Steph Curry’s Gentleman’s Cut bourbon.
Courtesy: Gentleman’s Cut
Steph Curry is one of the greatest basketball players ever, and judging by his company’s financials, he’s off to a pretty good start in the business world.
Curry is the CEO of Thirty Ink, a house-of-brands conglomerate that owns companies including Unanimous Media, Gentleman’s Cut bourbon and Underrated Golf and Basketball. CNBC Sport profiled the company in “Curry Inc.: The Business of Stephen Curry,” a production centered on Curry’s career and business ambitions that airs Wednesday on CNBC at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Thirty Ink generated $173.5 million in revenue in 2024, the company told CNBC Sport. The highest percentage of that revenue comes from its partnership with Under Armour, where Curry is president of Curry Brand, the company’s basketball and golf footwear and apparel brand. As part of a 2023 deal, the 11-time NBA All-Star was given 8.8 million Under Armour common shares, valued at $75 million at the time, in addition to other awards and incentives.
While Thirty Ink incurs annual expenses for delivering on Curry’s name, image and likeness, as well as related marketing around the brand, it doesn’t rack up traditional bottom-line operational costs to fuel those sales, helping contribute to a gaudy $144 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization last year, the company said.
Still, every business in Curry’s Thirty Ink portfolio is profitable, said Suresh Singh, the company’s secretary-chairman. Singh helped transform Curry’s business from SC30 to Thirty Ink, which has broadened its scope to different business lines such as bourbon, sports drinks and a branding consultancy and agency for other athletes.
“It’s completely unique,” said Singh. “One of the big things, I believe, is that there’s a lot of athlete- and celebrity-driven partnerships and businesses that aren’t necessarily focused on profit, aren’t necessarily focused on mission. We do both.”
Unanimous Media
The company’s mission is to “elevate the under.” That manifests itself differently depending on the business line. Unanimous Media attempts to hire diverse writers to create projects about family, faith and sports, said Erick Peyton, the multimedia company’s co-founder and co-CEO along with Curry.
“He knows every single project on our slate, which is probably around 40 right now,” Peyton said of Curry. “His vision is to inspire through media. It’s really a feeling when you watch our projects, hopefully you’re a little bit happier, you know, maybe it makes you feel a little bit better.”
Unanimous Media launched in 2018 and has been profitable every year, said Peyton. The company is four years into a first-look deal with Comcast’s NBCUniversal, which owns the Peacock streaming service. Unanimous initially signed that deal for “high eight figures” over several years, and it has been renewed once, Peyton said.
“It was a good deal, for sure,” said Peyton. “We’re really, really happy with Universal, and we’re hoping that they recoup their investment, and we’re hoping to kill it not only on Universal, but on the Peacock side.”
“Goat” movie poster.
Courtesy: Sony Pictures
Unanimous is releasing its first feature-length movie, “GOAT,” about a billy goat that plays basketball, with Sony Pictures Animation next year.
“It’s set in an all-animal world,” Peyton said. “The goat plays basketball, but we don’t call it basketball there, we call it ‘roar ball.'”
Curry’s DEI priority
Curry and John Schwartz, owner of the Amuse Bouche Winery in Napa Valley, partnered with Boone County Distilling Co. to develop Gentleman’s Cut. Thirty Ink was in talks last year to sell a minority stake in Gentleman’s Cut to a buyer that wanted to feature a Black-owned business, but the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion squashed the deal, according to a person familiar with the matter.
That deal would have valued the business between $120 million and $200 million, the person said. A Thirty Ink spokesman declined to comment.
Curry isn’t backing off his own commitment to DEI, he told CNBC Sport. Curry’s Underrated Golf business is specifically designed to give Black and brown children a chance to participate in a sport that hasn’t historically catered to them.
“Obviously, from a national perspective, a lot of the narrative is trying to peel back programs and opportunities that are programs and resources that are allowing people to have just a fair shot and a fair chance,” Curry said in an interview. “Everything that we do and what I can control is about true equity. If you look at all of our businesses — our DEI writers for Unanimous, or even looking at something like the Underrated brand — it’s about creating true representation and opportunity from a grassroots level.”
“All that stuff is important to me. I want to actually walk the walk and live it. And hopefully that’s an example for how our country should.”
Disclosure: Comcast’s NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.
