Newsletter
How Round21's Winning Lifestyle Playbook Combines Sports and Art
CEO Jasmine Maietta is a former pro baller and global marketing exec
Sports are a canvas for Round21, a company that unites artists and athletes to create special edition wearables, collectibles and other products that promote inclusivity and drive cultural conversations.
Among the collabs: artist Dwight White has immortalized the likes of Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes and Odell Beckham, Jr. on NFLPA-licensed footballs; and Samantha Woj’s painting of WNBA Rookie of the Year Caitlin Clark has graced everything from t-shirts to mini hoops.
“Our approach to working with athletes and artists shows how important collaboration is, and it’s often absent in traditional brand athlete brand product relationships,” says Round21 founder and CEO Jasmine Maietta. “Ours is an exchange of ideas and beliefs. Artists have been capturing history as it’s happening since the dawn of time, and athletes have a platform for getting those messages out. The one-two punch of those together really keeps us on the leading edge of what’s coming.”
Maietta founded her sports-meets-creativity enterprise in 2020 after working in marketing for two decades. Her resume includes senior roles at Reebok and Hasbro, before she helmed global brand marketing at Under Armour and Peloton.
Maietta’s got game on the court, too, having played professional basketball and coached at the collegiate level before embarking on a marketing career.
Here, she talks about tapping into the creative side of sports through Round21.
MUSE: You’ve had an impressive career at big companies. What made you brave enough to leave the corporate world to create your own venture?
Jasmine Maietta: The courage came from knowing that the community was already focused on self-expression, but the industry wasn’t. When Covid hit, I felt it was a great time to start anew.
You went on Shark Tank when you were getting Round21 off the ground. What did you learn from the experience?
In 2020, I was seeking every distribution channel I could to get our message out; and when the producers called and said, “We want you to apply,” I said, “Great!” Shark Tank gave me the ability to refine our message. Generally speaking, representation and participation through sports products is definitely a mouthful.
It also gave me the opportunity to get real feedback from people who understand how multi-billion-dollar concepts are made. I did make a deal on air—and then I walked away. I never took money from any of the Sharks. But it was an incredible experience for me to understand, “What are we really building?” We haven’t strayed too far away from the pitch, and it’s definitely striking a chord now. Prior to that, we did a Kickstarter, which is still discoverable.
Can you talk about collaborating with artists like Samantha Woj, who we recently featured on Muse? How you find and choose the artists you work with?
Coming from a coaching background, the only analogy I can use is—we’re always scouting. I’m always looking for artists who can embody a message through their creativity, whether it’s the written word or Sam’s painting approach with sporting goods, or even singer/songwriters. The artist has to have some tether to sports, whether they played or have a certain team that they root for.
It’s important that the artists’ lived experience and identities feel like part of the narrative. That’s why we’re so intentional around showing the making of art—because what Round21 does is human-made. Obviously, AI is certainly on everybody’s lips. But we want to make sure that the humans get [to share] the storylines, along with what they create.
Athletes and artists often work together on Round21 products. Can you take me through a specific athlete/artist collaboration?
Shema Love is a Brooklyn-based artist, and she was handpicked to be our first WNBA artist collaborator because she had been following and participating in the rise of the WNBA for years. In 2023, Shema was handpicked to be the artist for our Brittney Griner product.
Brittney had just come back from Russia [after being held in prison for 10 months]. It was her first year back in the league, and she wanted to shift the spotlight from herself. Instead, BG wanted to put the spotlight on the people, and Shema captured that through both words and visual art. The words were—”Every game is a home game,” because, for Brittney, every game was a home game being on American soil.
Shema captured a sentiment that everybody could get behind and understand without it being literal. And BG hand wrote a letter to the community that Shema artfully represented on the back of every garment we sold along with a faceless Brittney Griner, to show she is now with the people, and that it’s not about her. And there was a significant give back for every product that went directly to bringing our families [held overseas] home.
You’ve also worked with Spotify and DoorDash—and Round21 digital apparel created by Love and Woj has been integrated into NBA2K 25, which is big in terms of distribution.
Distribution is key to growth, and the lack of WNBA storytelling content [in video games] is something that the NBA2K team and Round21 are obviously aware of. The NBA2K team was very committed to ensuring they bring more visibility to the W and to the players. So, the WNBA Round21 capsules and all of the products that we’ve built are available in NBA2K and will continue to be available with drops going into the holidays and draft season and into tip-off next year. We’re prioritizing cultural moments as well. We have Juneteenth projects ready for NBA2K.
The WNBA embraces equality and social issues at a time when other brands are shying away from anything they fear might cause controversy. Can you talk about being able to promote equality and human rights?
The WNBA has a much more culturally conscious and diverse fan base, and our products reflect the changing values of the culture. That is the value that we provide. We have been met with open arms and supported by Fanatics, and if you go to the San Francisco MoMA Art Museum website, you’ll see Round21 Pride products. Getting Fanatics, a multi-billion dollar e-comm behemoth that does incredible business in sports memorabilia, and the San Francisco MoMA adopting our cultural products shows the changing values of the community.
