Authentic Brands Group Takes Majority IP Stake in Drake's OVO
Authentic Brands Group takes majority IP control of OVO, while Vince Holding Corp. acquires the operating business, nearly 20 years after the brand was founded.
- Majority IP stake
- Authentic Brands Group acquires majority of OVO's intellectual property
- Drake's role
- Drake retains significant stake, guides creative direction, per the company
- Operating business
- Vince Holding Corp. takes OVO's operating business, handling design and retail
- Global ambition
- Partnership structured to expand OVO globally, per the company
- Brand age
- OVO was founded nearly 20 years ago, per the announcement
Authentic Brands Group has agreed to acquire a majority stake in OVO, the lifestyle and apparel brand co-founded by Drake, in a deal that restructures both the label's ownership and its operational infrastructure.
Under the agreement, Authentic Brands Group takes majority control of OVO's intellectual property, while Vince Holding Corp. acquires the brand's operating business. Vince will oversee design, product development, merchandising and retail for OVO going forward. Drake retains a significant ownership stake and remains involved in the brand's creative direction, per the company. The transaction comes nearly 20 years after OVO was founded.
The structure points to an accelerated global expansion, with Authentic's IP management capabilities and Vince's operational expertise providing new institutional infrastructure behind that push.
Why it matters
The OVO deal reflects a broader playbook in which celebrity-rooted brands separate intellectual property from operational execution, allowing each asset to be managed by a specialist. Authentic Brands Group has built its portfolio around exactly this kind of IP consolidation, spanning legacy sportswear labels to entertainment properties. Pairing that model with Vince, a company with direct-to-consumer and wholesale retail experience, signals that OVO is being repositioned as a scalable global label rather than a culturally adjacent merchandise vehicle. For the streetwear and lifestyle category more broadly, the transaction reinforces that founder-built brands with strong identity capital are increasingly attractive to institutional acquirers who see licensing and distribution scale as the next lever of value creation.
What to watch
The open question is how much of OVO's cultural cachet, built on its proximity to Drake's music career, survives the transition to institutional ownership. Brands in this mold have historically struggled to sustain relevance once the founding creative steps back from day-to-day product decisions, even when, as here, the founder formally retains both an equity stake and a creative role.
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