going to the administrator, she could net as much as $922,000. (Calculations are based on a typical 88% administration rate.)
Total estimated streaming, catalog and publishing income: max $5.02 million.
Brand Deals
In the past month, Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS and H&M have both launched campaigns featuring Charli XCX. The SKIMS campaign, launched Aug. 21, has Charli modeling its new cotton collection of boxers, bralettes and fleece pants. For H&M, Charli stars alongside other culture shifters Arca, Lila Moss, Ajus Samuel, Loli Bahia, Wali Deutsch and others in the global retailer’s A/W 2024 campaign. Financial details of these deals are not public, but sources estimate Charli was paid a sum in the mid-six-figures for her deal with H&M.
Billboard has reported in the past that branding deals contribute $2.6 billion in revenue annually to the music industry, with sponsorship spending on music tours, venues and festivals comprising more than 60% of that amount. The remainder comes from fees paid for the use of music in ads, films, games and TV shows, with endorsement payments, such as clothing brand partnerships, contributing the smallest portion of revenue.
Marcie Allen, the MAC (Marcie Allen Consulting) president known for orchestrating some of the highest-profile brand partnerships in the music industry, says these kinds of deals, and what it takes to land them, are rarely about the money.
To attract attention from top companies serving the Gen Z market, “it isn’t just about awareness, recognition or buzz. It is about puncturing through culture to create an entire subculture, a new vernacular, and ultimately becoming embedded into identity.”
“The concept of ‘going viral’ is fundamentally changing and Charli XCX’s ‘brat summer’ is a perfect example.”
Additional reporting by Ed Christman and Eric Frankenberg
This is the first of a new column Billboard is launching in which we will unpack one financial issue a week for an artist in the news. Thanks for reading, and if you have suggestions or tips, email me at ediltsmarshall@billboard.com.
When he’s not obsessed with the double-bass patterns in “A Skull Full of Maggots” and “Hammer Smashed Face,” Cannibal Corpse‘s Paul Mazurkiewicz Jr. contemplates coffee. “Always thought, in the back of my mind, ‘It’d be cool to have a Cannibal Corpse coffee,’” he says. So when Mike Tonsetic, a founder of Concept Cafes, reached out to the death-metal drummer on Instagram and proposed the band-branded Brazilian blend Beheading & Brewing, Mazurkiewicz responded: “Sounds like what I was thinking about for years. Why not?”
Introduced on Halloween 2022 and emblazoned with album cover artist Vince Locke’s image of a disemboweled zombie drinking from a decapitated head, Cannibal Corpse coffee bags have been “selling really well” on tour and online, according to Mazurkiewicz. And it’s part of a new branding formula in heavy music: touring stars from GWAR (“espresso destructo”) to August Burns Red (“revival roast”) aligning themselves with gourmet blends, copious caffeine, black bags and scary artwork.
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“We thought it was going to be hell-raisers and beer drinkers shooting us down, and saying, ‘Coffee is stupid,’” says Tonsetic, whose Orlando-based company has also teamed with Ministry, Soulfly and Suicide Silence’s Chris Garza. “But metal fans in their 40s-plus, a lot of them are sober and not just drinking beer. They’re getting into other things, whether it’s coffee or tea.”
Rockers have teamed with coffee companies for years. Iggy Pop customized a blend with Portland’s Stumptown Coffee in 2019, and KISS (of course), Dropkick Murphys and members of Green Day have put out their own brands. While hard-rock bands have historically focused on branding bourbon and other alcohol products, in recent years, the estimated $458 billion coffee industry has come for metal, often through roasters with “death” in their names and skulls in their logos. “Like everything, after a couple happen, everyone starts doing it,” says Cory Brennan, founder of 5B Artist Management, whose clients Slipknot and Babymetal do not have their own blends. “The coffee-metal world is getting saturated, but there are some great ones.”
Metal-branded coffee deals vary. Several sources say they’re 50-50 revenue splits between artist and coffeemaker, but another source adds that expenses for a high-end brew can be as much as $12.50 per bag, so for a $20-25 price point, the coffeemaker might give a well-known band roughly $8, or $5 for a lesser-known artist. “If I do a collaboration, as long as I cover my costs, they get to have the profit,” says Carl Fricker, owner of 24-hour Brisbane, Australia, espresso house Death Before Decaf, which sells blends by rising metalcore stars August Burns Red and Sydney metal band Northlane. “A lot of the bands, as they’re getting on in years, they don’t go out and get smashed anymore. When they get into coffee, they get right into coffee.”
Cannibal Corpse Coffee
Courtesy Photo
“It does really well,” says August Burns Red guitarist Brent Rambler. “We’re big coffee drinkers. At worst, I’ll get some great coffee out of it.” Adds vocalist Keith Wampler, whose band The Convalescence sells its Brazilian hazelnut through Grindcore Coffee Co.: “If you make it gory and put some skulls on it, it’s a little cooler than your average bag of coffee you grab at the store.” (The word “death” can be fraught for coffee companies in the U.S.; when Death by Decaf attempted to expand here, by trying to extend its Australian business name with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, New York-based Death Wish Coffee Co. sued for infringement. Death by Decaf settled last December, and the owner says he spent $200,000 on legal fees.)
As for flavor, most metal stars leave aesthetic coffee details to the experts: “I’ve got three options that are pretty extreme in the caffeine count, and that seems to be a huge selling point for a lot of bands,” says Chad Petit, Grindcore’s owner.
But for Grindcore’s coffee bag with GWAR, displaying a cartoon of the band wielding a buzzsaw and giant hammer, the shock-metal veterans insisted on elaborate tastings and feedback. “This is a band that kills people on stage and cuts people’s heads off,” says GWAR co-manager Liam Pesce. “Obviously, they’re going to want the darkest roast and flavor imaginable.” Adds John Bambino, another GWAR co-manager: “I think there was mention of nutmeg in there.”
Spotify is launching a music advisory agency for brands, the streamer announced on Wednesday (Feb. 21). For its inaugural campaign, the agency, dubbed AUX, connected Coca-Cola with the DJ-producer Peggy Gou. The two have “built a long-term partnership that will span live concerts and events, social media content, a branded playlist, and on-platform promotional support,” […]
The National Hockey League (NHL) and Adidas have collaborated with Justin Bieber‘s fashion brand Drew House on designs for the 2024 NHL All-Star jersey collection.
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On Saturday (Jan. 13), the NHL announced that the vibrant new jerseys will be worn by the league’s players during the NHL All-Star Game at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena on Feb. 3. The Toronto Maple Leafs and the city of Toronto will host the 2024 NHL All-Star Weekend from Feb. 1-3.
The 2024 NHL All-Star jersey collection includes four versions of the jersey (one for each All-Star team) in four colors: blue, red, yellow and white. The NHL shield will feature bubble letters and enlarged dimensions, and the crest is one of the largest to be included on a NHL jersey.
NHL, Adidas and Bieber’s Drew House previously collaborated on a reversible alternate jersey for the Maple Leafs.
“After the tremendous success of our first NHL, Adidas and Drew House collaboration for the Maple Leafs’ Next Gen jerseys, we have looked forward to another opportunity to bring a bold, fashion forward look to NHL jerseys,” Brian Jennings, NHL’s chief brand officer and senior executive VP, said in a statement. “The All-Star Weekend in Toronto is the perfect setting for a fresh perspective on the All-Star jersey. The vibrant colors in this year’s All-Star collection are both youthful and classic and offer the perfect complement to the young NHL talent set to meet in Toronto for this year’s NHL All-Star Weekend.”
Nic Corbett, director of sports marketing and hockey at Adidas, added: “Since our inaugural year of collaboration with the NHL, Adidas has not only elevated but redefined the benchmarks for performance, sustainability, storytelling and design inherent in the iconic NHL All-Star jersey. This season, our partnership with the NHL and Drew House presents a distinctive opportunity to transcend conventional uniform design, seamlessly merging the realms of sport and youth culture. The added layer of enthusiasm stems from the fact that this extraordinary event unfolds in a hockey-obsessed market, amplifying the excitement to unprecedented heights.”
The NHL All-Star jerseys are currently available for purchase through adidas.com and nhlshop.com, as well as other online and physical retailers.
See designs for the 2024 NHL All-Star jersey collection below.
2024 NHL All-Star jersey collection
Tyrell Hampton
The bitter legal battle between Sean “Diddy” Combs and alcohol giant Diageo over their soured tequila venture is going to be paused until at least next spring, an appeals court says.
In a ruling on Tuesday, a panel of judges on New York’s appellate division granted Diageo’s request for a so-called stay of the lawsuit, in which Combs accused the company of racism and failing to adequately support his DeLeon brand of tequila.
Diageo’s attorneys asked for the pause while they try to convince the appeals court to overturn a ruling this summer for Diddy and send the case to private arbitration, which would negate the need for continued litigation. Combs’ attorneys had called Diageo’s request a “desperate attempt to delay judicial scrutiny for its discriminatory conduct.”
Tuesday’s decision means any progress in the underlying case will be paused until at least April, which is when the appeals court said Diageo’s appeal must be ready to be heard.
Following the ruling, Combs’ attorney John Hurston told Billboard: “Once the appellate court considers the actual merits, we are confident that they will reach the same conclusion as two separate judges already: that Diageo can’t avoid a public trial.”
A spokeswoman for Diageo did not immediately return a request for comment.
Combs sued in May, claiming Diageo breached his partnership deal for DeLeon Tequila by failing to properly support the brand. But he also went a lot further than that, leveling accusations of racism and claiming Diageo had treated his product line “worse than others because he is Black.”
“Cloaking itself in the language of diversity and equality is good for Diageo’s business, but it is a lie,” Combs’ lawyers wrote. “While Diageo may conspicuously include images of its Black partners in advertising materials and press releases, its words only provide the illusion of inclusion.”
The case claimed that Diageo had “typecast” his DeLeón Tequila as a “Black brand” that could only be sold to “urban” consumers, harming its sales and leaving it lagging behind competing Diageo brands like Casamigos and Don Julio.
Diageo responded a month later, calling the lawsuit a “bad faith, sham action” filed by a star who had “amassed nearly one billion dollars” from their partnership but now wanted to “extract” billions more.
“These allegations are nothing more than opportunistic attempts to garner press attention and distract the court from the fact that plaintiff’s breach-of-contract claim is entirely without merit,” the company’s attorneys wrote. “Diageo categorically denies these accusations.”
Diageo demanded that the case be sent to private arbitration, citing a provision in Diddy’s partnership contract that they said required such disputes be handled out of court. The company argued that, if Diddy’s “inflammatory rhetoric” about racism was removed, the case was nothing more than a “garden variety” business dispute that must be arbitrated.
But in September, the judge overseeing the case rejected that argument, meaning the case would move forward in state court, with the trial open to the public.
Diageo quickly appealed that ruling, and asked for a stay to prevent the case from moving forward while the appeal played out. Without a pause, the company said it faced “irreparable harm” because it would be forced to “arbitrate and litigate the same issues at the same time.”
After Tuesday’s ruling granting that request, the case will not proceed until the appellate court rules on Diageo’s appeal. Tuesday’s order said the appeal must be “perfected for the April 2024 Term of this Court,” but it’s unclear if that means the case will be decided by then, or merely argued and briefed.
During a show last month at Madison Square Garden, Stevie Nicks announced a surprise collaboration with an unlikely partner: Barbie.
The 75-year-old musician, who rose to rock icon status as a member of Fleetwood Mac and as a solo musician, told the sold-out crowd that a doll fashioned after her 27-year-old self would soon be released (she later announced the news on X). When the $55 doll was made available for pre-order hours later, it sold out almost instantly.
The tambourine-toting Stevie Nicks Barbie doll arrives to buyers on Friday (Nov. 10) as part of a limited-edition collaboration between Nicks, Barbie manufacturer Mattel and independent publisher Primary Wave. Primary Wave’s chief brand officer, Jeff Straughn, says that “all the stars aligned” for a project that’s also creating fresh opportunities for Nicks and the company.
In 2020, Primary Wave acquired a majority stake in Nicks’ publishing copyrights as well as her name and likeness (partnering with Kobalt on administration for the catalog). As part of the deal, Primary Wave represents Nicks in brand alliance and brand marketing opportunities and offers her access to its marketing, branding, Broadway, film/TV, digital strategy, licensing and synch teams. The Stevie Nicks Barbie is the first project developed under this partnership.
The company had already established a sparkling track record in such endeavors, telling Billboard last year that it had quadrupled the value of the Whitney Houston estate after assuming 50% ownership of the late icon’s assets in 2019. Other legendary clients include Smokey Robinson, portions of the estates of Prince and Bob Marley and the entire James Brown estate.
Primary Wave had already been in general discussions with Mattel about prospective collaborations when it signed the deal with Nicks. “Given that we have a lot of legendary and active artists, I felt like there had to be a match,” says Straughn. “We went into the conversation a little broader, but we also knew, through my conversations with Sheryl [Louis, Nicks’ longtime manager] that Barbie would be something Stevie is very interested in doing.”
“She doesn’t say yes to a lot of things,” Straughn continues, “but this isn’t about branding for her, this is a passion … and what we try to do a Primary Wave is go with organic opportunities that are authentic to the brand and audience.”
Nicks and her team worked directly with Mattel on the doll’s design. There were several iterations of the face and outfit, with the team ultimately styling it after Nicks’ iconic look from the cover of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 classic, Rumours. Nicks even sent the actual outfit she wore on the album cover to Mattel for accuracy.
“Sheryl told me from the beginning that when Stevie gets involved, she’s hands-on, and she wasn’t lying,” says Straughn.
The doll is thus dressed in a black velvet dress with gauzy flowing sleeves. She sports a pendant necklace and a moody gaze that seems to ponder the players who only love you when they’re playing, with Nicks overseeing details “all the way down to the tambourine,” says Straughn.
Stevie Nicks Barbie
Excitement about the project was already high at Primary Wave during development, but the project was brought to a new level with the 2023 Barbie movie. The film — which was released in July and grossed $1.4 billion at the box office — fostered a renewed level of appeal and cultural relevancy for the Barbie brand, helping fuel enthusiasm around Nicks’ version of the doll.
While the doll was originally slated to come out closer to the 2023 holiday season, it was Nicks’ idea to move up the release date to capitalize on movie’s success, an opportunity Straughn calls “once in a lifetime” synergy.
The Barbie movie’s appeal also synchs with Nicks’ own broad fanbase. “Not many artists like Stevie, who’s 75, can hit multi-generations,” says Straughn. “There are seven-year-olds out there that love Stevie Nicks.” He says Mattel was aware of this broad appeal and “identified Stevie as something that would be interesting to them, based on their research.”
Mattel has previously transformed rock stars into toys with Barbie versions of Tina Turner, David Bowie, Gloria Estefan and Celia Cruz. Now, Straughn says other Primary Wave artists have approached him asking for their own doll. Although he says it’s not a project every artist can do, he does hint that other Primary Wave collaborations with Mattel may be forthcoming.
The doll — already selling for more than twice its sticker price on the secondary market — isn’t likely to generate vast revenue and wasn’t intended to. (Primary Wave is not able to disclose exactly how many dolls were manufactured, although Straughn estimates it was “tens of thousands.”)
“It wasn’t as much about a financial win as much as it was about marketing,” says Straughn. The real benefit is the buzz that’s lifting all parts of Nicks’ and Primary Wave’s businesses. Straughn reports that streams of Nicks’ music have gone up since the doll’s announcement, and that it has brought multiple queries about synching her work for campaigns.
“That impact is exactly why I lead this branding team,” says Straughn. “The message here is really that these projects open up other opportunities, music-wise.”
Stevie Nicks Barbie
LONDON — Currently languishing near the bottom of the fourth tier of English football, Forest Green Rovers don’t have the global profile, colossal riches or superstar players of the world’s top teams. But despite their small stature, the Rovers enjoy one major bragging right: they’re the first European soccer club to be sponsored by Rock & Roll Hall of Famers the Grateful Dead.
“For us, it’s a perfect match,” says the California band’s archivist and legacy manager, David Lemieux. “Forest Green Rovers is a team that really follows Grateful Dead values, which is to say that we’re both conscious of the world around us and we want to make sure that we leave it a better place than when we arrived.”
Grateful Dead’s decades-long promotion of environmental causes is well-known throughout the music business, but Forest Green Rovers’ eco credentials are equally impressive.
Based in the small town of Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, just over 100 miles outside London, Forest Green Rovers Football Club has been recognized by both the United Nations and football’s international governing body, FIFA, as “the world’s greenest football club.” The team and its owner, Dale Vince, have won praise for pioneering sustainable practices like using renewable energy to power its 5,000-capacity ground, transporting players in an electric bus and serving vegan food to players, staff and fans.
Forest Green Rovers Chairman Dale Vince at a Labour Party conference in Liverpool on Oct. 8, 2023.
OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images
The idea to partner Grateful Dead with Forest Green first landed on Lemieux’s desk 18 months ago when it was presented to him by the retail and licensing team at Warner Music Group’s services division WMX, which looks after the group’s merchandising rights outside of touring and online. (Grateful Dead’s music catalog is handled by WMG’s Rhino Records, which also runs the band’s Dead.net website, while Warner Chappell Music represents the act’s publishing interests globally, in conjunction with the Grateful Dead’s company, Ice Nine).
At the time of WMX’s pitch, Lemieux wasn’t familiar with Forest Green Rovers, which has spent much of its 134-year history competing outside the top level, with its best-ever finish coming in the 2021/22 season when the club was crowned champions of League Two (they were relegated 12 months later). But after researching the club and its energy industrialist owner, he says it was a natural fit for the two organizations to team up on a clothing merch deal that sees Grateful Dead’s iconic green skull logo featured on a range of Forest Green co-branded sporting wear, t-shirts and hoodies, produced by U.K. sustainable clothing business I Dress Myself.
“We love to partner with cool people, cool companies and cool organizations who are trying to make a positive difference,” says Lemieux, a self-confessed “hippy Deadhead” who has worked for the legendary California-formed group for 25 years and been a follower of English football since the late 1990s, when he studied in the United Kingdom and would regularly attend matches.
Courtesy of Warner Music and Forrest Green Rovers.
Financial terms of the deal with Forest Green have not been disclosed, although Lemieux describes it as “not a huge money-maker for anyone.” (The most expensive clothing item on sale in the Forest Green online store is a “Grateful Dead Lightning Hoodie” featuring the green skull motif that costs around $75.00.)
For custodians of Grateful Dead — which officially disbanded in 1995 following the death of guitarist and songwriter Jerry Garcia but has continued to tour in various incarnations, most recently as Dead & Company, featuring original members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart — the tie-up with Forest Green is the latest in a vast and ever-growing line of merch and licensing deals helping keep the Grateful Dead brand alive.
At present, the band has deals with more than 100 merch partners and more than 750 products on sale in over 50 territories, spanning everything from water bottles to cosmic mushroom foraging tools to camping equipment to Grateful Dead-branded skis and snowboards, as well as an extensive range of t-shirts and clothing.
Historically, the bulk of those merch deals have been with companies in North America, Grateful Dead’s biggest market for touring and record sales. But Lemieux says he’s now seeing an increasing number of licensing offers come in from Japan, England, South America and other international territories.
“Brand awareness is growing and it’s growing fast in the international markets,” says Lemieux. He credits Warner Music’s licensing teams in New York and England for working hard to find “best in class” partners.
“At the heart of everything Grateful Dead do is sustainability, so when we work on projects for them, whether it’s a multi-million-dollar deal or a small project, they need to know about its sustainable nature,” says WMX licensing and record retail account director Alex Mitchell, who oversaw the merch deal with Forest Green Rovers.
Courtesy of Warner Music and Forrest Green Rovers.
Mitchell says the season-long partnership with the club (with an option to renew next year) is one of several licensing deals WMX are working on to “make the Grateful Dead story better known” in the United Kingdom and Europe beyond “just being a cool band t-shirt.”
Sports and music brand tie-ups are, of course, nothing new, and Grateful Dead has struck similar deals in the past (the band famously sponsored Lithuania’s cash-strapped 1992 Olympic basketball team and more recently held one-off brand partnerships with various baseball, basketball and ice hockey clubs in North America). But Forest Green marks its first real foray into the world’s most popular sport.
The deal comes at a time when soccer’s profile in the United States continues to climb, especially among young Americans, fueled by the arrival of global superstars like Lionel Messi to Major League Soccer and the crossover success of Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso and the hit FX series Welcome To Wrexham, which documents the fortunes of Wrexham A.F.C (who play in the same league as Forest Green) and its Hollywood actor owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.