Is NiJaree Canady's $1M deal the best return on investment in sports history?: MoneyCall

New York Times

a day ago

Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic's weekly sports business cheat sheet. (Want to get MoneyCall conveniently delivered to your email every Wednesday morning? Easy sign-up here.)
🚨📺 Hot off the presses this morning: Andrew Marchand on ESPN's muddled NBA Finals TV commentator situation, including exclusive new reporting on the future of Doris Burke and Richard Jefferson.
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Name-dropped elsewhere today: NiJaree Canady, Ryan Reynolds, Sam Presti, Saquon Barkley, Sha'Carri Richardson, Peyton Manning, Austin Ainge, Pablo Torre, Manute Bol and more. Let's go:
Let's talk about return on investment
About a year ago, Texas Tech boosters offered (and paid!) $1 million to the best pitcher in college softball, NiJaree Canady, to leave Stanford and come to Lubbock.
The payoff? Canady has thrown every Red Raiders pitch during the program's first Women's College World Series appearance — which includes leading them past juggernaut and four-time defending champ Oklahoma on Monday to advance to the WCWS championship. (And, yes, one costly intentional walk gone wrong against Texas tonight.)
In a time with plenty of open spending on college players, that feels like the best $1 million invested in college sports this year, whether your metric is exposure for the school and program, setting a new bar of earning power for women's college athletes or simply a wealthy booster getting to feel better than if they'd spent on, like, a bathroom reno.
That got me thinking about a couple of other pretty good ROIs in sports over the past few weeks:
The OKC Thunder: Before they play in the 2025 NBA Finals tomorrow night, let's rewind to 2007. Thunder GM Sam Presti took on $8 million of the Phoenix Suns' undesired player salary in exchange for two future first-round picks. Here we go …
One of those became Serge Ibaka … who eventually was in a deal that got OKC a draft pick that turned into Domantas Sabonis … who eventually was traded for Paul George … who was eventually the key piece of the trade with the Clippers … that yielded the Thunder its NBA MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, along with a draft pick … that turned into SGA's All-Star teammate Jalen Williams.
OKC went from being valued at less than $300 million in 2007 to more than $3.6 billion as of 2024, with this season's trip to the finals assuredly tacking on substantially more. Not a bad ROI for eating $8 million.
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Wrexham: Actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney bought the team for $2.5 million in 2021. Three promotions later, it's now worth more than $100 million and ready to spend bigger — with the chance to earn promotion to the Premier League. (Naturally, the popular TV show 'Welcome to Wrexham' will be back for Season 5 to capture the effort.)
Relax about the NBA Finals. Plus, a beloved show's next chapter
Big talkers from the sports business industry:
Other current obsessions: MLB investing in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League … the Big Ten's obsession with four auto-bids to the College Football Playoff … annoying ads shown incessantly on TV in Canada during the Stanley Cup … the $20,000 Manute Bol basketball card … Saquon Barkley on the Madden 26 cover doing this (with some help) …
Saquon hit his iconic reverse hurdle for the Madden cover 🤯
(via @saquon, @NFL, @EAMaddenNFL, @ari_fararooy) pic.twitter.com/yjfpfsfNvv
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) June 2, 2025
Could anyone challenge the Premier League?
While we're on the topic of 'return on investment,' earlier this week The Athletic published a thought-provoking dive by my colleague Dan Sheldon into this fascinating question: Why has there never been a challenger to the Premier League like LIV Golf to the PGA Tour or the USFL/XFL/etc. to the NFL?
The answer turns out to be a combination of the Premier League's 'sheer popularity,' the 'well-established history of its biggest clubs' and some significant structural barriers, including membership rules and massive broadcast revenues.
Part of it is that the Premier League itself was originally less of a challenger brand than simply a new organizing principle. Former league CEO Richard Scudamore noted:
'Nothing changed, right? It's not like LIV Golf, the IPL (cricket's Indian Premier League) or the proposed European Super League. The Premier League didn't come along and say they were going to compete head-to-head with the existing structure of English football. The smartest thing about it was that it was all change, but nothing changed. It was really just a marketing arrangement. … so it disrupted only in a governance sense — it didn't disrupt in a footballing sense.'
But could it happen? What would it take?
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Charlie Stillitano, football's 'Mr. Fixer,' told Sheldon this about how a Premier League rival might emerge:
'Let's be honest, there are enough billionaires in the world, and they might say, 'Let's scrap this relegation and promotion thing in England.'
'You need to have a country that is really robust. One country that you could do it in is the United States. Players would come here, you can pay them the money and they will have a good life, and it's the biggest media market and commercial market in the world.
'But we also have sports fans who like football. You could get billionaires here together to do it, but you need the courage to do it.'
The entire story is well worth your time.
Name to Know: Pablo Torre
The former ESPN talent, occasional 'Morning Joe' co-host and full-time podcaster has made headlines in 2025 for his reporting on the Bill Belichick-Jordon Hudson story, along with plenty of more esoteric topics on his eponymous pod. My colleague Zak Keefer has a phenomenal profile of one of sports media's most unique talents.
Investor of the Week: Sha'Carri Richardson
The Olympic track mega-star was announced as an 'adviser-owner' of Athlos, a startup women's pro track league co-founded by prolific women's sports investor Alexis Ohanian.
Runner-up: Peyton Manning, who became a part-owner of NWSL Denver.
Data Point: $9.55M
What LAFC earned last weekend from a play-in victory to send the club to the FIFA Club World Cup.
(Open question: How much will qualifying U.S. teams' players actually see of that bag? Answer: $1M per team, total, and the players are, rightfully, not happy.)
Branding of the Week: Orlando Magic
A- for bringing back the '90s-era pinstripes.
introducing a new generation of Magic basketball pic.twitter.com/V8DWuZdpSG
— Orlando Magic (@OrlandoMagic) June 3, 2025
Date to Know: June 1
When the calendar flipped last Sunday, Bill Belichick's buyout to leave UNC football dropped from $10 million to $1 million. To clarify: That's the number Belichick — who hasn't yet coached a game — would have to pay to walk away, not what UNC would have to pay to fire him, which comes in around $30 million, a guarantee he gets the first three years of his contract.
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Filed under 'two things can be true'
Beat Dan in Connections: Sports Edition
Puzzle #254
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⏱️ 00:31
Hint: Fun, timely hockey theme! Try the game here!
Great business-adjacent reads for your downtime or commute:
Longtime friend of MoneyCall Joe Drape of The New York Times had an incredible feature this past weekend profiling an eighth-grade football star, his NIL opportunities and the moment we are living in when deals are coming for not just high school athletes, but even younger ones. Read it here.
Two more reads worth your time:
Back next Wednesday! Meanwhile, do you know what has a phenomenal ROI? Forwarding MoneyCall to a couple of friends or colleagues, with your personal recommendation to subscribe to receive it every Wednesday morning (totally free, as are all The Athletic's other newsletters).