How Off Season's Vicky Picca built a 21-team NFL business in under two years

When the American sports-fashion brand Off Season launched in January 2025, it had five NFL teams, one product category and a founder the internet already knew. Kristin Juszczyk, the self-taught designer whose custom Chiefs jacket for Taylor Swift went viral in 2023, supplied the creative story supported up by Emma Grede, co-founder and CEO of Good American and founding partner of Skims. Puffer vests started at 295 dollars and the debut sold out.

About 20 months later Off Season carries capsules with MLB, the NBA, the WNBA, Formula 1 and Team USA, and a permanent line of its own. For the 2026 NFL season, which starts on Wednesday, the brand collaborated with 21 teams. The person who built the machinery underneath is Victoria Picca, who joined the label as president in April 2025 after 24 years inside the least glamorous corner of sports: the licence agreement.

"Licensing sits at the exact intersection of brand, commerce, and relationships," she told FashionUnited. “Marketing gave me the 'why,' operations gave me the 'how,' but licensing let me own the whole relationship, from what gets made to who makes it to how it comes to market.

New Orleans, Duke, and the law

Picca was born in New Orleans, took a bachelor's degree at Duke University and a J.D. at New York University School of Law, and worked a clerkship, an entertainment law firm and Proskauer Rose, long a feeder to the National Basketball Association.

What pulled her toward licensing rather than marketing or operations was that the work never settles. "It's never static," she said. "Every negotiation, every partner, every product category is a new puzzle of how to protect what makes a brand special while finding the right structure to bring it to more people."

Picca joined the NBA in 2000 as associate counsel and, unusually for a lawyer, crossed into commerce, rising over 14 years to senior vice president of licensing and business affairs. In 2014 she moved to Fanatics as senior vice president of business affairs, overseeing a portfolio of more than 700 licensees and, by the company's own account, agreements that drove over 2 billion dollars in sales.

Off Season was her first move into fashion, and the transfer came with new lessons. At Fanatics, scale demanded systems: standardised deal structures, playbooks, approval chains. At a brand barely three months old, that instinct can be a liability.

"I've had to unlearn the instinct to systematize too early," she said. "A young brand needs speed and judgment call by call, not a one-size-fits-all playbook."

The rigour transferred — deal economics, protecting the brand, thinking several moves ahead — but the templates didn't, according to her. "Every deal still gets built around what's actually right for Off Season at this moment, not necessarily what worked at scale somewhere else."

A different kind of bet

Sports licensing asks you to guess which teams win and which players break out, then build a product against that uncertainty. "In fashion, the equivalent bet is trend," Picca said. Retail buying is also more localised in sport. There is no single autumn/winter that works everywhere, because buyers think market by market and team by team. “Buyers have to think market by market, team by team, about what's actually right for their customer in that city,” she said.

The division of labour with Juszczyk follows that line. "Kristin owns the creative vision — it is her vision for what women actually want to wear, and that point of view drives the product," Picca said. "My role is turning that vision into a business: the licensing relationships, the operations, the retail strategy, the decisions about how and where we scale."

The overlap rests on which drops to prioritise, which retail partners to approach, how to pace launches. "Neither of those decisions works well in a silo, so that's where we're most in it together,” Picca said.

21 teams, six leagues, one open question

Seven teams joined in September 2025, taking the NFL roster to 13. A WNBA capsule that month was the first collaboration outside football; the NBA followed, then Formula 1, Team USA and, in July 2026, MLB. In June 2026 the brand launched Mainline, its first permanent collection, alongside distribution through Nordstrom and Revolve. This season's NFL Fall Part 1 added 10 teams at once and opened at 80 dollars, well below the debut's outerwear pricing.

"We are so excited to be reaching fans in more than 20 NFL markets this year," Picca said. 10 new licences at once is less arduous than it sounds for someone with her and Juszczyk’s contact books, but she does not oversell the shortcut — Juszczyk is notably married to San Francisco 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk.

“The relationships absolutely make it move faster than it would for a brand without our licensing pedigree, but it's still a business deal that touches upon brand guidelines, product categories, retail distribution rights, marketing approval processes. What our background buys us is credibility and speed of trust: they know we understand how to operate within their brand standards and protect their IP, so the conversations start from a place of confidence rather than having to prove ourselves from scratch,” Picca said.

The brand's wholesale mix is "extremely deliberate,” Picca described it. Fanatics and NFLShop serve as the base, Nordstrom aims for a higher-end customer who may not think of herself as a fan-gear shopper, Urban Outfitters and Revolve come for younger and trend-driven buyers, Dick's House of Sport and Evereve for the sports-immersed and the everyday-style shopper. "Together, that mix is how we reach women wherever they already shop, rather than asking them to come find us in one place,” she said.

Picca wants Off Season as "the brand women reach for when they want to look good and/or support their team — not a novelty or a seasonal moment, but a permanent fixture in how women dress around sports." Asked about an unannounced goal she is personally excited by, she went only as far as: "Look for us in different activations. I can't get ahead of the announcements."