Jay-Z has sold about 50 million albums, won 17 Grammys, is worth almost $500 million and can well afford his own "gentlemen's club" and nightclub, is the co-creator of the Rocawear fashion line, a part-owner of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and the Barclays Center stadium in Brooklyn, and happens to be married to Beyonce and the father of Blue Ivy Carter. 

So while he may be busier than your average Roca-a-fella, he's also making time for a brand new endeavor to stretch his business clout: becoming a sports agent.

The big news this week—via well-placed media clips in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times—is that Jay is opening his own sports agency, snagging New York Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano away from the sport’s best-known and most-feared agent, Scott Boras, to be his first client.

Cano is in the final year of his current contract with the Yanks so whoever negotiates his next one, which will likely be worth more than $200 million, will be reeling in a whole lot of dough. It’s looking like the man who'll be hauling it is in none other than Hova himself.Continue reading...

Rocawear's first ever TV commercial features founder Jay-Z, above. In other celebrity brandcasting today, Burger King's new commercials feature Mary J. Blige, David Beckham, Jay Leno, and Salma Hayek promoting BK's 10 new menu items, its biggest menu expansion since 1954, which debuts today.Continue reading...

When Jay-Z's Rocawear brand yanked its "Occupy Wall Street" shirts over criticism about profiting off a social movement (with no plans to donate anything back to Occupy Wall Street), the lesson was clear: Those capitalizing on OWS must tread lightly or risk major PR blowback.

With this in mind, the future of one trademark application (filed Nov. 19th) is very intriguing. The mark, "Wine for the 99%," was requested by massive wine conglomerate The Wine Group LLC.Continue reading...

NBA owners and players are trying to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement. So far, training camps and some preseason games have been canceled, but the constant threat of the entire season getting flushed down the drain hangs over things. One team that might actually benefit from such a thing could be the New Jersey Nets.

The Nets are spending the season in Newark before moving to Brooklyn. A year off could help new fans forget that the team has been one of the more forgettable franchises in recent years. One little tool that the team isn’t using to help people move on from the recent past is a new name.

Mogul/rapper and minority team owner Jay-Z, a Brooklyn native, announced Monday that the team’s name will stay Nets. His other big announcement, which was made overlooking the under-construction Barclays Center, is that the arena will open in September 2012 with a series of eight concerts by him before the opening tipoff of the Brooklyn Nets season.Continue reading...

The next retail marketplace is online. No, not real-world goods purchased via the web, but virtual goods purchased online for your virtual life. It's a brave new world that Warner Bros TV is leaping into by releasing lines of "branded virtual goods" based on some of its programming.

The Time Warner-owned TV hit-maker just announced a partnership with Virtual Greats aimed at creating "custom branded boutiques for the initial launch of branded virtual goods from popular series The Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl, and Pretty Little Liars." So what the heck is a "branded virtual good?", you ask?Continue reading...

Need a T-shirt for your avatar? Or a movie poster for your avatar’s bedroom? Help is on the way.

Universal Pictures has signed a deal with Virtual Greats to create virtual goods for two of its films, Brian DePalma’s Scarface with Al Pacino and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. The first batch of virtual goods will be found on Meez.com, a social entertainment destination for teens and young adults, according to a press release.

Virtual goods, by the way, are things bought in virtual communities or virtual games that cannot leave that environment. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the most expensive virtual good ever sold was in the virtual Entropia Universe, where a space station called the Crystal Palace went for $330,000. Hey, the place came with four biodomes stuffed with aliens to hunt down along with a lovely bar to quaff virtual lagers.

Prices like that help explain the results that research firm In-Stat came up with last year when it predicted that $7.3 billion would be spent in virtual goods in 2010. So Universal wants a piece of that action and its first items will appear on Meez later this month. And more Universal virtual goods are surely to follow at Meez and on other sites.Continue reading...