Renee Montgomery Took an Ownership Role to Help Run the Atlanta Dream

Renee Montgomery said she had not intended to retire from the WNBA in 2020. That summer, in Atlanta, protests were taking place daily after George Floyd’s murder, and Montgomery felt connected to what was happening in her community. Returning to basketball while part of her attention remained on events outside the court felt impossible. She described herself as intensely routine-driven: the athlete who could be counted on to arrive at the gym at a set time and follow her schedule. She could not, she said, be “half in, half out.”

Opting out of the season did not mean Montgomery was ready to stop playing. It became consequential when she learned that retirement was required to be eligible for an ownership opportunity. She had to decide whether to leave the possibility of playing behind for a chance that might not materialize—and whether she could return if it fell through. Her family encouraged her to act on how strongly she felt, but the risk remained. Montgomery said she spent a year retired and without a job, having already sat out the previous season.

The opportunity took shape amid a particular moment in the Atlanta Dream’s history. Jason Kelly asked whether then-owner Kelly Loeffler had publicly and privately denigrated Black Lives Matter and sought to tamp down protests in the WNBA. Montgomery agreed. A Washington Post headline shown during the interview said Loeffler continued to criticize Black Lives Matter and would not sell her stake in the team. That headline was presented as context; Montgomery described the wider circumstances as a convergence of events.

She was working with More Than a Vote when LeBron James publicly called for new ownership of the Dream. Montgomery had previously reached out to the team’s general manager without much traction. She treated James’s call as an opening, and said he helped connect her with Larry Gottesdiener and Suzanne Abair, who won the bid for the team. Montgomery pitched herself as a potential partner who had played the game and understood it from inside. She said the meeting clicked, but the process still felt long from her perspective.

She also described the timing as a “perfect storm”: Atlanta’s activism, an election year, her work with More Than a Vote, and her prior acquaintance with Raphael Warnock, who was running against the team’s former ownership. Looking back, she said, the sequence was difficult to imagine repeating in the same way.

Her path was faster than Alex Rodriguez’s years-long effort to buy a team, but speed did not remove the uncertainty. Montgomery had to decide whether to stop playing before she knew if the ownership opportunity would come through, and then persuade people to take her seriously.

Montgomery joined the Dream as both a co-owner and vice president. For her, the vice presidency was the consequential part of the day-to-day transition: an owner could be as involved or hands-off as they chose, but an executive role put her inside the team’s workings. She did not want her name attached to the organization while she sat back and watched what happened. She wanted a hand in how it operated.

That priority shaped what she sought in the agreement. Montgomery said she was not trying to conduct a heavy negotiation; she was trying to secure a seat at the table. One element she did negotiate was an executive position that would let her offer input and help control how the team was run. She said Gottesdiener and Abair valued her advice and asked for it.

The contract itself was an early shock. Montgomery said she had read her playing contracts in full, unlike many athletes, but the ownership contract was thick and unfamiliar—a book. She had been an expert in basketball; in the business building, she was starting from the ground floor. The experience made the difference between sports knowledge and business knowledge tangible.

She also wanted the organization to show athletes respect. Montgomery said she did not know whether the Dream had been run that way when she was a player, and changing that perception around the league was on her mind. Her player experience informed what she noticed, but she also learned that some changes players might expect from a team were controlled at league level. She used private flights as an example: players might ask why a team could not simply pay for them, but a team could not necessarily make that decision on its own.

That constraint changed how she thought about improvement. Rather than try to fix everything at once and do it all mediocrely, Montgomery said the organization had to choose a few things each year and execute them well.

The Dream’s first season under the new ownership group was what Montgomery called “year zero.” The group took over 40 days before the season, a deadline she called a nightmare and did not recommend. She recalled starting with about 20 employees and said the staff had since quadrupled. Watching the organization grow, and seeing the arena change from what she remembered as a player, was among the most rewarding parts of the job.

She described communication among the owners as a constant drip rather than a set of occasional formal meetings. They shared group chats, where she passed along social-media posts and news; other chats included the general manager or president. Montgomery said the group kept one another updated as deals and decisions developed, and connected that communication to what she had experienced on the strongest teams she had been part of.

The Dream was not an obvious investment to every prospective buyer. Asked about the risk, Montgomery recalled Gottesdiener saying he wanted the team because he valued the “truth to power” it represented. She said the ownership group believed in the possibility of a return, but its interest was also connected to what Atlanta stood for.

Montgomery had served on an executive committee during collective bargaining negotiations. She remembered a period when teams were folding and players were told they needed to take a deal because the league’s future was uncertain. That experience remained in the back of her mind. Still, she said her love of basketball and Atlanta made her believe the Dream could survive and succeed.

Her view of growth is that investment may be needed before the gains are assured. The planned move from Gateway Center Arena to State Farm Arena for five years illustrates the trade-off. Montgomery valued Gateway’s atmosphere, where fans were close to the court, but saw a larger arena as a chance for more people to experience the team. A New York Times headline shown during the interview said the Dream would play all of its 2027 games at State Farm Arena as part of a multiyear deal.

Montgomery said arranging the move involved multiple parties because State Farm Arena is controlled by a separate group. She credited Dream president Morgan Shaw Parker with leading the work, and said Gottesdiener and Abair supported the vision. Leaving Gateway was difficult, she said, but the team had to invest if it wanted to grow its audience. She pointed to playoff demand as evidence that fans wanted to attend.

Montgomery’s childhood memory of the WNBA is not a story of steady, inevitable expansion. The league began when she was 10, and she became obsessed because it meant basketball could be a profession. Coming off the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and into the WNBA’s 1997 launch, she remembered players appearing on her favorite sitcoms, including Martin, and seeming like celebrities. The league felt “massive” to her then.

She compared the next phase to a new restaurant that draws a crowd when it opens, then reaches a stagnant point. In her view, the WNBA experienced that plateau. She said the attendance and viewership now resemble the crowds she had imagined as a young fan.

For Montgomery, visibility is the condition that matters most to sustaining and extending growth. She recalled a period when fewer games were on television and games appeared on less prominent networks. She was surprised to see a playoff game on ESPN2, and argued that playoff games should be carried by major broadcast or primary channels, naming ESPN, ABC, USA, NBC, and CBS.

She said viewership, attendance, and online engagement were up, and that the product was there; games still had to be available where potential fans could find them. She also sees an international opportunity. Montgomery said the league has fans overseas, and noted that women’s basketball has audiences and leagues in other countries. She questioned whether the WNBA has yet built international super-fans on the scale of those who follow major NBA teams.

Montgomery sees college athletes’ commercial value as overdue for recognition. She said athletes and their brands contribute to sports beyond what happens in games, and that a university’s athletic success can affect enrollment and revenue. As a college player, she was focused on basketball and considered herself fortunate to receive a scholarship. She sees the business differently now.

She pointed to the crossover between sports and media as a sign of change, citing influencer-branded patches on professional and college uniforms. The opportunity is not evenly distributed, in her view: Montgomery said UConn was not as large in this area as schools such as LSU.

She agreed with Rodriguez that the current name, image, and likeness environment can feel like the “Wild West.” Her proposal is to use rules from professional sports rather than leave arrangements in an ambiguous space between amateur and professional. If a program wants a player, she argued, it should have to trade for that player; a player should not be able to sign a three-year contract and leave without constraints. She also called for buyouts and maximums, and said the same logic should apply to coaches. Her argument was that paying players calls for clearer rules.

Montgomery has invested in Campus Ink, a merchandise company she approached after seeing its work. She said people underestimate merchandise: fans express themselves through what they wear, and apparel has moved beyond standard team logos. Fans want statement hoodies that carry a favorite player’s words or point of view, she said. Campus Ink was doing that work, and its UConn licensing made the connection especially natural for her.

Her way of finding opportunities is direct. Montgomery said she is known for cold outreach: when she sees a business that interests her and might work, she contacts the people behind it. She joked that Mark Cuban’s involvement in a deal makes her want to be included, but her explanation for investing in Campus Ink centered on the changing relationship between fandom and merchandise.

Montgomery wants to build a broader business, but said women’s sports do not necessarily have the capital available to make the investments she wants to pursue. That constraint has pushed her to get creative, make cold calls, and build piece by piece rather than let limited funds stop her.

She framed the problem as a question women’s sports must answer: what can be built when the investment is not there? For her, securing capital for smart investments is a next step, but the absence of capital does not mean she intends to wait. She described using direct outreach to find opportunities, including the Campus Ink investment, and seeking an executive role at the Dream so she could help shape the organization rather than simply be associated with it.