Ryan Reynolds negotiated equity stakes in Aviation Gin and Mint Mobile instead of taking advertising fees. Aviation Gin sold for $600 million and Mint Mobile for $1.2 billion, making him over $100 million from those deals alone.
Take Ryan Reynolds, for example. He realizes, wait a second, you're paying me $1 million to do a commercial, so this has to be worth more than $1 million to you. How much more? $1.2? $2 million? $4 million? I don't know. Let's find out, right? And so he goes and buys into Aviation Gin and Mint Mobile and says, like, all right, I'm gonna buy in in a huge stake, and then I'm now in charge of advertising. Yep. I now basically get paid in equity value for my commercials rather than cash. Aviation Gin exited for $600 million, Mint Mobile for $1.2 billion.
