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New York Times
26-03-2025
- Business
- New York Times
College hoops business is booming despite quiet tourneys. Plus, is MLB in a healthy place?
MoneyCall Newsletter 📈 | This is The Athletic's weekly sports business newsletter. Sign up here to receive MoneyCall directly in your inbox. Read past editions here. Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic's weekly sports business cheat sheet. Name-dropped today: Derik Queen, JuJu Watkins, Amir Khan, TGL, Juan Soto, Rob Manfred, Warren Buffett, Caitlin Clark, Paul Skenes, Morning Routine Guy and more. Let's go: Is the NCAA Tournament in trouble? Is college basketball broken? No, wait: Is Cinderella dead?!?! Short answer: Please. Get a grip. There has been a hysteria this week about men's college basketball — about zero Cinderellas in the Sweet 16, about four power conferences taking up all 16 spots, about a record-smashing gazillion players jumping into the transfer portal (more than 1,000 since it reopened this week). While a smidgen of the magic of March might be missing this week, the business of college hoops is totally fine: Meanwhile, the biggest adjustment is still coming up this spring: the pending House settlement to a class-action lawsuit that would allow each DI school to share $20 million of revenue with players. Any with big football programs will put most of the bag toward that, but the basketball-first schools (like the Big East and many mid-majors) will spend it on hoops, theoretically flattening the big-school advantages. What St. John's was able to do with a billionaire's bankroll will now be more accessible to the Georgetowns and Gonzagas. Advertisement (If you love a team in a power conference, don't worry: NIL collectives can — and will — still pay well beyond an NCAA-sanctioned $20 million floor.) The portal opened Monday, transfer rules are lax and it makes NFL, NBA and MLB free agency look stodgy. NIL budgets are skyrocketing, and players and coaches alike are all on year-to-year deals — now, we just don't have to use NCAA-avoidant euphemisms or 'bag men' or burner phones. As disruptive and uncomfortable as that might seem, it actually feels healthier than the old system. Big talkers from the sports business industry: Related: Azzi Fudd decided to forego being a WNBA first-round pick to go back to UConn, where she can benefit from another year of NIL and set herself up to make more money as a pro after the next collective bargaining agreement takes effect. Other current obsessions: 'Morning Routine Guy' satire … BreakingT's offerings immediately after Derik Queen's buzzer-beater … the energy in the Chinese Grand Prix F1 fan zone … God Shammgod profiles … wondering if Amir Khan's aura remains intact if he leaves McNeese for N.C. State … Last week's Japan series aside, the new MLB season officially starts tomorrow. Very excited to hear Joe Buck back in the baseball TV booth for the Yankees opener on ESPN. Weird vibes for the season ahead: The cash-flowing, free-spending Dodgers are seemingly unstoppable. Juan Soto moved from the Bronx to Queens for a mere $765M. The 'Las Vegas' (nee Oakland) A's are playing in a minor-league park in Sacramento, as are the Rays in Tampa. And do you really know how to watch your team play on TV? Here's what I'm wondering: Is baseball in a healthy place? I checked in with my colleague Chris Strauss, The Athletic's MLB managing editor, for his perspective: 💬 'Well, that's a loaded question. If we're talking about the sport on the field — the rule changes that made the game more watchable, generational stars like Ohtani and Judge, the influx of young talent — there's still so much to love about baseball. But it's hard to say that where we are right now is ideal for the long-term health of the game. 'Everyone in the sport is warily eyeing the end of the 2026 season, when the current CBA runs out. Both Rob Manfred and Tony Clark spent much of the offseason foreshadowing a potential work stoppage. 'Fans are frustrated with teams like the Dodgers spending as much as they are, but there's an equal anger at teams like the Rockies, Pirates and Marlins who are barely spending anything. And all of the changes in the landscape of the regional sports networks seem to have widened those gulfs.' I'm not entirely sure how the sport gets healthier — especially as the CBA clock ticks down — but I do know that we'll be covering it from every angle along the way. Meanwhile: The Athletic's MLB preview coverage has been outstanding, and you can see it here. (And be sure you are signed up for The Windup, our free daily MLB newsletter.) $1 million The payout from Warren Buffett to the Berkshire Hathaway employee who nailed 31 of the 32 first-round picks of the NCAA Tournament, including 29 straight without a miss to start the tournament, which was the tie-breaker with 11 other employees who picked 31 of 32 games correctly (and got $100K each). 41 The number of Caitlin Clark games (featuring the Indiana Fever) that are going to be available to watch nationally, either on TV or streaming, next season. Keep in mind, that's out of a 44-game regular season, which begins in May. Credit to the league for recognizing CC is the biggest draw and leaning all the way in. The game to circle? Saturday, June 7 — Clark vs. Angel Reese on CBS in prime time, which has the potential to be the most-watched regular-season WNBA game ever. Last year's Clark-Reese game in June got 2.25M viewers on CBS. Take the over! Advertisement $40M Fanatics' merch sales in Japan during the Dodgers-Cubs series, a record for the company at major events. Combine that stat with the 25 million people who watched the series in Japan, and it's clear that market will play a massive role in the future of MLB (and its TV rights negotiations). $225K The delta between Paul Skenes' 2025 salary ($875K) and the price his MLB Debut Patch card was bought for ($1.1M) by Dick's Sporting Goods. I love this as a marketing coup for Dick's, which is based just outside Pittsburgh. 2.6 seconds How quickly I can grab the remote and hit the mute button when the Geico 'squealing pig' ad comes on during NCAA Tournament games. 70.3% / 97.6% Where I stand in the men's and women's tournament-picking pecking order nationally, compared to the other 24M+ brackets. But wait! Let's do a 'Second Chance' Sweet 16 challenge (same group name: 'MoneyCall March'). Enter the men's version and the women's version. Beat Dan in Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle #184 🔵🔵🔵🔵 🟡🟡🟡🟡 🟢🟢🟢🟢 🟣🟣🟣🟣 ⏱️ 00:21 (PB!) Try the game here! Great business-adjacent reads for your downtime or commute: What is the story with Knicks owner James Dolan and his constantly combative posture with the league? Mike Vorkunov dug into it. Two more:
New York Times
19-03-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
A business case for 96-team March Madness, plus Inside the NBA's strength
MoneyCall Newsletter 📈 | This is The Athletic's weekly sports business newsletter. Sign up here to receive MoneyCall directly in your inbox. Read past editions here. Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic's weekly sports business cheat sheet. Name-dropped today: Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, JuJu Watkins and Paige Bueckers, Sixth Street, Bill Simmons, Savannah Bananas, Charlie Baker, Lindsay Schnell and more. Let's go: Priorities! If you've got a bracket or want yet another group to join, MoneyCall readers are welcome to join my ESPN group, 'MoneyCall March.' Links here: men's and women's. Meanwhile … in the wake of UNC's blowout win last night in the First Four, is it fair that the five major conferences got 38 of the 68 bids to the men's NCAA Tournament? College sports has never cared much about 'fair,' but we can argue for more inclusion by citing something it does care about: 💰. Advertisement Limiting opportunities for success isn't in the best interest of college basketball, which is part of why the Tournament has aggressively expanded over the years from 16 to 32 (1975) to 40 (1979) to 48 (1980) to 64 (1985) to 68 (2011). Expansion is in the DNA of March Madness. This week saw the release of the mega-trendy new book 'Abundance' by The New York Times' Ezra Klein and The Atlantic's Derek Thompson, whose thesis is that we're better off as a society if (to oversimplify) we create more stuff. It's time for college basketball to embrace an 'abundance' agenda and expand the NCAA Tournaments to 96 teams each, especially now that the number of Division I teams is over 350 and counting. (To compare, think about the percentage of NFL and NBA teams that make the playoffs.) In the same way the radical expansion of the College Football Playoff from four to 12 teams made college football's season that much more exciting (and opened the door for inclusion of lower-conference teams to go from zero to one), an expansion of the men's and women's NCAA Tournaments from 64 to 96 would have a similar effect. The Big (Abun-)Dance math is sound: more teams = more variance = more madness. Big talkers from the sports business industry: MLB teams have been very aggressive in partnering with private equity firms, which have been equally aggressive in getting into team ownership across the sports landscape. College conferences are the next big category in which you'll see eyebrow-raising spending from private equity. Sixth Street also owns stakes in the San Antonio Spurs, FC Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bay FC. Meanwhile: Each player on the champion Rose got a $50K bonus (which is one-third the average WNBA salary, meaning it's no wonder Unrivaled is upending WNBA labor talks). Don't miss Ben Pickman's takeaways from the inaugural season. Related-ish: Don't miss Chantel Jennings' interview with NCAA president Charlie Baker about many of the biggest business issues impacting women's college basketball. And even if the Olympics could have negotiated a higher deal with, say, a streaming platform, NBC has proven itself to be a gold standard of reliability as a network partner. Other current obsessions: Man U's financial books … Artie Kempner to 'MNF' … NHL owner rankings … Detroit Tigers prospect Max Clark … Baseball x manga … Pro-Rel system in domestic U.S. soccer … Travis Hunter's fishing obsession … To borrow from Bloomberg's Matt Levine: NOT investment advice. Men's Women's Mmm, chalky! Need advice? I enjoyed these predictions from my colleagues Chantel Jennings and Sabreena Merchant on the women's side, and Lindsay Schnell, C.J. Moore and Brendan Marks on the men's. Time for a lightning round. Elevator Pitch: 'Inside the NCAA' > 'Inside the NBA' One leitmotif of the NBA season is that TNT's 'Inside the NBA' crew seems to mostly dislike the current NBA, bashing the league and its players on a weekly basis. You notice a 'Severance'-style switch when the group moves over to college basketball for their three weeks of NCAA Tournament coverage. Their tone is demonstrably more positive when they cover college hoops, almost like, 'They're kids! It's college! Let's give them a break and just enjoy this!' Advertisement That's probably a function of that crew dropping in on the sport three weeks a year, along with their lack of familiarity with almost any of the players or teams. Instead, it's all about the vibes! The upsets! And buzzer-beaters! And unlikely heroes! And brackets! And alma maters! And it's a refreshing break from their cynicism about the pro game. Number to Know: 14,288 The new record for people to pack an arena to watch a women's hockey game in the U.S. There's a lot of attention on WNBA and NWSL, but the PWHL has a ton of momentum, too. Speaking of NWSL … New renderings of Denver's stadium, scheduled to open in 2028: Remembering John Feinstein 'A Season on the Brink' was THE formative book of my youth. Feinstein was a legend among college basketball writers and a prolific book author. My colleague Brendan Quinn filed an exceptional appreciation of Feinstein that is worth your time. New pod alert! Just in time for March Madness and the start of the WNBA season, if you're a fan of women's basketball analysis, check out 'No Offseason' from The Athletic. Beat Dan in Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle #177 🔵🔵🔵🔵 🟡🟡🟡🟡 🟢🟢🟢🟢 🟣🟣🟣🟣 ⏱️ 00:57 Friends, today's puzzle was SO good. Try the game here! Great business-adjacent reads for your downtime or commute: Selection Sunday didn't feel the same without Greg Gumbel, and fans will feel his absence in the studio tomorrow, Friday and throughout the next few weeks. Before the games tip off, read this great piece by Lindsay Schnell about Gumbel's legacy. Two more:
New York Times
12-03-2025
- Business
- New York Times
NWSL's big opportunity, plus Steph Curry joins college sports' GM era
MoneyCall Newsletter 📈 | This is The Athletic's weekly sports business newsletter. Sign up here to receive MoneyCall directly in your inbox. Read past editions here. Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic's weekly sports business cheat sheet. Name-dropped today: Alex Cooper, Caitlin Clark, Steph Curry, Stephen A. Smith, Ki'Lolo Westerlund, Shohei Ohtani, Drake, Sidemen, Adam Schefter, Jon Rothstein and more. Let's go: After an exciting Challenge Cup last week, the 2025 NWSL regular season officially starts this Friday. The league's business is sizzling. Just a glimpse: It's not all perfect, and my colleagues Melanie Anzidei and Meg Linehan recently detailed the enormous issues within Bay FC, plus last month's $5 million league settlement around its abuse scandal. Overall, the first 90 days of 2025 have seen the latest manifestation of the surge in women's sports investment that has defined this decade. Consider: January's launch of Unrivaled, February's Super Bowl promotion of women's flag football and this Sunday's launch of a women's NCAA Tournament that is on track to set TV audience records — even above those of the Caitlin Clark era. Advertisement Now NWSL's biggest season ever is here. I got in touch with Linehan to answer two questions: What is the biggest opportunity in front of the league in 2025? Meg: The NWSL's actively courting new and casual fans and has shared goals around storytelling and cultural relevancy. Right now, it's pretty simple: Make sure people know about the league, and convert them into viewers and ticket buyers for continued growth. What is this year's biggest potential pitfall that would stall the momentum? Most professional leagues are probably watching the economic outlook of the U.S. pretty closely, but any signs of a recession could impact everything from ongoing and potential brand partnerships to fan purchasing power. Linehan's essential 'state of the league' piece will be up on The Athletic on Friday morning — be on the lookout! (For now, read this season preview from Full Time, our free women's soccer newsletter.) Big talkers from the sports business industry: To wit: Davidson men's and women's basketball programs' revised NIL budget goal is now pegged at more than $10 million, which totally changes their trajectory in the NIL era. Expect a lot more NBA players to sign on with their alma maters in loosely official GM-like roles. (And a fellow Carolina team recently hired an NBA agent for a similar position.) Related-ish: Power Ranking Highly paid NBA players as college assistant GMs/NIL czars I want to see: 1. Lehigh: CJ McCollum (2025 salary: $33,333,333) 2. Williams: Duncan Robinson ($19,406,000) 3. Weber State: Damian Lillard ($48,787,676) 4. Wichita State: Fred VanVleet ($42,846,615) 5. Akron: LeBron ($48,728,845) Other current obsessions: Reebok golf shoes … Shohei Ohtani in Fortnite … Ki'Lolo Westerlund, the first recipient of a DI flag football scholarship … SailGP, the F1 of the Seven Seas … Kyler Filewich, the Wofford player who shoots granny-style free throws and will charm us all next week … Selection Sunday is in a few days, and when the brackets come out, we're all looking for every advantage. My go-to is The Athletic's annual Bracket Breakers analysis of teams most likely to pull an upset. There is gold in this year's pre-Selection preview … Drake! They rank among the nation's top 21 teams in forcing turnovers, offensive rebounding and defensive rebounding, which gives them a massive edge in possessions. Drake also plays at the nation's slowest pace, which makes that possession advantage even more pronounced. After all, in a game where each team has the ball less often than usual, each trip up or down the floor matters more. Add it all up, and Drake profiles as an epic underdog: Their Underdog Rating is nearly twice as high as any team that made last year's field as an 11-seed or lower. How good is Drake, the college basketball team? So good it's the most popular 'Drake' in the sports world's consciousness right now. Plenty more March Madness hints on the site next week. Time for a lightning round. Elevator pitch: 'Sidemen' is the future of sports This past weekend, 90,000 fans packed Wembley Stadium to watch 'Sidemen Charity Match 2025,' pitting soccer mega-influencers against each other on the pitch. That attendance number is eye-popping enough, until you check out the Sidemen YouTube livestream page: 22 million views of the match. Advertisement Combine the Sidemen event with the audience for the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson Netflix fight in November and the other absurd audience numbers done regularly by influencers like soccer's Céline Dept (44M+ YouTube subs), and what you realize is the massively undervalued TV rights opportunity around events specifically featuring sports influencers. Save the date: Nov. 15, 2025 Kudos to women's college basketball powerhouses South Carolina and Southern California for agreeing to a new two-year series dubbed 'The Real SC.' JuJu Watkins vs. Dawn Staley's squad in November in L.A. at Crypto Arena is the ideal way to tip off the new college hoops season. Data point: 95.5% optimistic A year ago, Mets fans ranked 23rd among MLB fan bases for 'optimism' — a measly 38.4 percent of fans were optimistic. This season? That's up to 95.5 percent optimistic — Mets fans! That's good for fourth on The Athletic's enlightening annual MLB optimism rankings. Review: ESPN app insider alerts Monday's Twitter/X implosion just as NFL 'legal tampering' started was a fascinating use case for Adam Schefter's ESPN app alerts. Optimally (if not practically), Schefty should always be posting to ESPN users first, then X, but in this case he — er, his assistant — had to go straight to the ESPN app (in addition to IG and Bluesky, among others), and it was kind of cool as a fan to not be beholden to social media. One nit-pick: The alerts were written for Twitter's word count, not ESPN's mobile notifications, which is not g … Beat Dan in Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle #170 🔵🔵🔵🔵 🟡🟡🟡🟡 🟢🟢🟢🟢 🟣🟣🟣🟣 ⏱️ 00:26 Out of my rut! Can you top :26? Try the game here! Jon Rothstein is the quirkiest reporter in college basketball. After you read this profile of him, the question remains: Is he in on the bit?
New York Times
05-03-2025
- Automotive
- New York Times
‘Drive to Survive,' the most influential sports show, is back. Plus, Serena and Sabrina invest
MoneyCall Newsletter 📈 | This is The Athletic's weekly sports business newsletter. Sign up here to receive MoneyCall directly in your inbox. Read past editions here. Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic's weekly sports business cheat sheet. Name-dropped today: Charles Leclerc, Serena Williams, Sabrina Ionescu, Jimmy Johnson, Ilona Maher, Ben Stiller, Jessica Gelman, Katherine Legge and more. Let's go: If the sports media story of the decade is the explosion of streaming, the defining example is 'Drive To Survive,' Netflix's signature sports series whose seventh season drops globally on Friday. Perhaps a bit apocryphally (but also materially), DTS's Season 2 on Netflix drove F1 right into the U.S. sports fan consciousness, with the show's combination of eye-popping glitz, glib participants, watch-next-episode instant gratification and the alchemy of access. It helped that it released right in the middle of the pandemic, as fans had little to do but binge TV seasons. Advertisement 'It works more like a soap opera than it does a sports access show,' says Paul Martin, co-founder of production company Box To Box Films, which makes the show. With exclusive access, The Athletic's Madeline Coleman observed Box To Box last fall at the Las Vegas Grand Prix to see how the show was produced, and the result is the most definitive story ever written about 'Drive To Survive.' In the spirit of DTS showcasing F1 personalities like Red Bull principal Christian Horner, Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc and breakout star Guenther Steiner, I asked Coleman for her candid commentary: Why does DTS resonate with fans? Madeline: Martin, the executive producer, told me how the show has 'a stickiness' to it, and I agree. Co-EP Tom Hutchings said: 'It just gets under the skin of the characters that run the world of F1.' Do drivers enjoy the production process? It does seem that more have bought into the idea at times, though it is a case-by-case basis. Max Verstappen opted out of filming for a previous season. Most interesting detail you learned? How the cameraperson operates inside the garage. A producer took me inside Ferrari's garage and talked through the different spots he records from. When the cars are inside and team members are working, it becomes quite packed. Season 7's best storyline? Leclerc's Monaco GP win. It was raw and emotional, and I appreciate how his backstory was woven into the episode. The series spawned its own subgenre: 'Drive to Survive for …' — a way to describe any TV show that could convert casual viewers into fans by way of behind-the-scenes access. Coleman's incredible story explains how the original does it. (Look for Coleman and Luke Smith's in-depth analysis of Season 7 coming later this week at The Athletic.) Bonus quiz! Test yourself by matching the sport to its DTS-esque series title. (Answers at the end of the newsletter!) Big talkers from the sports business industry: Related: The WNBA's embattled Connecticut Sun are positioning themselves to sell a minority stake, as WNBA team valuations continue to soar. Ben Pickman examined what's next for the franchise (and it's not clear!). I totally tuned in live for the game ending, when the anthropomorphic mascot threw itself into the giant toaster and the players ate it. Does that sound like gibberish? Does that simply trigger a craving for a breakfast-ish snack? For all those reasons, Stewart Mandel's deep dive into the PTB is such a must-read. 💬 'My Fox replacement for Jimmy Johnson is … no replacement. At least, not yet. If Bill Belichick had stayed off the sidelines, then he would have been the choice. If Sean McVay or Mike Tomlin stop coaching, they would be high on Fox's list. But with no coach-turned-analyst of that caliber, I think Fox will just increase Rob Gronkowski's time on the big show and possibly add a Mike McCarthy type on its early show who could maybe sprinkle in on the noon broadcast.' Other current obsessions: Ilona Maher's ability to carry an entire sport … Next iteration of NIL: taking less money to play for Deion … Legendary rap impresario (and erstwhile would-be pro hooper) Master P as a college basketball GM at University of New Orleans … Josh Allen, TV producer … Ben Stiller posting about the Knicks smack-dab during the Oscars … Let's find out. This Friday and Saturday in Boston is one of my favorite sports-business events of the year: the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, now in its 19th year. Check out this preview I wrote about the 2025 event (favorite panel title: 'Have the Nerds Ruined Basketball?') I also got in touch with SSAC co-founder Jessica Gelman (a classmate of mine at Harvard Business School) to ask her a few questions: If the collective brainpower of every SSAC 25 attendee could be harnessed to solve one consistently vexing sports business question, what would you pick? Gelman: College sports is at a crossroads, and the potential impact on Olympic and women's sports is an area we should all be focused on. The impact of college sports participation on future business executives is well-documented: 95 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs were collegiate athletes, and 94 percent of C-suite women were collegiate athletes, so ideating on this is a collective imperative. (Gelman would know: She was a hooper at Harvard in the mid-'90s and regularly schooled me in the HBS gym, and now she is CEO of Kraft Analytics Group. Read the full interview here.) Time for a lightning round. The Big Number: 94,751 That was the attendance for the NHL Stadium Series game between the Blue Jackets and Red Wings at Ohio Stadium in Columbus last Saturday. It was the second-highest outdoor attendance of an NHL game ever. The league's marketing momentum continues. Related: An amazing conversation between my colleague Richard Deitsch and the two national play-by-play broadcasters on either side of the epic U.S.-Canada 4 Nations championship game. Incredible insights about an incredible game. Advertisement Name to Know: Katherine Legge Legge will become the first woman to drive in a NASCAR Cup Series race in seven years. (Previously, in MoneyCall, reporter Jeff Gluck told you how one of NASCAR's biggest challenges is a limited pipeline of female drivers.) Date to Know: May 23 That will be the final episode of ESPN talking-head debate show 'Around the Horn,' which has been on the air weekdays since 2002 and an incubator for legions of on-air talent (plus one MoneyCall newsletter writer). Much more on this in May. Ratings Point: 1.42M That's the debut for IndyCar on Fox, up nearly half a million from last year's season opener on NBC. (And slightly above what F1 draws on ESPN …) Kit Release: NWSL The 2025 NWSL season kicks off March 14, but — as it is across the soccer/football/fútbol global landscape — the new kit reveal is always a huge deal, especially when it comes to driving new revenue for the league and clubs. Check out our team's kit reviews. (I'm a Spirit homer and like what they did with the neon alternates, but Bay FC really stood out to me as sharp.) 10-word TV Review: SC+ on Disney+ Appreciate the attempt. Fifteen-minute format is too long by half. Beat Dan in Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle #163 🔵🔵🔵🔵 🟢🟢🟢🟢 🟣🟡🟡🟡 🟣🟡🟡🟡 🟣🟡🟡🟡 🟣🟣🟣🟣 🟡🟡🟡🟡 ⏱️ 01:05 'Pbew!' PHEW? You're better than that, Dan! A second straight week for you to out-play me, everyone. Try the game here! Answers to the DTS quiz Tennis: 'Break Point.' Golf: 'Full Swing.' NASCAR: 'Full Speed.' Rugby: 'Full Contact.' Surfing: 'Make or Break.' Tour de France: 'Unchained.' MotoGP: 'Unlimited.' MLS: 'Onside.' NWSL: 'For the Win.' Great business-adjacent reads for your downtime or commute: Speaking of my alma mater, it had a solid cameo in this fantastic piece by my colleague Rustin Dodd on how teams create culture, through the lens of the recent Luka Dončić and Jimmy Butler storylines. Two more: 📫 Back next Wednesday! New challenge for all MoneyCall readers: Forward today's email to one friend or colleague with your recommendation they subscribe. And always check out The Athletic's other newsletters, too.
New York Times
26-02-2025
- Business
- New York Times
In year 30, is MLS nearer to its goals? Plus, Diana Taurasi's media potential
MoneyCall Newsletter 📈 | This is The Athletic's weekly sports business newsletter. Sign up here to receive MoneyCall directly in your inbox. Read past editions here. Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic's weekly sports business briefing. Name-dropped today: Lionel Messi, Andrew Marchand, Tottenham Spurs, Lewis Hamilton, Travis Hunter, RaMell Ross and more. Let's go: With Year 30 of MLS kicking off this week — including the launch of its 30th team, San Diego FC — I think it's worth asking: Has MLS broken through yet? The bull case: San Diego's owners paid MLS a $500M expansion fee, sponsorship sales seem healthy and Lionel Messi is still playing (for a staggering $20 million a year, plus team equity and marketing deals) and churning out highlights. Plus the in-stadium fan experience is awesome, and game attendance totals are very impressive. Advertisement (To emphasize that last point: MLS was the second-most attended soccer league in the world last year, behind the Premier League.) The bear case: The world's best in-their-prime players would never play in MLS, the lack of a promotion-relegation system has opened the door to a competitor domestic league, Messi is in the last year of his contract and the Apple TV deal has limited exposure to potential new fans. (To emphasize that last point: Last year's MLS Cup championship game, airing on Fox and Fox Deportes, was not only half the audience of the year before, but well behind the NWSL championship game on CBS and even behind the title game of the second-rung USL.) Open questions: I asked my colleague Paul Tenorio, one of The Athletic's U.S. soccer reporters (and who is working on a book about the 'Messi Effect' and the growing popularity of soccer in America), for his perspective: 💬 We can definitely say it's much closer than it was in 1996 — no U.S. soccer league of value existed when MLS launched in 1996! Now it has stadiums around the country that regularly put tens of thousands of fans in the seats. So if we're measuring 'major' based on relevance in markets, butts in seats in stadiums, etc., I think it's definitely closer. In terms of quality, is it closer to the rest of the world than when it launched? Yes. But is it anywhere close to penetrating into the top five soccer leagues in the world? I think that's a tough argument to make. Is there a path to the top? Yes, of course. MLS has built out infrastructure and has an incredibly wealthy ownership group. Right now, it's more about desire to get there and the timeline owners decide on to accomplish that growth. MLS has been a gateway to getting more U.S. fans interested in soccer. Its downstream effects notably include a national infrastructure to support that Club World Cup in 2025 (and World Cup in 2026) and the illumination of a market for pro women's soccer in the U.S. — including the latest version of the NWSL, which feels like it has way more cultural capital than MLS right now (the former's upcoming docuseries looks fantastic, by the way). U.S. interest in soccer — on the whole — has surged over the past 30 years. MLS has played a part in normalizing that. So has the success of the U.S. women's national team. And so has NBC, which brought Premier League to the American masses. Not quite as much relevance as MLS would have liked, but there is always tomorrow — the consistent theme for the league. Big talkers from the sports business industry: She has paired with Sue Bird for phenomenal 'alt-casts' during the women's NCAA Tournament (and an NBA Christmas Day game in 2023). Her expertise and on-camera authenticity make her a natural game or studio analyst across all of hoops. National pride, definitely. Awesome rivalry. Current geopolitical intrigue. Also: Don't discount that it happened to fall on an otherwise mostly dormant day of the sports calendar, when it could command all the attention. Expect to see more leagues — NBA and MLS seem to fit the model — try to import 4 Nations-style magic for their all-star games. Related-ish: The brand behind the ubiquitous 'Everyone Watches Women's Sports' merch line has done $6 million in revenue, per Sportico — which also leads us to this NASCAR X Unrivaled collab. Consider me curious, Stewie! Other current obsessions: Woj auctioning off his old news-breaking phones and media credentials … Overtime getting into tennis … Lewis Hamilton's endorsement deal with Lululemon … 'We Beat the Dream Team' on Max … RIP Al Trautwig … F1 helmet reveals for the 2025 season … Earlier this week, I was in Indianapolis, where the NFL is holding the annual draft combine. A center of attention: Colorado's Heisman Trophy-winning, two-way sensation Travis Hunter. Most folks have no doubt Hunter could play either DB or WR in the NFL at an elite level. (And maybe both!) In the hotel lobby, I tracked down Jacob Robinson, co-author of our incredible Scoop City newsletter and an NFL savant, for his take: Which position should Hunter play? 💬 Follow the money. The highest-paid corner (Patrick Surtain) makes $24 million a year. Ja'Marr Chase is looking at $35 million when he signs his extension this offseason. If Hunter is just a top-12 receiver, he can still make more than the highest-paid corner. Combine history, a reading rec and more. Time for a lightning round. Did You Know? The NFL Scouting Combine launched in 1982, and the league didn't allow cameras at the event for decades, a notion that seems absurd now. The combine finally got to TV in 2004 as a signature piece of programming for the then-nascent NFL Network, fans loved the glimpse inside the process and it has been a staple TV event for the league ever since. Advertisement Name to Know: RaMell Ross If you're a sports fan, your rooting interest for the Oscars on Sunday is Ross, nominated twice for his stunning film 'Nickel Boys' — Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture. Ross played hoops at Georgetown in the early 2000s before shifting to cinema as an award-winning documentarian and filmmaker. What I'm Reading: Sonny Vaccaro's memoir The former sports marketing exec is one of the most influential people in the business history of basketball, a legendary character who had a 'Zelig'-like presence in the 1980s, '90s and '00s — from the origins of Air Jordan to college teams becoming de facto Nike franchises to LeBron's shoe deal. His memoir 'Legends and Soles' dropped yesterday, and I'm really enjoying it so far. Beat Dan in Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle #156 🔵🟣🔵🔵 🟡🟡🟡🟡 🟢🟢🟢🟢 🔵🟣🔵🔵 🔵🟣🟣🔵 🟣🟣🔵🟣 My first 'Next Time!' Diabolical! This is your week to prevail. Play the game here! Beyond the Sean McVay effect: Inside the youth revolution that reshaped NFL coaching. Two more: 📫 Back next Wednesday! Thanks for telling a friend or colleague or two about MoneyCall! Please keep it up — just text them this link to sign up. (It's free!). And check out The Athletic's other newsletters, too.
