Real Housewives of the NFL Build Content Empires

There was a time when Chanen Johnson could say, “I’m making more money than an NFL player,” referring to her husband, Saints tight end Juwan Johnson.

While she has fun bragging about that now, that wasn’t always the case. At first, she was conflicted about how much she wanted to share with the world. But after growing exasperated with the amount of hate she and other women who are in relationships with professional athletes were receiving —being called gold diggers, among the more polite invectives, and accused of being spoiled while their husbands paid all the bills — she finally decided to set the record straight.

“I was initially pretty scared to share that this was actually profitable for me,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter of her social media career. “But I was getting so angry that people were saying I didn’t have a job.” Just in case the haters weren’t aware, Chanen absolutely has a job — one that involves creating content for her nearly four million followers across multiple platforms.

Chanen is among a new generation of wives and girlfriends of pro athletes, aka WAGs, who have proudly reclaimed the once-demeaning term. The acronym first appeared in British tabloids in the early 2000s to refer to English soccer players’ partners, such as Victoria Beckham and Cheryl Cole. The collective term lumped these women together, robbing them of individuality, and reducing them to merely decorative fixtures of Premier-league broadcasts while erasing their individual accomplishments.

Fast forward to today and WAGs are taking power back with the help of social media, creating content that shows what actually goes on in the life of an athlete’s spouse. This has resulted in massive social media followings, sometimes bigger than their husbands’ — Chanen has 770,000 followers on Instagram alone, which is 600,000 more than Juwan can claim on the platform.

Every sport has its WAGs and its WAG fans. But in the United States, one league reigns supreme in terms of WAG star power: the NFL.

At the top of the WAG hierarchy are the A-list spouses, such as Taylor Swift (wife to Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce), Simone Biles (Chicago Bears safety Jonathan Owens’ wife) and Hailee Steinfeld (wife to Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen’s). They have their own respective fanbases thanks to their successful careers prior to meeting their athlete partners. But at a lower tier, WAGs are building empires via content creation, leaning into the label placed upon them by the public and proving their value extends far beyond just being a wife.

“Obviously people have these preconceived notions of what it’s like to be married to an athlete, so I kind of ran with it and just turned what hurt my feelings into a joke and it turned into a career for me,” Chanen says of her early satirical content about being in a relationship with Juwan, then an independent NFL player, when she launched her TikTok account in 2020.

At the beginning, if someone left a nasty comment suggesting she uses all of her husband’s money, she would playfully mock them by posting a video of her carrying a stack of cash. If a hater called her a trophy wife, she would deliver a comedic clapback.

Chanen would also mix in straightforward videos offering a peek inside her relationship with Juwan and her day-to-day routine, which she saw as an opportunity to “shut down all of the false realities that people think about our life.”

Several other partners — such as Allison Kucharczyk (wife to former NFL defensive end Isaac Rochell), Ann Michael Maye (Patriots quarterback Drake Maye’s wife), Sadé Vanessa (NFL wide receiver Robbie Chosen’s partner) and Claire Kittle (wife to 49ers tight end George Kittle), to name a few — have also built followings, some in the millions, with social content that pulls back the curtain on the realities of being a pro athlete’s wife or girlfriend.

Kucharczyk — who has garnered more than 1.1 million followers — never misses an opportunity to tease her former NFL player husband about his far lower follower count. (Fans regularly refer to Rochell as “Mr. Kuch.”) The NFL got in on the joke when he was still playing for the Las Vegas Raiders. In 2022, Kucharczyk posted a TikTok video showing a jersey the NFL sent the pair with the words “Allisons Husband” displayed on the back. “The NFL finally fixed his jersey,” she captioned the video, which featured a shocked Isaac playfully reacting to the change.

Kucharczyk’s and Chanen’s partners enthusiastically support their wife’s endeavors, regularly appearing in videos, often in humorous or self-deprecating scenarios. But Chanen acknowledged that it’s “rare” to see a male athlete as supportive as her partner, as “a lot of times there’s guys who don’t necessarily love their girls posting a bunch of stuff” about their personal life and relationship.

The reluctance by some players to let the public in, even on a choreographed version of their private life, is understandable, especially given how protective the NFL and its teams are of their brands. Nevertheless, the league has come to recognize the positive impact of embracing athletes’ partners and the fanbases they bring, leading them to seek out their own collaboration opportunities.

Kristin Juszczyk (wife of NFL player Kyle Juszczyk), who captured people’s attention with her custom game-day outfits she made for herself, later secured an official licensing deal with the NFL to create custom jackets and matching head-to-toe looks, often worn by high-profile WAGs. Chanen says she’s previously partnered with the Saints on gamedays and at community events as well as with the NFL and Super Bowl on video collabs, which “honestly gave them a lot of extra attention as they obviously love social media and just the women behind it.”

Sports leagues have acknowledged the business acumen and content creation skills that led these women to become social media powerhouses. “I got the opportunity to speak at the NFL annual meeting,” Chanen recalls. “They brought me in and they were like, ‘Hey, this is what Chanen is doing on social and it’s working for her and it brings her audience into really loving football. And that’s something that we love and we want to incorporate.’”

The pro football league’s WAGs aren’t the only ones catching people’s attention and building fanbases of their own — social-media scrollers can also catch wives and girlfriends sitting trackside at F1 races, courtside at NBA games and in the stands at soccer matches, among many other sports, who are doing something similar.

Alexandra Leclerc (F1 driver Charles Leclerc’s wife) is a hugely popular source style inspiration. Tennis pro Taylor Fritz’ former girlfriend Morgan Riddle was dubbed “the most famous woman in men’s tennis” when they were together. And Jordyn Woods (New York Knicks player Karl-Anthony Towns’ partner) went viral when fans decided her purse was a mystical good-luck charm for the team during their historic championship run this year.

The WAG phenomenon inspired Maddy Sells to create WAGTalk, the digital video series in which she interviews professional athletes’ partners across leagues. “Some women … are very, very private,” she says of her guests, “but have the coolest stories ever that I’ve been so excited to get out.”

Since its early 2025 launch, Sells has noticed more and more men engaging in the comments, a “huge variation” that, she says, took her by surprise. “A lot of men come up to me and we’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I love WAGTalk.’ And I was like, ‘Whoa, I did not expect that,’” she admits.

Some men are even looking to get on the WAG action. Amid the recent rise in WNBA viewership, Zach Ellwanger (husband to Minnesota Lynx guard Maya Caldwell) saw an opportunity to launch his TikTok series “The Real House Husband of the WNBA.”

Despite having only started the series in June, Ellwanger tells THR that he and Caldwell have both been surprised by the “pretty explosive reaction” from viewers. Not only have they each gained 14,000 followers on social media in the last two months, but he says “there are a lot of people that continue to want to see” his day-in-the-life-style content that offers a “unique perspective” as a husband traveling around the world supporting his wife’s career.

Ellwanger, who works as a luxury-goods consultant by day, embraces his newfound “HAB” (husbands and boyfriends) status, excited to be “bringing more eyes to women’s sports” with his content. “If I can play a role in that, that’s great.”

When it comes to WNBA athletes and their partners, Sells, the WAGTalk host, says, “It’s so cool to see that side of things because, again, they don’t get as much spotlight,” compared to male-centered leagues. She thinks there’s plenty of room in the WAG space for boyfriends and husbands, because “people want to see everything,” adding that her audience especially loves seeing queer relationships within the women’s pro basketball league.

Amid their cultural ascendancy, many WAGs are looking at ways to expand their footprint beyond the sports or social media worlds. Some have already signed with top Hollywood agencies and received offers for reality shows, podcasts, brand deals and more, turning their digital followings into business empires.

Kucharczyk has previously teamed with major brands like Abercrombie & Fitch and Dick’s Sporting Goods, in addition to a marketing partnership with NBCUniversal and Visa for the 2026 Winter Olympics. As for Chanen, she’s previously partnered with brands like Ulta Beauty and Cheetos and hopes to do more speaking engagements and potential hosting opportunities with her husband in the future.

As Chanen’s career has reached new heights, so has her husband’s. As she tells THR, making more money than her husband is “not something I could brag about anymore” as Juwan has “surpassed me in that,” having since become a regular starter for the New Orleans Saints.

Her dedicated fans don’t have to worry about her leaving social media anytime soon, however. Despite having been approached with reality TV show opportunities, Chanen says they “never really aligned with our lifestyle and our schedules.” Plus, since she and her husband “are so raw on the internet anyway,” she says, “there’s nothing about us that really people don’t know at our core.”

This story appears in The Hollywood Reporter’s August 2026 Sports issue. Click here to read more.