Soccer’s relationship with cannabis has evolved from locker-room whisper to legitimate boardroom conversation—driven less by “getting high” headlines and more by athlete wellness, post-career planning, and a new generation of founders who want control over the products tied to their names.

One of the clearest examples is Mendi, a recovery-focused CBD brand founded by former pro soccer player Rachael Rapinoe, with U.S. women’s soccer icon Megan Rapinoe joining as a high-profile partner and public-facing advocate. The company’s positioning is deliberate: plant-based recovery and pain-management support marketed to active lifestyles, built around transparency and athlete trust rather than smoke-and-mirrors celebrity hype. Mendi’s rise also reflects a reality of modern sport—many players are navigating tough training loads and recurring injuries while looking for alternatives to heavy reliance on traditional painkillers.

Another soccer-linked entry point is Just Live, a CBD brand launched by a group of athletes that includes U.S. soccer star Alex Morgan. The brand’s origin story reads like a modern athlete business case: create compliant, tested CBD products aimed at recovery and everyday performance, and speak directly to consumers who are already experimenting with wellness routines outside of team facilities. In a marketplace crowded with “miracle” claims, athlete-led brands often try to win trust with sourcing, lab testing, and conservative messaging—because credibility is the asset that actually compounds.

Soccer’s cannabis entrepreneurs aren’t limited to U.S. stars. Rodney Wallace, a Costa Rican professional player, has been profiled for turning his experience into a CBD-driven business path, showing how the athlete-to-operator transition can happen while a career is still in motion—or immediately after it. The key shift is mindset: not “endorser,” but builder, with long-term ownership replacing one-off sponsorship checks.

In other markets, the entry is sometimes more explicitly financial. Tal Banin, a former captain of Israel’s national team, signed a partnership tied to fundraising and equity involving a cannabis company’s U.S. subsidiary—an example of athletes stepping into dealmaking roles that look more like private capital than traditional sports marketing.

And then there are global icons taking adjacent routes. David Beckham has been reported as an investor in a cannabis-linked skincare and wellness company, underscoring how “cannabis” in athlete portfolios often includes topical and cannabinoid-focused consumer goods—areas that can be easier to scale, less controversial for mainstream partners, and more compatible with international brand images.

Taken together, soccer’s athlete-owned and athlete-invested cannabis stories point to the same trend: players are treating cannabinoids less like a taboo and more like a sector—one where authenticity, compliance, and product rigor matter as much as star power.