Dany Garcia Is Redefining the Sports and Entertainment World

Dany Garcia is dancing in her living room. As she poses, a group of young women who have helped develop her social media presence chant: “Killer heels and a Bodycon dress. Killer heels and a Bodycon dress.” It’s Garcia’s spin on the "Boots and a Slicked-Back Bun" meme that flashed briefly during midsummer before becoming a memory. Garcia is also quick to move on. Minutes later, she’s sitting on her couch as she and her team film another bit, based on former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s viral testimony from 2019. How many times has Garcia stared at her husband and professional bodybuilder Dave Rienzi’s butt? “Quite a few times,” she says. Fifty times? “More,” she says. A hundred times? “More.” They do a few takes. And Garcia is on to the next one. She’s clearly enjoying herself—“It’s fun little storytelling,” she told ADWEEK—but she moves with the quick pragmatism one would expect from the CEO of The Garcia Companies, a holding company she founded with a diverse portfolio of enterprises. For instance, there’s the energy drink company ZOA, founded in 2020 by Garcia, Rienzi, her famous ex-husband Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and Juggernaut Capital Partners founder John Shulman. And then there’s its powerhouse movie production house Seven Bucks Productions, co-founded by Johnson and Garcia in 2012, which signed a first-look deal with Disney in June. But the most recent watershed in Garcia’s career happened in 2020, when she was part of a consortium that bought the pro football minor league XFL, making her the first woman to have a co-equal or majority ownership stake in a pro sports league in the United States. Earlier this year, the XFL merged with the USFL and became the United Football League (UFL), with Garcia retaining a minority stake. It was not Garcia’s intention to make history. But when she did, she realized she needed to step in front of the camera. “There was this recognition that if I was succeeding quietly—especially as a woman, as a Latina—it's only half the job. If we're succeeding quietly, we're failing, right?” said Garcia, who grew up in a Cuban household in New Jersey. “I can open my world through social media.” The nature of Garcia’s story, and how she’s epitomizing what women of color can be, have made her the 18th annual Beacon Award honoree, selected by ADWEEK in partnership with Adcolor. “She has that humility, but at the same time, she's very specific about what she represents,” said Adcolor president Tiffany R. Warren. “Often, people who are from marginalized communities are afraid to stand in their power in that way. [Garcia] is so proud of what she's been able to accomplish, and wants to be a blueprint for others. And that is hallmark Adcolor.” A first in pro sports Garcia’s world is varied. Her background working in finance, her marriage to Johnson, and the business relationship she still has with him have been extensively reported. “I'm a blend of venture capital, a blend of traditional business, also blended with entertainment,” she said. And Garcia’s businesses, diverse as they are, all reflect aspects of her personality, values, and interests. She’d be hard-pressed, for instance, to buy into a grocery delivery service—something that doesn’t tie into what she's doing naturally. Dany Garcia became the first female owner of a pro sports league when she bought into the XFL, which merged with the USFL this year to become the United Football League. The UFL, for instance, is about providing a chance. “It’s the greatest experience, because my athletes come for an opportunity, and they get to play on national television,” Garcia said. The UFL plays in the spring, before the NFL’s September kickoff, and as of mid-October 80 UFL athletes had signed NFL contracts. Garcia was a fan when Vince McMahon launched the XFL for the second time in 2018. The first incarnation, which McMahon started in 2001, had gimmicks to make it a more extreme version of football than what the NFL offered. But the relaunch was different. “It was freaking phenomenal,” Garcia recalled. “It was real football. I could see these athletes who were what we call 'the 54th man'—the man who got cut, and you could see them playing with passion and with opportunity.” Initially, Garcia wanted to talk to McMahon and see if she could buy in as a partner. But then the pandemic hit, tanking many live events including the XFL. “When it went into bankruptcy, I said, ‘I can get the whole thing,’” Garcia recalled. “I have been involved in live events, and I’ve been an athlete, and I’ve been around sports all my life.” She knew she’d have to leave the internal workings of football operations to general managers and CEOs who knew how the professional version of the sport operated. “But everything else I’ve done for the last 30 years—every skill, every bit of storytelling, from film to the WWE to Rock the Troops in Hawaii—I could bring everything there,” Garcia said. Once she decided to buy the XFL, she recruited Johnson and other investors, including RedBird Capital, to buy in with her. UFL ownership hasn’t been frictionless. It struggled with low attendance early in its debut with 8,791 fans, according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal, though it ended the season in June with about 580,000 attendees, peaking with 40,317 at an April match in St. Louis, according to the UFL. And the Army was reportedly irked that its $11 million marketing deal with the UFL didn’t lead to any new recruits, and that Johnson didn’t publish enough service-related posts on his social media accounts, according to Military.com. “There was a misunderstanding regarding the contract, which did not include recruitment," Garcia said. "The Army had an agency with a specific point of view, and it was a difference of opinion. Ultimately, the partnership did not move forward on the level that was originally reported.” Among The Garcia Companies’ diverse holdings is ZOA energy drinks, founded by Garcia alongside Dwayne Johnson, her husband Dave Rienzi, and Juggernaut Capital Partners’ John Shulman. From Seven Bucks to $7 billion Garcia is used to these challenges—her journey as an entrepreneur has been a minefield of them, even from the very start. The name of Seven Bucks Productions famously comes from the amount of money that Dwayne Johnson had in his pocket after he was released from the Canadian Football League in the mid-'90s. At the time, Garcia and Johnson were dating. Johnson had no idea what he was going to do, and he considered going into construction, Garcia recalled. “I was like, ‘No, that’s not gonna happen. You have great aspirations.’” They realized wrestling was his next opportunity, and Johnson called his father, who was a wrestler, to pick him up and take him back to Tampa with the rest of his family to work at Bally’s as a trainer, and to begin his own training. “That’s where the idea of Seven Bucks Productions came from,” Garcia said. “The idea that everyone has a turning point in their life, where you don’t know what’s next, but you move forward.” Even after Garcia’s marriage to Johnson dissolved, they still moved forward, unconventionally, as business partners. Garcia had been involved with Johnson’s contracts during his professional career with the WWE, and later with his film and television work, she said. As they were negotiating their split, Johnson asked Garcia if she would continue to be his manager and help run some of his business decisions. Seven Bucks Productions’ Red Notice, the 2021 action comedy starring Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds, is Netflix’s most popular movies. “And it was easy,” Garcia said. To her, his request was just a continuation of a longstanding business relationship. Today, the production house they started together already has a string of hits, including Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle—which saw $962 million in global box office returns—its sequel Jumanji: The Next Level, Rampage, and Red Notice, which tops the list of Netflix’s most popular films of all time. The long-term goal, Garcia said with a wry grin, is to take Seven Bucks to $7 billion. By comparison, Paramount’s market cap at the time of this writing is $7.43 billion. And Seven Bucks is loaded up for more big bets. In November, it will release the action-adventure Christmas comedy Red One starring Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu, and J.K. Simmons. Seven Bucks’ docket for 2025 includes The Smashing Machine, directed by the acclaimed filmmaker Benny Safdie, and the live action version of Disney’s Moana. That relationship with Disney expanded earlier this year with a deal that gives the film studio first crack at projects developed by Seven Bucks, which has traditionally been film studio-agnostic, Garcia said. But in working with Disney, Garcia sees an opportunity to push Seven Bucks’ IP beyond its films. Consider how the Disney-owned Marvel and Star Wars movies and shows have successfully expanded into toys, video games, and other experiences. “There’s no one better than Disney at that, and a number of our projects are that way,” Garcia said, adding that Disney is also one of her ownership partners in the UFL. “It’s not just an overhead deal. Can we get into that organization and utilize all assets so everyone has more?” Garcia defers when asked if the closer ties to Disney means Johnson—who played the DC antihero Black Adam—is in line to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “We haven't done any current development on the MCU,” she said. “But a great idea is a great idea, and I would never rule anything out.” Fox Sports broadcaster Curt Menefee (L) and Dany Garcia rang the opening bell at the Nasdaq stock exchange in March to commemorate the start of the United Football League’s season. Building up And if Garcia latches onto a great idea, even an improbable one, she latches on hard. How else does one start training to become a professional bodybuilder at 42? Garcia had been enamored with women bodybuilders since she was 14, but graduating college, working, and raising her daughter—the professional wrestler Ava Raine—precluded her from devoting the time she needed. But in the 2010s, her now-husband Rienzi told her there was a new bodybuilding category called physique. “They’re like mini bodybuilders,” Garcia said. Rienzi put her through a rigorous training program and three years later, in 2014, she debuted as a pro. (She retired in 2019.) Garcia liked how bodybuilding made her look and feel. But there was also a business benefit. “After every contest, and I didn't do many, maybe four or five total, the next year our business exploded,” Garcia said. “It was like that intense training time sharpened my mind, and I would come out philosophically in such a different place, the business world would go BWOOSH.” There’s a parallel between creating a very specific shape with her physique, and sculpting The Garcia Companies’ portfolio of companies—where Garcia tends to each one as if it were a muscle in her body. “The creativity to my physique," she said, "is very much a reflection to the creativity I get to do and build in the things I'm shaping and molding." Correction: An earlier version of this article cited an article stating that Garcia was the first woman to own a pro sports league. She is the first woman to have a co-equal or majority ownership stake in a pro sports league in the United States. The article has been updated.

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Dany Garcia Is Redefining the Business of Sports and Entertainment

ADWEEK and Adcolor's 2024 Beacon Award honoree is building an empire on her own terms

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