Responsible for selling 35 million records worldwide, Snoop Dogg can now add record ticket sales to his resume.
The club have opened up sections of the away end because of the spike in interest, meaning not only have the ‘sold out’ signs gone up for the visit of Preston North End, the game is also set to see more Swansea fans in the ground than ever before.
It’s a short term hit of buzz for a club that lost its way after relegation from the Premier League in 2018.
Eyes, however, are now on a return – with the involvement of Snoop part of a longer-term plan that Swansea chief executive Tom Gorringe says has “no limits”.
Brought on board by the club’s US owners Brett Cravatt and Jason Cohen in July, Snoop’s minority stake didn’t mean a large injection of cash.
But it did mean a huge boost to its ability to sell itself.
“The reality is that if we operated within our natural resources we couldn’t compete financially,” says Gorringe, speaking just after helping show Snoop around the club’s training base on Monday afternoon where he met players and staff.
“PSR (profit and sustainability rules) is our biggest constraint. We are up against sides with parachute payments and we have one of the lowest turnovers.
“We have to think of new ways to generate income. We are an underdog and part of the attraction for him is the difference he can make with the pull he naturally has.”
That pull includes more than 100 million social media followers – more than Wrexham’s ownership combined – that Swansea have already looked to make the most of.
Beyond growing the brand and the wider fan base, which Gorringe admits “takes time”, there have already been tangible benefits.
Income has been tie-ins including clothing collaborations with Snoop’s own publishing label, the iconic Death Row Records that was once the home of Dr Dre and Tupac Shakur.
“By December, our retail business surpassed last year’s revenue,” says Gorringe, who has previously suggested that sponsorship deals for next year are set to be bigger and better than any previous agreement.
MILAN — He’s as smooth as a bobsled track and sharp as a skate blade.
Snoop Dogg, the rap rapscallion who puts the OG in Olympic Games, plopped down on a couch in the NBC green room and muted the TV. It’s exhausting being everywhere at all times at the most spread-out Winter Games in history.
Whether he was carrying the Olympic torch, skiing with Picabo Street, sliding a curling stone or driving a Zamboni, Snoop was everywhere. He finished each day with a highlight show from the Milan studios.
So ubiquitous was the so-called Ambassador of Happiness, you’d swear NBC duped a Snoop — or maybe two.
Snoop Dogg, right, and five-time Olympic gold medalist former speedskater Eric Heiden watch speedskating at the Milan-Cortina Olympics on Feb. 11.
(Ben Curtis / Associated Press)
“The Winter Olympics are underrated,” he said in an interview Friday at the network’s Olympic complex. “It’s not highly touted like it should be. This is an event that is just as good as the Super Bowl, as the Summer Olympics. There’s so much action and there’s so much happening, and it’s not just one day. It’s not just four quarters. It’s weeks of great competition — on ice, for the most part.”
It’s almost as if the angular, 6-foot-4 Snoop is on ice as he glides through the back halls of NBC’s temporary headquarters, wearing a white turtleneck under a red, white and blue leather jacket with “COACH SNOOP” across the front. He’s wearing a gold-rope chain with the Universal logo as a pendant, and gold-rimmed sunglasses that are square and lightly tinted.
He greets everyone he sees and a friendly assistant follows him, handing out Olympic pins of a tiny, cartoonish Snoop with his arms raised at his side, standing in front of an American flag.
Is it any wonder this guy creates a buzz in every venue he enters? He is the No. 1 celebrity sighting at the Games.
“Snoop has a joy about him, a childlike curiosity, and he’s also a people person,” said Molly Solomon, executive producer and president of programming for NBC’s Olympics coverage. “He wants to lift people up in all aspects of his persona.”
NBC began using the rapper as part of its Olympic coverage during the Tokyo Games in 2021 with the streaming Peacock show “Olympic Highlights with Kevin Hart & Snoop Dogg.” Many of their playful clips and humorous commentaries went viral and were especially appealing to younger viewers. Snoop genuinely enjoyed the competition, even though a lot of it was new to him.
Three years later, as the network was preparing for the Paris Olympics, executives were looking for ways to enhance the prime-time coverage, much of which would air on tape because of time-zone differences. They decided to expand Snoop’s role to give the perspective of a “superfan.” With these Olympics, his role further evolved into an experiential one, and to serve as an informal mentor and ambassador to the athletes.
“This is the biggest stage in the world,” he said. “Nobody gets to perform in front of the world like they do, with the whole world paying attention. To have all of that pressure of [something] you’ve been working for four years … Some of these girls and guys get that one shot, their event is only one time.”
As a roving correspondent, he did … well, some serious roving.
That included making the drive from Milan to Cortina for curling, sliding and women’s ski racing. That’s a four-hour van ride each way, some of it winding into the Dolomites.
“Trying to sleep with my head up against the window, with turning curves and every mountaintop,” he said. “Sliding by trains and traffic, and oh my God, I couldn’t drive out here. One-way streets. Little-bitty trains coming this way, that way. Bicycles, mopeds. It’s a lot.”
He also made a 3½-hour trip to Livigno to watch snowboarding — and said that if he had to pick a sport to compete in, that would be his choice.
“I could get good in snowboard, because I just like the creativity of when you’re in the air you have full control but you in the air,” he said. “I just feel like that’s something I could really be good at.”
So he must have skateboarded as a kid growing up in Long Beach, right?
“Never,” he said. “That’s what I’m saying. None of these sports are near and dear to me. That’s why it’s gonna be a first-time trial. But I know who I am. I don’t like to fail. I don’t like to lose. So I’m just such a perfectionist that I will get good enough to be good enough.”
He’s 54 and concedes his body can’t always accomplish what his mind thinks it can. He tried running the 200 meters at the Olympic trials in Oregon before the Paris Games and did so in 33 seconds, but he limped away with an injury. So he has a goal for when the Summer Games come to Los Angeles in two years.
“When we get to L.A., my mission is for me to run the 200 in under 30 seconds,” he said. “In 2028, I should be 56 years old. So if I can run it in under 30 seconds at 56, that’s a gold medal for me.”
Solomon said NBC is still brainstorming about how Snoop’s role will evolve for the 2028 Games.
Honorary Team USA coach Snoop Dogg throws a curling stone as Americans Daniel Casper and Tabitha Peterson Lovick watch on Feb. 6 in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
(Richard Heathcote / Getty Images)
“Of course, L.A. is Snoop’s hometown,” she said. “So he will be a hometown hero.”
Snoop said his love for the Olympics dates to the 1984 Los Angeles Games. He didn’t attend any events at the time, though, noting that for a 13-year-old kid growing up in Long Beach, the city felt “like a whole state away.”
“We were watching on television,” he said. “We never thought we could physically be there. … It just felt good to be an American, to watch us compete against the whole world and to see how great we were.”
He’s particularly interested in flag football — which will make its debut in the Los Angeles Olympics — and created a youth football league that counts among its alumni NFL standouts C.J. Stroud and JuJu Smith-Schuster.
“Flag football is a sport the whole world can grab ahold of,” Snoop said. “There are so many athletes that are in the NFL that are from different parts of the world that they’ve grown the sport from them just making it to the NFL and being an inspiration for the next generation.”
The rapper reportedly sent five tickets for the men’s snowboard halfpipe final to the owners of a local restaurant who covered his dinner after there were some troubles with the credit card payment. Sofia Valmadre, whose parents own Cronox in Livigno, Italy, said Snoop had placed an order for a cheeseburger, chicken wings, chicken nuggets and French fries at her family’s eatery. Unfortunately, the credit card the mogul’s staffer tried to use was declined for an unknown reason.
“My mother told him it was OK [to take the food] without paying,” Valmadre told Reuters. “[The next day] he sent us five tickets to see the final.”
The “Gin and Juice” rapper has become a familiar presence at the Olympics, especially since NBC made his involvement official starting with the 2024 Paris Summer Games. In addition to cheering on American athletes including curlers Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin, snowboarder Chloe Kim and speedskater Erin Jackson at their events — usually in custom apparel celebrating the sports stars — Snoop has been spending his time in Italy hanging out with bestie Martha Stewart, learning how to ski from Picabo Street and getting chummy with Olympians like “Quad God” Ilia Malinin.
For those curious about Snoop’s dining habits, Stewart recently described him as a “very fussy eater.” She even surprised him with a bowl of spaghetti with meatballs topped with cheddar cheese during a recent fine-dining outing.
Snoop Dogg‘s daughter Cori Broadus and her fiancé Wayne “Duece” Polk bid a final farewell to their baby girl, less than a year after welcoming her into the world.
Broadus and Polk celebrated the life of their infant daughter, Codi, over the weekend in a memorial attended by family and friends. On Sunday, Broadus shared various scenes from her baby’s funeral to her Instagram page, including pictures from the church reception, of loved ones wearing matching “Codi’s Crew” outfits and of the infant’s casket in the ground with flowers and a teddy bear laying atop.
“Part of me went with you,” Broadus captioned her Instagram carousel. “My girl for life.”
In a video from the memorial, Broadus mourned her daughter’s short life and all the moments they could have shared in a moving eulogy. Broadus lamented being unable to see her baby girl take her first steps, bring her to her first day of school and support her through the highs and heartbreaks of life together.
Broadus, with Polk by her side, said “I don’t understand why this happened.”
“I’m trusting God, but that doesn’t mean it makes sense to me. Some days I wonder if this world was just too cruel for someone as pure as you,” she continued. “Other days, I wonder how I’m supposed to live in a world without you in my arms.”
Broadus, 26, and Polk became parents to baby Codi last February. The baby girl arrived prematurely, after Broadus’ 25-week pregnancy. The happy mom at the time detailed her emotional pregnancy journey, which she said included “blaming myself because I wasn’t able to give her all that she needed.” Broadus said she praised God for supporting her and making her daughter’s birth possible.
Broadus had detailed her infant’s health issues in December, describing her daughter in a poem as a “miracle wrapped in tubes and tape” with “lungs trying to catch up to the life inside her.” The Choc Factory Co. makeup executive said she felt guilty that her daughter might also suffer from lupus, an autoimmune condition she was diagnosed with in childhood. In her poem, Broadus said she was hopeful her daughter would live a healthy life beyond the hospital walls of the NICU.
In January, Broadus revealed that her baby girl was back home in her arms and shared photo and video to Instagram. Weeks later, she announced she “lost the love of my life.”
Broadus said in her eulogy that amid her mourning she feels relief that her daughter is at rest.
“I find comfort knowing you have your angel wings now, knowing you are home, safe.”
SNOOP Dogg’s 11-month-old granddaughter has tragically died – as daughter Cori Broadus says ‘I lost the love of my life’.
Cori revealed the news that her daughter Codi Dreaux died on Monday, just 20 days after her release from the NICU.
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Snoop Dogg’s 11-month-old granddaughter has passed awayCredit: GettyHis daughter Cori revealed the tragic news her baby girl Codi had died on MondayCredit: Unknown
Cori had welcomed Codi – her first child with photographer fiance Wayne Duece – in February last year.
But Codi was born three months prematurely, and spent the first months of her life in the NICU before being discharged at the beginning of January.
Cori, 26, had excitedly announced “She’s home” on January 6 in an Instagram post, but now she has shared the devastating news that Cori has passed away.
She posted a black and white picture of her holding her baby daughter as she looked down and smiled at her.
Alongside it she wrote: “Monday, I lost the love of my life. My Codi.”
She also reshared her post about Codi coming home and wrote: “20 days later?! dawg im sick.”
Wayne also shared a post to his Instagram Stories on Saturday, which showed Codi gazing up at him as he cradled her.
He wrote: “I been the saddest since u left me Codi Dreaux. But I know u at peace. Daddy will always love you.”
Meanwhile, one of Codi’s nurses also shared a heartbreaking post, which Cori reposted.
It showed a black and white video of a crib and mobile hanging over it, with the caption: “I been sad for 6 days straight. Being a nurse has its ups and downs and this is the biggest down I ever experienced.
“It was such a pleasure being mybabygirls nurse. I gave her one last bath told her I loved her and didn’t even know I was getting her ready for Heaven.”
Cori is the youngest of Snoop’s three daughters with his wife of 28 years, Shante Broadus.
She was diagnosed with Lupus when she was six, and suffered a stroke in early 2024, which made her pregnancy high risk.
She gave birth to Codi when she was just 25 weeks along, but when Codi was six months old and in the NICU, she told Us Weekly her baby girl was “feisty”.
Cori is the youngest of Snoop’s three daughtersCredit: Getty
She said: “Codi just has so much character. The doctors and nurses always tell me: ‘Your baby got her mind. She’s smart. She’s alert.
“‘She knows what’s going on. She can hear. She can see. Yeah, the circumstances are not what you thought they would be, but it could be worse.’
“We want to take Swansea to the Premier League, and to do that we are going to need money – that’s the reality of the game these days.
“I want to introduce sponsorship deals and publicity that will make them a global name.”
The West Coast rapper has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide but is yet to attend a Swansea game, though his son Cordell Broadus was in the directors’ box for the Welsh side’s draw with Watford last August.
American billionaire businesswoman Martha Stewart, who joined Snoop Dogg and Real Madrid legend Luka Modric as a Swansea co-owner in December, was in Wales for the game against Wrexham just before Christmas.
Swansea have said Snoop Dogg is likely to attend a game at some point this season, though there is still no confirmation of when he may appear at the Swansea.com Stadium.
“For real I want to meet with the fans,” Snoop Dogg said.
“These fans are passionate, they are real, and I want to hear what they got to say when I am in Swansea.
“I knew I always wanted to invest in a soccer team – it’s been a dream of mine for years, it was all about waiting for the right opportunity.”
Modric was the first celebrity name to get involved at Swansea, with the former Ballon d’Or winner named as a co-owner last April.
Swansea’s American owners, led by Brett Cravatt and Jason Cohen, believe bringing in high-profile names at boardroom level will help increase the profile the club which will in turn boost income.
