President, COO, Founding Operating Partner

Ownership Opportunity | Founding Executive

Help Build the Brand That Connects Playground Basketball

We are not simply creating another basketball tournament, apparel label, or content channel. Playground Legends™ is building a character-driven sports and entertainment franchise inspired by the culture, mythology, competition, and personalities of legendary basketball playgrounds.

We've created the connective brand around a basketball culture that today exists across thousands of courts, cities, tournaments, creators, players, communities, apparel brands, local legends, and stories but rarely under one recognizable cultural platform.

Playground basketball has extraordinary history, personalities, competition, language, fashion, and mythology. What it has lacked is a brand capable of bringing those fragmented elements together. Playground Legends™ is that brand.

Characters + Storytelling + Courts + Competition + Content + Merchandise + Community + Licensing

The fictional and real worlds reinforce one another. Original characters such as Baby Face, Super Fly, Pretty Boy and Dishy represent individual courts and cities. Live tournaments create real-world competition. Short-form entertainment builds stories and personalities. Merchandise becomes part of the culture rather than simply another apparel collection.

Over time, the same intellectual property will extend into longer-form entertainment, animation, graphic novels, games, collectibles, licensing, branded events, youth programs, and additional cities.

The Opportunity

Playground Legends is seeking a President / Chief Operating Officer and Founding Operating Partner to work directly with the Founder in building the company from its current creative and developmental stage into a scalable sports, entertainment, media, and consumer brand.

This is not an executive position inside an established corporation. It is an opportunity to help build one.

The ideal person has previously helped create, grow, commercialize, or lead a company, division, property, league, media platform, entertainment venture, consumer brand, or culturally relevant business.

We are especially interested in experience across:

Sports and basketball
Entertainment and media
Brand development
Licensing and intellectual property
Consumer products and apparel
Sponsorship and strategic partnerships
Experiential marketing and live events
Digital media and content distribution
Youth, grassroots, or community sports
Venture building and early-stage companies

The Founder will continue to lead the creative vision, brand universe, characters, storytelling, visual language, and cultural direction of Playground Legends. The President / COO will help turn that vision into a company.

What You Would Build

The President/COO will take responsibility for the commercial and operational infrastructure behind Playground Legends™.

That includes developing and executing the business model, establishing partnerships, building revenue streams, creating operational systems, and helping determine how Playground Legends expands from its founding courts into additional markets.

Initial responsibilities may include:

Developing the company's operating and commercialization strategy
Turning the Playground Legends vision into measurable business objectives
Creating financial models, budgets, forecasts, and revenue plans
Developing sponsorship opportunities with national and local brands
Building relationships within basketball, media, entertainment, retail, and licensing
Structuring tournament and city activation models that can be replicated nationally
Developing partnerships with courts, community organizations, athletes, creators, and cultural figures
Building licensing opportunities around characters, merchandise, content, and intellectual property
Evaluating media, production, streaming, and distribution relationships
Developing merchandise and consumer-product partnerships
Creating scalable systems for local Playground Legends markets
Helping recruit executives, advisors, producers, partners, and city operators
Preparing the business for outside investment when appropriate
Working with legal and financial advisors to protect and commercialize Playground Legends intellectual property
Establishing operating disciplines while preserving the authenticity and cultural identity of the brand

Why This Opportunity Exists

Basketball is one of the world's most recognizable sports, but the culture surrounding playground basketball remains remarkably decentralized.

Local courts have their own histories. Cities have their own legends. Players build reputations independently. Tournament organizers create individual events. Content creators tell isolated stories. Apparel companies borrow from basketball culture. Communities develop their own personalities and traditions.

Yet there is no single independent brand connecting these pieces through characters, storytelling, competition, merchandise, media, and local participation. That fragmentation is the opportunity.

Playground Legends is being designed as an expandable platform in which individual courts retain their identity while becoming part of a larger universe.

Rucker Park can remain Rucker Park. Flamingo Park can remain Flamingo Park. Venice Beach can remain Venice Beach. Cabrini Green can remain Cabrini Green.

Each city can have its own players, stories, rivalries, aesthetics, tournaments, merchandise, and cultural identity while participating in something larger. The ambition is to build a brand people recognize wherever playground basketball is played.

Who We Are Looking For

This opportunity is for someone who sees the potential before the organization is fully built.

You should be comfortable with ambiguity, early-stage decision-making, and creating systems where none yet exist.

You should understand that a great brand is more than marketing—and that culturally significant businesses are built by combining authenticity with disciplined execution.

The strongest candidates will have demonstrated ability to:

Build rather than simply manage
Create revenue rather than simply administer budgets
Establish partnerships and close meaningful agreements
Navigate sports, entertainment, media, or consumer-brand ecosystems
Work comfortably with both corporate executives and local communities
Recognize the commercial value of intellectual property
Scale ideas without stripping away what made them interesting
Recruit and lead talented people
Operate independently and make decisions
Think nationally while executing locally

Existing relationships within basketball, sports marketing, media, entertainment, licensing, consumer products, sponsorship, or investment would be valuable.

An MBA is not required. Entrepreneurial judgment is.

The Founder Relationship

Playground Legends is a founder-led creative company.

The Founder will remain responsible for the central creative vision, including the brand identity, characters, visual universe, storytelling direction, and cultural positioning of Playground Legends.

The President/COO must respect that creative foundation while bringing complementary expertise in operations, commercialization, partnerships, finance, and company building.

This should be a relationship between two people with very different strengths working toward the same objective.

We are not looking for another creative director. We are looking for the person who can help build the enterprise around the creative vision.

Compensation, Ownership & Capital

Transparency matters. There is currently no budget for a traditional executive salary.

This is therefore not appropriate for someone seeking conventional executive employment or immediate guaranteed compensation.

The opportunity is intended for an entrepreneurial executive interested in becoming an ownership-level partner in Playground Legends Brand, LLC and participating in the long-term value created by the company.

The final structure could include meaningful equity or ownership participation based upon responsibilities, commitment, experience, contribution, and mutually agreed milestones.

Because this is an early-stage venture, the right partner should also have the financial ability and entrepreneurial willingness to invest capital into the company when appropriate as part of the agreed ownership structure.

We are not seeking a passive investor disguised as an operating partner. And we are not seeking an executive who contributes capital but not execution.

The ideal person contributes leadership, relationships, operating ability, commercial expertise, time, and capital.

Specific ownership, investment, vesting, governance, compensation, and future salary arrangements will be determined together and documented through appropriate legal agreements.

As the company becomes funded and/or generates sufficient operating revenue, executive compensation can evolve accordingly.

What Success Looks Like

The first phase is not about building a large corporate organization. It is about proving that the model works.

Success means establishing Playground Legends as a recognizable cultural property through a combination of:

Strong original characters
Compelling short-form entertainment
Successful local tournaments
Authentic court participation
Strategic sponsorships
Distinctive merchandise
Community engagement
Repeatable city activation models
Media and licensing opportunities

From there, the objective is to build a platform capable of expanding court by court, city by city, character by character.

The long-term opportunity is substantially larger than apparel. Substantially larger than tournaments. And substantially larger than social content.

The opportunity is to build an enduring intellectual property and entertainment brand around one of basketball's richest cultural traditions.

Interested?

If you have built businesses, brands, media properties, sports ventures, licensing programs, consumer companies, or experiential platforms and believe playground basketball represents an overlooked cultural and commercial opportunity we would like to hear from you.

Please send a brief introduction explaining: