Authentic Brands Group has acquired a majority stake in the intellectual property of October’s Very Own (OVO), the Canadian lifestyle and apparel brand co-founded by Drake. The Toronto rapper will retain a significant ownership stake and continue to lead the brand’s creative direction.
Vince Holding Corp. (VNCE), a longtime Authentic partner, will take over OVO’s operating business, including clothing design, product development, merchandising and retail stores.
“We’re just a couple kids from Toronto who started something we believed in. Here we are 20 years later, same kids with bigger dreams. Authentic and VNCE are the perfect partners to help us continue to grow,” Drake said.
OVO’s expansion and partnerships#
Drake co-founded OVO in 2008 with entrepreneur Oliver El-Khatib and producer Noah “40” Shebib. It began as a blog and lifestyle movement before expanding into high-end clothing and streetwear, with its black-and-gold owl logo becoming widely recognized. The OVO Sound label was later spun off from the brand.
OVO operates twelve flagship stores across Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, including locations in Toronto, New York and London. The brand has produced collaborative collections with:
- Major League Baseball (MLB)
- New Era
- Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)
- National Basketball Association (NBA)
That includes a merchandise capsule tied to the Toronto Raptors’ 2019 NBA championship.
“OVO has earned a place among the world’s most influential lifestyle brands because it has always stood for something authentic and unmistakable,” said Jamie Salter, Authentic’s founder and executive chairman. “Drake and his team have built something with incredible cultural influence. We see a significant opportunity to take that even further, opening new markets, building new businesses and reaching more people around the world without losing what makes OVO, OVO.”
Authentic Brands Group is a U.S.-based licensing company. Its portfolio includes Sports Illustrated, Champion and Nautica, along with licensing rights for the estates of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and Muhammad Ali. The deal adds one of Canada’s largest homegrown brands to Authentic’s portfolio, with OVO’s global operations still tied to Toronto, where the company was founded.
Canada holds line on streaming content rules#
Canada is holding firm on Canadian content (CanCon) streaming rules, and the Juno Awards are restructuring several categories for 2027.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) confirmed it will proceed with plans to regulate how Canadian content is presented and made available on major streaming services, following resistance from the United States.
A CRTC spokesperson said the regulator will determine how streamers must ensure Canadian content is available and visible to audiences, and is still finalizing dates for the regulatory proceedings.
The Online Streaming Act, which became law in 2023 under the Trudeau government, has been a source of dispute. Trade talks between Canada and the United States collapsed over the weekend partly because the Trump administration demanded that American streaming platforms be exempt from Canadian content regulations.
“There were some things we wouldn’t do. We were not prepared to compromise Canada’s sovereignty or undermine our key industries,” Mark Carney said. “We were not prepared to compromise on our sovereignty, the protection of the French language, and our culture. To our American colleagues, let us be clear: for my government and for Canada, these issues were never on the table, even though the United States tried until the very last minute.”
The standoff is the latest in a series of disputes between the Canadian government, Canadian companies and U.S. streaming companies since the law took effect.
Under the act, the CRTC imposed a 5% tax contribution on broadcasters earning more than $25 million to fund Canadian, French-language and Indigenous content. Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music pushed back against the measure. In May, the CRTC said it planned to raise that contribution to 15% for audiovisual streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV, aiming to stabilize a $200 million funding rate for Canadian companies.
Canada’s federal government later announced a $600 million yearly investment that includes covering the $200 million base contribution that would otherwise have been taxed on foreign streaming services.
Discoverability has also been a point of contention. In December, the province of Quebec passed Bill 109, the Act to affirm the cultural sovereignty of Québec. The law sought to impose quotas on French-language content presented and promoted on the homepages of foreign streaming platforms such as Netflix and Prime Video. The platforms objected and asked Quebec’s National Assembly to forgo the quotas.
Carney defended French-language preservation after U.S. President Donald Trump and his representatives denied that the French language was a factor in the talks.
