The name \u201cJoe Montana\u201d still carries enormous cachet around the San Francisco Bay Area. It also carries serious investment potential, deal flow now being tapped by the cannabis industry.<\/p>\n
Joe Montana the man might have been able to cash in on the goodwill he earned while quarterbacking the San Francisco 49ers to four Super Bowl titles in the 1980s, but the pro football hall of famer has proven to be more than a nostalgia act good for branding restaurants. He has become a model for how to turn game checks into serious multi-generational wealth. Montana has\u00a0invested<\/a>\u00a0in real estate and\u00a0software and is also a partner in Liquid 2 Ventures, an early-stage seed fund<\/a>\u00a0of the type sought after by startups.<\/p>\n This all makes the 62-year-old\u2019s recent, very large, and very direct entry into the marijuana industry unsurprising while also paradigm-shifting.<\/p>\n Last week,\u00a0it was announced<\/a>\u00a0that Montana and a group of partners have invested $75 million into Caliva, a San Jose-based state-licensed retail and cultivation operation (which also happens to be one of the closest dispensaries, geographically speaking, to the 49ers\u2019 new stadium in Santa Clara).<\/p>\n The exact size of Montana\u2019s personal stake wasn\u2019t announced, and there are many other prominent investors in the group \u2014 Carol Bartz, a former CEO of Yahoo! Inc. among them \u2014 but what makes this interesting is Montana\u2019s apparent positioning as an owner rather than a mere brander or pitchman.<\/p>\n Though he is also doing that. In the statement accompanying the big news of his big buy, Montana said that he hoped investments like his could \u201cprovide relief to many people\u201d and perhaps be a bulwark against \u201copioid use or addiction.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether Montana uses cannabis himself as former football players including running back\u00a0Ricky Williams<\/a>, lineman\u00a0Kyle Turley<\/a>, or quarterback\u00a0Jake Plummer<\/a>\u00a0have publicly disclosed \u2014 in Turley\u2019s case, he credits cannabis for literally saving his life from a prescription painkiller and head trauma-fueled tailspin \u2014 is unknown.<\/p>\n Montana has yet to say. It may not really matter. Montana\u2019s money, or his magnetism attracting more money, or merely his brand as a successful investor (or a combination of all three) will help Caliva open new stores and launch new product lines, Bartz\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0the Associated Press. This is a marked escalation from Montana\u2019s previous marijuana-related investment, a modest-by-comparison $4.1 million play in Herb, a cannabis-themed media company.<\/p>\n You could argue that Montana isn\u2019t really breaking any new ground. Investing in a California licensed cannabis company more than a year after retail stores began selling to any customers 21 and over isn\u2019t exactly novel and is even less so given the broader national context, where legacy alcohol and tobacco companies are openly pouring literal billions into cannabis companies.<\/p>\n Even less interesting is Montana\u2019s deployment of the medical marijuana argument in the recreational marijuana era. Sure, there is research saying that cannabis may reduce dependence on opiates and legalization may cut down on overdose deaths, and it\u2019s good that someone rich and famous is saying these things, but they\u2019re also old news. And who among us really thinks Montana is in it for the healing as opposed to the return on investment?<\/p>\n At the same time, money is conservative, and attitudes around cannabis are still retrograde. Montana\u2019s willingness to attach his name to cannabis is a demonstration that there really is very little serious stigma left with the cannabis industry, at least for a football hero with a successful second act as a money man.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/b>, which celebrity do you think will invest in cannabis next?<\/p>\n The post Joe Montana\u2019s Big Marijuana Investment Is a Safe Play But Still Significant<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The name \u201cJoe Montana\u201d still carries enormous cachet around the San Francisco Bay Area. It also carries serious investment potential, deal flow now being tapped by the cannabis industry. Joe Montana the man might have been able to cash in on the goodwill he earned while quarterbacking the San FranciscoContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,4970,170,657,7389,1426,7390,687,6062,7391,5964,5363],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32528"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32528"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32529,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32528\/revisions\/32529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Joe Montana\u2019s Big Marijuana Investment Is a Safe Play But Still Significant<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"