Yahoo News Naomi Osaka’s Production Company Hana Kuma Raises $5M in SpringHill Spinoff (Exclusive)
Hana Kuma, the media company founded by tennis star Noami Osaka and Stuart Duguid, has raised $5 million in a fundraising round that will also see it spin off from The SpringHill Co., which helped launch it less than a year ago.
Investors in the new round include SpringHill, which was founded by LeBron James and Maverick Carter, as well as Fortnite owner Epic Games, Boston Red Sox owner Fenway Sports Group, Japanese conglomerate The Kinoshita Group and the investment firm Disruptive.
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“You know, there was never any grand plan of ‘We’ll spend X amount of time under the SpringHill umbrella and then we’ll go and do it ourselves,'” Duguid tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It just happened very organically and naturally, and it came to the point where we decided it was time to raise financing, build out the business and hire more people and have a more robust team and a more robust business plan.”
Osaka says that when she entered the media business last year, James and Carter told her “not to be discouraged by anything and keep trying to just push barriers and learn along the way.
“When I first set off as a tennis player, when I was a kid, I didn’t think I’d be in this position and I feel like I’m constantly learning new things,” she adds.
With Hana Kuma now mature enough to stand on its own, Osaka is taking that advice to heart.
“We really want to see her build her own version of SpringHill,” Carter tells THR in an interview. “We’ve worked really hard to get SpringHill where it is, but now we want to help others to do the same, and to do it different than as we have done at SpringHill, and to do it in their own way and their own voice.”
To that end, the spinout is also a big move for SpringHill, which had incubated the company since its launch last summer.
In fact, Carter says that the move is a “seminal moment in the history of the company.
“You know, it’s at the center of why we started the company and what we do, which is to really work with and empower creators — and we consider athletes creatives — and until this point, that really meant doing documentaries, making movies, having them be producers, we’ve even had athletes do photography for us. But now, this is the next level, right?”
In connection with the spinoff, Matt DeMartis, SpringHill’s vp strategic partnerships, will join Hana Kuma as GM. He previously worked at Disney/ABC and at NBC Sports.
For Hana Kuma, the new round means an expansion of its programming, including into the anime and manga spheres (Duguid notes that The Kinoshita Group owns an animation studio).
“We’re having the opportunity to tell you stories that I haven’t necessarily seen before, and I think that’s what kind of drew me to it,” Osaka says. “I come from Japan and Haiti and of course America too, and I have a very different heritage and upbringing than a lot of different people. And I know that there are a lot of other people that are like me, and just trying to utilize that. I’m just telling the stories that I think are interesting, and I think that people would want to hear, like Mink! [Hana Kuma’s first documentary short film], which is also really educational.”
“We want to focus on telling really interesting stories, working with brands that we love, doing work that we’re really proud of, and we’ll see where that takes us,” Duguid adds. “I think we we’re a female-led business, so female empowerment is at the front of everything that we want to do. I think socioeconomic conditions, and to an extent politics, are always interesting for us, given what Naomi has done and what she stands for. I think mental health is an interesting area.”
SpringHill, meanwhile, is planning to launch other companies in partnership with athletes — and some non-athletes — in the future, leveraging its experience building its own business and others like Hana Kuma.
“We have already some lined up and we have another one coming actually very, very soon,” Carter says, adding that they are seeking athletes with a “global mindset.”
SpringHill raised money in 2021 at a $725 million valuation.
“I think their stamp and their ethos and their talent will largely be reflected in the new business, but we’ve always been really, really close with them,” Duguid says of Carter and James. “LeBron and Mav produced Naomi’s Netflix documentary, and as we were deciding about a partner to kind of go on this journey, they were natural for us, given the strength of our relationship and just the respect we have for all the work that they’ve done. But yeah, I think it was a great place to be incubated.”
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