Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we break down sports and money—with an extra bit of humor and opinion. Today, we do our own NFL power rankings…

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In April 2016, the Seattle Seahawks decided to have a little fun with what was then typically a pretty vanilla moment in the NFL offseason: the day the league released its full schedule.

Instead of just publishing a list of games, the club created a playful video in the style of the short baking tutorials that were popular on social media. The 100-second film featured 16 cupcakes, each with ingredients specific to an opponent on the schedule—buffalo sauce for the Bills; clam chowder for the Patriots; etc.

And with that, an NFL tradition was born. Over the next half decade, more and more teams worked to one-up each other with their schedule release videos. Now it’s all 32. The schedule release day has become one of the most important days of the year for people who work in an NFL team’s social media, marketing or ticket sales departments.

Some teams spend months—and tens of thousands of dollars—to craft their final product. When it goes well, it can go mega-viral. When it goes poorly, it becomes an internet laughingstock (or requires an apology, evidently!).

Like we did last year, we watched all 32 videos from this year’s drop, and all four of us rated them from 0-10. What follows is Club Sportico’s power rankings, from worst to best. Click on any team name to watch.

32. Arizona Cardinals — Club Sportico rating: 2.73

A lot of thought seemingly went into this, but I’m not sure anyone stopped to ask, Why? (JF)

If you feature mascots, it’s basically impossible to get anything less than a 8 from me. I gave this a 3.9 (ENW)

As of 9:30 a.m. ET this has 883 likes on Twitter… the next lowest team has 2.6K (LA)

31. San Francisco 49ers — Club Sportico rating: 2.83

Cool intro, then everything is downhill (JF)

30. Jacksonville Jaguars — Club Sportico rating: 3

I assume the haircut is fake. I hope the haircut is fake. It appears the haircut is not fake. (Edit: It is!) But does it actually matter? (ENW)

29. Cincinnati Bengals — Club Sportico rating: 3.25

This is basically the only video of the 32 that uses game highlights. Sadly there’s not much more to it (ENW)

28. Houston Texans — Club Sportico rating: 3.63

I feel like “not uncomfortable to watch” should be a pretty low bar to clear for these videos. This one does not clear it (LA)

He’s oddly compelling (ENW)

27. Los Angeles Rams — Club Sportico rating: 3.75

Shockingly polite, compared to the competition (JF)

26. New York Jets — Club Sportico rating: 3.93

The Jets tend to lean toward videos that mimic viral social genres. This one is instantly recognizable, but with some fun team-specific flair (ENW)

25. Cleveland Browns — Club Sportico rating: 4

The Browns like to make these weird. It has the nostalgia aspect, but otherwise doesn’t strike me (pun intended) as all that compelling (ENW)

24. Detroit Lions — Club Sportico rating: 4.13

This was never going to land on the podium, but I’ve got tremendous respect for a video that actually feels aligned with the team’s identity. Detroit would rather win in December than May (JF)

FOOTBALL GUY (ENW)

To my two colleagues who gave this a 6: That’s a worse vote than that one writer that didn’t believe Ichiro was a Hall of Famer (also ENW)

23. Baltimore Ravens — Club Sportico rating: 4.13

I think I got too excited when I saw the theme was ‘Wedding Crashers.’ Happy for the couple, but otherwise, meh (ENW)

Doing a nice thing does not a good video make (JF)

22. Green Bay Packers — Club Sportico rating: 4.28

Claymation has always freaked me out, but also I just did not enjoy this video (MP)

I wrote in my notes: “Has nothing to do with the schedule; occasionally horrifying” (LA)

21. New England Patriots — Club Sportico rating: 4.3

It’s too simple, but I smiled the whole time. It satisfies the Novy-Williams Rule: If the players are having fun, fans will too (ENW)

20. Washington Commanders — Club Sportico rating: 4.38

PFP (Points for Production). More creative than I expected out of the nation’s capital (MP)

19. Minnesota Vikings — Club Sportico rating: 4.48

I think this one went over my head. Is Minnesota known for fine dining or something? (MP)

I expected jokes about the Vrabel-Russini romance. I did not expect this (ENW)

18. Seattle Seahawks — Club Sportico rating: 4.5

Ya, the Super Bowl went to their head (JF)

17. Pittsburgh Steelers — Club Sportico rating: 4.5

I don’t know enough inside Pittsburgh humor to fully love this, but I know enough to appreciate it (ENW)

16. Tampa Bay Buccaneers — Club Sportico rating: 4.53

If 8-9 was a video.... (JF)

15. New Orleans Saints — Club Sportico rating: 4.58

Local celebrities and a few good jokes are enough to land this in the middle of the pack (JF)

14. Carolina Panthers — Club Sportico rating: 4.88

Every schedule release video should come with a warning. That’s a great sign. But it still got a little stale (JF)

HELL YEAH (ENW)

13. Miami Dolphins — Club Sportico rating: 5.2

Stephen Ross is one of the few owners to appear in videos this year. But not in the role you expect (ENW)

One of a few vids this year that seemed to forget they were supposed to be schedule reveals until the final frames (JF)

12. Philadelphia Eagles — Club Sportico rating: 5.48

Happy for you, or sorry that that happened. Not reading that essay. But seriously, why is it 13 minutes? I guess they’re cool guys, not sure. I do not like the Eagles (MP)

Saquon complaining about Philly’s short weeks and long trips was worth the watch (JF)

11. Las Vegas Raiders — Club Sportico rating: 5.6

They should cast Kirk Cousins in more movies (LA)

10. Denver Broncos — Club Sportico rating: 5.65

A solid, run of the mill schedule release video that entertains for three minutes and is pretty much unmemorable three minutes later (LA)

9. Chicago Bears — Club Sportico rating: 5.93

Bob Ross deserves all the love. After all, football is art.

8. Buffalo Bills — Club Sportico rating: 6.08

The NFL’s version of “More Cowbell.” I could see “Giant Chrysalis” becoming a thing in Buffalo for years to come (ENW)

The Bills’ identity seems to be, “we’re weird.” Great! (JF)

7. Kansas City Chiefs — Club Sportico rating: 6.13

I kept expecting this to get boring and somehow it never did (LA)

6. Indianapolis Colts — Club Sportico rating: 6.48

As someone who watches random Simpsons clips on YouTube at 1 a.m. when I can’t sleep, inject this into my veins (LA)

“MMMMmmm Sauce Gardner” (ENW)

And now, our Top 5…

5. New York Giants — Club Sportico rating: 6.78

If it weren’t for Jameis, this would’ve been a wet blanket of a video out of an org I expect nothing more from at this point. But Jameis is gonna Jameis (MP)

4. Atlanta Falcons — Club Sportico rating: 6.83

I’m sure this plays well as individual clips, but I’m looking for a bit more cohesiveness in my schedule release video (JF)

Nostalgia sweet spot for those of prime SportsCenter age. Jump right to 3:11 for the best bit (ENW)

3. Tennessee Titans — Club Sportico rating: 7.38

Doesn’t capture the magic of the first on-the-street video, but the Myles Garrett joke may have been the single biggest laugh of all 32 teams (LA)

2. Dallas Cowboys (There’s a second one too)— Club Sportico rating: 7.53

As much as I wanted to like this one less than the Eagles, I laughed four (4) times (MP)

I think the “second one,” which is also the shorter one, is funnier. You can learn a lot about a person by how they charade cheese being grated (ENW)

1. Los Angeles Chargers — Club Sportico rating: 7.98

We’re getting to the point with Chargers schedule release videos that I wonder if they should actually divert some of these resources towards their football team (LA)

Personally, I might pay $50-60K just to sit in the room and watch this come to life. I imagine it’s like watching Jordan from the bench, being Tiger’s caddy or seeing Gruden break down QB tape. (MP)

The internet agrees!

Our final grades are below. Let us know your favorite (and what we missed) in the comments!

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Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.

Here are six things we’re discussing on this Tuesday morning…

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What I’m Wondering 🤔: Is now a bad time to buy the Seahawks? The market for the Super Bowl champs is “soft,” a team owner told ESPN last week. There are some unique factors at play here, including the fact that current owner Jody Allen has a directive to sell the team as part of her late brother’s will, and the issue that only so many humans can pony up the billions required to buy a majority stake of an NFL team these days. But maybe there’s also some hesitancy given that Seattle is at the top of the league competitively and the only direction for them to go is down. The new owner will be tasked with retaining talent and keeping fans happy, while taking over a franchise that was 17th in revenue by Sportico’s last count.

During Super Bowl week, there was talk of a playoff run boosting the team’s value. However, I could see a wannabe-owner lining up instead to be the person who brings the NBA back to Seattle.

What I’m Following ⛹️‍♀️: The WNBA season started this weekend, and with it, a new round of complaints about how hard it is to watch sports on TV these days. The league’s nationally televised games are split up between CBS, ABC, ESPN, NBC, Peacock, Prime Video, Ion, USA Network and NBA TV.

There are also still ~150 games on WNBA League Pass, which makes it a pretty good buy at $40, but my Threads algorithm was overrun with fans confused about what that subscription got them. Or maybe they were just ginning up some engagement bait…

Richard Deitsch asked WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert about the fractured landscape for Sports Business Journal.

“The WNBA is not unique in this battle, right?,” she said. “Obviously the challenge is making sure fans can find our games when they want to.” Weekend 1 indicated there’s still work to do.

What I’m Working On ⚾: Meanwhile in MLB, the Padres and Cardinals played on four networks over four days this weekend—ESPN, Apple TV, Fox, and their local channels. There needs to be a name for this. I love naming things unnecessarily, but have struggled to come up with a sure-fire winner. A Stream Slam? A tic-tap-toe? Help me out here!

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What I Was Right About 👀: I was so glad to hear many of you comment about how homeplate ads impact your viewing experience (and hope I didn’t inadvertently up that number with last week’s email). Meanwhile in tennis…

Refer a friend

What I Love ❤️: Shoutout to Sickos Committee for doing the real work, looking at each MLB team’s stadium policies to determine how many would likely allow fans to bring a gallon of spaghetti into the ballpark.

One More Thing I Was Right About 📺: In January, I wrote about Netflix’s sports podcast play as a bid for daytime attention. Its battle with YouTube to better serve viewers in quiet moments throughout their routines continues—and now Prime Video is getting into the action too, with Oprah, the longtime queen of daytime television. My first thought when I saw the news? I wonder if this means we’re going to get an Oprah-hosted Thursday Night Football altcast!

Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.

Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we discuss the intersection of sports and money—with humor and opinion. Today we’re talking about un-missable advertisements 🙈. (Don’t forget to vote at the end of this post!)

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Reader Advisory: There’s a chance this article will significantly impact your MLB viewing experience. If you don’t notice the ads that are increasingly popping up behind home plates (and on pitching mounds) across the majors, close this tab and go back to watching baseball in bliss. Once you start tracking such things, you might not be able to un-see the changes. On the other hand, if you already find yourself constantly taking note of glowing backstops, well then welcome. This post is for you.

I knew that MLB backstops have changed in recent years. I just didn’t know by how much.

Look at Camden Yards, which brought retro aesthetics to MLB parks after opening in 1992. Here’s what the Baltimore backstop looked like in 2016.

10 years later, it’s retained much of its beauty—just with a few more ads.

There have been more significant changes at St. Louis’ Busch Stadium.

Ad and camera placements seem to be made in conjunction these days, opening up commercial real estate that stretches from behind the pitcher well into the stands.1

When home plate ads were first being considered in the 1990s, then-Yankees owner George Steinbrenner reportedly pushed back. “He thought it was a slippery path to a bad place,” former Detroit Tigers exec Len Perna told SBJ in 2022.

30+ years on, this is how far we’ve slid.

Club Sportico has compiled images from 2016 and 2026 for each MLB stadium. New York does have ads behind the dish, though it hasn’t changed them much over the last decade. Other teams have been more aggressive.

You can slide your way around all 30 ballparks here.

Teams/networks now also digitally insert their own ads on top of existing placements for away games, which can lead to even more distraction.

Watching NESN’s coverage of a recent Red Sox game in Toronto via MLB.TV, I was mystified to see the ball disappear mid-pitch through a digitally-placed FanDuel ad. Did they really need the third logo?2

I can’t blame franchises for their decorating decisions. Outside of the biggest markets, TV money is increasingly imperiled. Faster games further cut down on advertising opportunities. The Yanks and Dodgers don’t have to scrounge for every sponsorship buck, but the Guardians and Pirates have more reason to. And the backstop is a veritable piggy bank. Home plate signage generated $1.9 billion in sponsor media value in 2024, according to Relo Metrics.

Everyone anticipates major changes for baseball next year, with a new CBA and potential salary cap on the table. I don’t expect the sport’s leaders to pause in the middle of all of that to address matters of design. Advertising has steadily encroached across sports since the COVID-19 pandemic gave leagues extra reason to capitalize where they could, and the sponsorship genie isn’t being shoved back in the bottle anytime soon. It’s worth noting that the digital replacement tech has gotten better, at least to my eye. Though that might just lead teams to push the envelope even further.

The one new MLB stadium in our sample offers a glimmer of hope…

Arlington, Tex.’s Globe Life Field opened in 2020 with the typical backstop replaced by sunken suites. There are still plenty of ads on-screen, and the box crowd doesn’t offer the same enthusiasm as packed stands, but I can’t complain. At least there are live, human faces behind the batter, rather than a billboard.

Eben’s ⚡ Take: Given that many of these billboards are digital and considering how virtually every streaming service now offers expensive ad-free and cheaper ad-supported tiers, I wonder how far we are from that reality as sports fans. Want to watch the Orioles with the classic brick background? Pay up for RSN Premium™️! Otherwise, prepare to watch the team like they’re playing in Times Square. ~Sigh~

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Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.

2

Here’s an even harder find-the-ball challenge.

Here are six things we’re discussing on this Monday morning…

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Celebrity Investor of the Week 🧑‍🎤: Wrexham fans will need to wait at least another year for their Premier League moment, but English soccer delivered a different celebrity-owner celebration over the weekend. On Saturday afternoon, English soccer club Ipswich Town secured promotion to the Premier League—just the second time in the past 25 years that the Tractor Boys1 will play in the sport’s most competitive circuit. In the locker room after the game, four-time Grammy winner (and Suffolk native) Ed Sheeran joined players to sing his hit “The A Team.” The video is any sports fan’s dream 👇

Sheeran was on tour in Miami the last time Ipswich secured an EPL spot, which I’m sure makes this moment extra sweet. But he’s not just a celebrity fan. He has financially supported the club for years, paying to be Ipswich’s main front-of-jersey-sponsor for three seasons from 2021 to 2024 as the team climbed to the top of the English soccer pyramid. In 2024, he also bought 1.4% of the club. Promotion to the EPL, particularly this close to its last relegation, could easily be worth $100+ million for the team.

Marketing Genius of the Week 🏡: Speaking of lower-level soccer, a striker in the Canadian Premier League made the most of his moment over the weekend. After scoring a goal, Tomasz Skublak pulled his business card out of his sock and held it up for the camera while miming the “call me!” gesture. Terrell Owens, move over!

The minimum salary in the Canadian Premier League is about $23,000 USD. If any of you need a real estate agent in Toronto, please give this man a ring.

Wishful Thinking of the Week 🎫: After his team’s shocking first-round upset over the Celtics on Saturday night, which set up a second-round I-95 showdown with the rival Knicks, Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid had a message for fans.

Good luck! The 76ers are also restricting official ticket sales to fill orders only for buyers whose billing address is inside the Philadelphia area. This has become common in the NBA and NHL and it rarely works, because—news flash!—even local fans like to buy and flip tickets for cash.

Refer a friend

Sportico Story of the Week 🛢️: The Edmonton Oilers’ 50/50 lottery2 has gained almost mythical status in major North American sports. While many teams sell ~$10,000 worth of tickets per game to their raffles, the Oilers raffles are orders of magnitude bigger. That’s thanks to a 2020 COVID-era decision to sell tickets online, in addition to in-arena. Last year’s total sales were $64 million (C$87.5 million).

In a profile of the 50/50’s growth, our colleague Justin Birnbaum also wrote last week about a third destination for a lot of that money. About 28% of sales in fiscal 2025 went to a company called Win50 that handles operations of the lottery, and Win50 is controlled by the same group that owns the Edmonton Oilers. More here.

Non-Sportico Story of the Week ⚽: I’ve spoken extensively about why I believe the upcoming World Cup will not be the commercial bonanza that many in U.S. soccer believed. Last week the Wall Street Journal profiled a number of homeowners, some who spent years—and thousands of dollars—preparing their residences for an Airbnb windfall that has yet to materialize. The anecdotes throughout are telling, but here’s one example:

Stunning Video of the Week ❌: At the 76^th FIFA Congress last week, global soccer boss Gianni Infantino tried to get representatives from the Israeli and Palestinian delegation to pose for a photo together. Instead, Palestine Football Association president Jibril Rajoub told the crowd “We are suffering!” and walked off the stage.

Infantino, like his FIFA predecessors before him, loves to speak about soccer’s ability to bridge the most contentious divisions. This staged photo attempt came right after a speech in which he suggested the two groups “work together for the children.” But his hollow approach to diplomacy—he gave President Trump a new FIFA “Peace Prize” a mere weeks before Trump started an international conflict in Iran—has tested the limit of that already-dubious claim. I’m hoping he retires that rhetoric entirely.

Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.

Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we discuss the intersection of sports and money—with humor and opinion. Today we’re talking about horses 🏇, hats 👒and roses 🌹.

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How did the Kentucky Derby become the Kentucky Derby? That story starts with explorers Lewis and Clark. Or at least the myth does.

Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr., grandson of William Clark and named for Clark’s traveling partner,1 helped create Churchill Downs in 1875, using England’s Epsom Downs as inspiration. The first Kentucky Derby was held that May, though it’d be another half-century before the race achieved lasting fame thanks to an obsessed marketer, a loose grip on tradition, and a bit of betting-related luck.

Today, sports strive to become spectacle. A game only grabs so much attention. Events are what break through. To see where leagues are headed, then, it’s worth studying how a horse race came to draw 150,000 people in Louisville and 20 million viewers on NBC year after year.

The Derby was created with the intention of being important, according to Kentucky Derby Museum senior director of curatorial education Chris Goodlett. The Civil War had just decimated the horse breeding industry and there was a need to get people interested in racing again. There were ups and downs through the race’s first few decades, but always a consistent effort to get elites— women included—to the track. An emphasis on formal attire helped the race stand out from the beginning.

In the early 1900s, progressive-era reformers from California to New York banned gambling, shifting the sport’s epicenter and shrinking the number of operating racetracks in the U.S./Canada from 355 in 1897 to 31 in 1908. In 1915, a filly won the Kentucky Derby for the first time. Maybe more importantly, Regret was owned by prominent New York businessmen Harry Payne Whitney.2

“I do not care if she never wins another race, nor if she never starts in another race, she has won the greatest race in America, and I am satisfied,” he said afterwards.

Matt Winn, Churchill Downs’ leader from 1902 until his death in 1949, had convinced Whitney to bring his horse to Kentucky and later said of that running: “the Derby was thus made an American institution.” But Winn’s marketing efforts played a big role too.

Many of the techniques he employed are still popular today. Holding concerts at the track. Woo’ing influencers, in his case the famous sportswriters of the day. Boasting about attendance figures that couldn’t easily be verified. Winn also served as a human mascot for Kentucky culture as a slightly exotic, tradition-tinted land. “It was a Disney-fied version of the idea of the Old South,” said James Nicholson, who wrote a book on how the Kentucky Derby became what it is.

Before there was Colonel Sanders, there was Colonel Winn.

He’s responsible for many of the Derby’s most famous traditions, from the playing of “My Old Kentucky Home” to the souvenir mint julep glasses to the garland of roses and gold trophy given to each Derby champ. Winn kept the race alive through war, prohibition, depression, and more war, creating a place that could simultaneously be for long-shot lovers and power-brokers. Churchill Downs celebrated the past without ever getting stuck in the mud. It was only a matter of time before it became iconic.

“All Winn talked about was Derby all the time,” Goodlett said. “It was always Derby, Derby, Derby, Derby, and ways to push the Derby.”3

Shortly after he died, TV took over evangelizing Churchill Downs. While some tracks were wary of televising events, for fear fans would stay home, the Derby leaned in. CBS carried its first race in 1952.

In 1975, ABC won the rights to air the event by promising more cameras, more commentators, and more coverage. Many were dubious when the network devoted 90 minutes to the event. On Saturday, NBC will be live from Louisville for five hours.

By the ‘80s, the Derby stood alone. “There are very few sports that the American public follows so little, but becomes so interested in for one race,” TV host Jim McKay said at the time.

Gaudy, whimsical outfits emerged around the same time. Social media has only boosted the trend. Outrageous hats and fascinators are a fairly modern obsession, seemingly driven more by hysteria around Prince William and Catherine Middleton’s 2011 royal wedding than any ties to horse racing’s distant past.

The result now is a truly odd mix of tradition and TikTokers, a sport’s pinnacle competition set amid a debaucherous circus. But one suspects Colonel Winn would approve.

“After 100-whatever years, it kind of becomes its own thing,” Nicholson said. “You can spend all day at the Derby just looking at people’s ridiculous hats and somebody with a critical eye would say, What is this? Nobody dresses like this…. But then it just becomes what one does.”

Each year, Churchill Downs briefly becomes the center of both the sporting universe and the cultural milieu, for reasons that remain somewhat incomprehensible. Marketing certainly helped. But in time, it looks more like magic.

Eben’s ⚡ Take: I went to the Masters this year for the first time, and was floored by how much the event, its participants, its media partners and its fans patrons all fully embrace the tradition. That tournament and the Kentucky Derby are in a very exclusive group of sporting events (or venues, like Wrigley Field) that seem to have kept their old-time charm amid generations of changes to how we consume and enjoy sports.

Will that list grow longer over time, or shorter? A few years ago, I would have said shorter. Now I think the opposite. People crave nostalgia, even if it nods to a time they didn’t personally experience. And if that involves dressing like a southern belle, drinking a very specific mint cocktail and learning the basics of parimutuel wagering, well that’s even better.

To that end, after the Masters we debated on the podcast whether modern sports teams could have cellphone-free sections. Am I crazy here?

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Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.

Here are six sports business takeaways from Sabastian Sawe’s milestone-shattering London Marathon performance…

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Sportico Story of the Weekend 👟: On Sunday, not one but two men broke the once unfathomable two-hour marathon mark. Sabastian Sawe won the London Marathon in 1:59:30. Yomif Kejelcha claimed second with a 1:59:41 time in his official marathon debut. And they both did it wearing Adidas.

Advances in shoe technology over the last 10 years brought a “Sub-2” time into the realm of possibility. Sara Germano fully lays out how we get from there to here.

Non-Sportico Story of the Week 💨: Rachel Bachman delivered a prescient story last week on the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 31, which the runners wore for the first time in London. At 3.4 ounces, it weighs less than half as much as an average running shoe.

A limited number of the shoes went on sale at 10 a.m. ET Monday for $500 a pair. The broader brand lift from Sunday, which also saw Adidas athlete Tigst Assefa break her own women-only world record, helped the company’s stock rise 1.5% as the markets opened.2

What it Means for Nike 😜: Of course, you can’t mention a Sub-2 marathon without also talking about Nike. The Swoosh spent millions on the concept from 2015-2020, a push that culminated in Eliud Kipchoge breaking the barrier in a very unofficial and manufactured way—utilizing 41 pacers, a wind-resistant V formation and a car with a laser. In running circles that whole quest was widely considered a marketing gimmick, and Sawe cracking the two-hour mark wearing shoes made by Nike’s biggest rival was catnip for the internet.

A lot has been written about Nike’s recent struggles—bad leadership, an overemphasis on digital, the “China problem,” etc.—all of which have undoubtedly contributed to a stock that’s lost 66% of its value in the last five years. But we see a much more fundamental issue.

Nike has seemingly crossed that threshold at the confluence of ubiquity, success and complacency where it has become cooler to hate on the company than to stan it.3 Nike gets criticized for being too woke, and for being too exclusionary. For having products that are too cheap, and for products that are too expensive. Its marketing, once the envy of virtually every other consumer brand in the world, no longer inspires. That’s the real fear if I’m Nike. For decades Nike was the most aspirational brand in sports, now it has crested that mountain, and the other side appears dark, hostile and full of trendy online hate.

Refer a friend

What Bothers Us a Little 🙄: All that said, don’t let #SportsBusinessBrain distract from the real achievement. We appreciated that neither ESPN’s nor The Athletic’s first stories on the race results appeared to mention Adidas.

Sawe has been setting records for years. He conquered the field in London in 2025 too. He has run more than 125 miles per week in the lead-up to the race and has the potential to go even faster later this year, according to his agent.

He deserves just as much facetime as his sneaker.

What We Still Don’t Fully Understand 🧪: Less visible than the footwear (and less well-marketed than “super shoes”), there has also been a revolution in how endurance athletes refuel during events.4 Chemical advances now help them consume twice as many grams of carbs per hour, without upsetting their stomachs. As performance coach Steve Magness put it, without getting too technical, “In many ways, we’ve shortened the marathon.”

The race to beat the two-hour mark has clearly inspired a number of tech advances. It also seems to have injected more money into the distance running economy. That means more investment in recruiting top athletes and more of the world’s best focusing on marathons earlier in their career.

Sawe likely doesn’t set the record Sunday if he’s not pushed by a pack of other elite runners, both throughout the competition calendar and during the run through London. I’m fascinated to see whether the sport can build on the momentum of its most recent breakthrough, or whether that financial focus will slowly drift to taking down the next marketable milestone in human performance.

What We Love 😍: After the race, Guinness World Records celebrated Sawe’s achievement on X. About an hour later, they honored Matt Batchelor, who “ran the fastest marathon dressed as a three dimensional toy (male) in 4:19:23.”

The Sun tallied 38 records in total broken Sunday including “Longest scarf knitted whilst running a marathon” (5.59 meters) and “Fastest marathon wearing clogs (male)” (06:27:17). Maybe that’s the next frontier for Nike to take on.

Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.

Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we discuss the intersection of sports and money—with humor and opinion. Today we’re talking about whether age is just a number.

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Everyone knows that college football has been up-ended in recent years. Player compensation (revenue sharing, plus NIL deals), thousands of transfers, and an extra year of eligibility following the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped roster-building strategies across the country. More quietly, those same changes have also altered the NFL.

100+ players used to leave college early to enter the draft each year. Now fewer than 70 do. Ravens GM Eric DeCosta said that four percent of prospects on the team’s draft board before 2024 were 24.5 or older. “Now that number is up to 18 percent,” he said. “Historically we’ve tried to draft younger players when we can... That’s going to change the way we target players.”

On Thursday, the Los Angeles Chargers selected 25-year-old Akheem Mesidor 22nd overall, the oldest first-rounder since 2018.

But the New York Giants have gone in the other direction.

• 5th overall pick: Arvell Reese, LB, Ohio State, 20 years old

• 10th overall pick: Francis Mauigoa, OT, Miami, 20 years old

Over the last 10 years, across multiple Big Blue regimes, the Giants have consistently taken the youngest prospects in the league.1

How much has the overall draft picture changed in the last few years? We (well, Lev) crunched the numbers. Take a minute to digest this chart. Then we’ll share our reactions.

Jacob: What jumps out to me here is what didn’t happen. While the average age of day 2 and 3 draft picks has grown in recent years, first rounders have continued to hover below 22 years old on average. In 2025, only 7% of Day 3 picks were 21 by the start of the season, compared to half of the first-round picks. To me, that’s more a result of supply changing than demand. As mentioned above, fewer prospects are declaring early for the draft. This year, Dante Moore and Arch Manning both notably returned for another year of NCAA play. Dozens of lesser-known talents did the same. A gap is opening up, between elite players who are still declaring early/getting drafted high up and mid-tier guys who are electing to hold off on the pros, while still getting paid.

The 32nd pick in the NFL draft gets a $16 million contract. The 64th pick’s deal is worth less than $8 million. If a player thinks an extra year might improve their chances of getting into the first-round, and if they can get paid close to a $1 million in the interim, staying in school suddenly looks more attractive. And if you’re a Day 3 guy or a fringe prospect in the first place? It’s a no-brainer to take the paycheck being guaranteed to you in January over the possibility of hearing your name called in April.

Basically, the top of an NFL big board would have looked the same without college football’s myriad changes. The top 25 or so players declare for the draft as soon as they’re eligible (with a few exceptions), same as they used to. But after that? There are likely fewer young prospects to pick from.

Eben: I’ll offer another possible interpretation here. Maybe in addition to the changes underway in college—or maybe as a second-order effect of them—NFL teams are also growing more conservative in their preferences.

In general, the older a player is, the easier they are to evaluate. Their bodies are more developed, their minds are more mature, and there’s more game tape and data to study.2

When an NFL team decides which player to select, it is calculating not just a player’s talent in that moment, but also the team’s degree of confidence in its analysis and projection of future development. I’m generalizing, of course, but older players typically have higher floors and also lower ceilings.

The players who are can’t-miss prospects when they’re 20 years old typically go in the first round. For those players, the sheer abundance of talent more than offsets the volatility that comes with their age.

Maybe NFL teams (that aren’t the Giants) are shifting their thinking about what they value in their rookies. After the unicorn talents are taken, perhaps the current trend is that NFL teams would prefer the player they’re very confident will be a B offensive tackle this season (but will likely never be an A), as opposed to the youngster that will be a C now but could turn into an A over time.3 If that’s true, expect the draft to get older.

Lev: The reason we chose to explore this topic was the increase in age of later round picks since the NIL era began—and I agree with Jacob’s rationale—but I’m also interested in the steady overall decline in age between 2005 to 2020, since the same trend actually occurred in basketball. NBA rookies are now, on average, about 0.5 years younger than they were a decade ago and about a full year younger than they were at the turn of the century (back when players were eligible straight out high school)! It certainly looks like teams across sports are trying to find younger talent, but that desire is now at odds with a college sports landscape that makes it more lucrative for players to stay in school.

Let us know what you think! Is it supply or demand that has changed who gets picked when… or is it all just statistical noise?

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Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.

This week’s Pick Six is actually a Pick Seven, because… Mondays.

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Non-Sportico Story of the Week ⛳: The biggest sports business story of the past week was the defunding—or depending on where you get news: the demise? the mocking? the ???—of Saudi-backed LIV Golf. It started with a very vague Twitter post, then snowballed into rush of nearly-identical news stories, obits and takes. If you’re curious at all about what’s actually happening at LIV, I recommend this Twitter article (!?) from X user @ParandPaddock, which takes a much softer and more realistic view. LIV Golf isn’t going away, at least not anytime soon, but there are some major financial problems that need to be solved quickly.

By the way, in an extra dose of irony, LIV’s next event is in two weeks in Washington DC at… you guessed it, Trump National Golf Club. Yes, the man who has destabilized the entire Middle East, at least temporarily, is hosting LIV for what will undoubtedly be a media frenzy of questions about Saudi Arabia.

Sportico Story of the Week 🛢️: LIV Golf’s financial backer, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund PIF, has committed untold billions to global sports over the past decade. Thanks to PIF and other sovereign money from Qatar and the UAE, the Middle East has become critical to the sports economy. Now, there are signs that the Iran war could change that spending1, with examples popping up in soccer, golf, basketball, tennis, and even flag football. I wrote a column on Thursday diving into the dynamics on the ground, and the huge consequences that could follow.

What Made me Gasp 📉: It’s no secret that Chelsea FC’s newish American owners have put the club into a bit of financial distress. But I had no idea how deep the hole was until I read this excellent financial analysis from Paul Quinn’s soccer blog.

It’s worth a full read, but in short, Chelsea’s massive uptick in spending—which is yet to really produce on the field—is backed by a very risky financial loan that the team chose to structure with a payment-in-kind (PIK) mechanism. Instead of paying down the debt via set interest payments, the soccer club is adding the interest to the outstanding principal balance, which creates what Quinn calls “a deferred but mathematically explosive liability.”

What Made me Laugh 👟: Last week Allbirds, a once-hot sneaker startup, announced it was fully pivoting its business. It will no longer make the soft, trendy cloth sneakers that made the company worth—briefly, more than $4 billion.2 Instead it raised money to pivot to AI computing.

The news inspired this Tweet 👇

Speaking of stock charts, the market has (so far) loved Allbirds’ new move. Here’s the (Nasdaq: BIRD) three month price movement 👇

Sportico Thread of the Week 📺: On Saturday, Jacob took to Twitter to explain a question that’s bubbling up more and more as sports streamers secure rights to major sporting events—How do bars handle games on Netflix, YouTube, Apple TV or Prime Video? Turns out it involves two main competitors, fire code occupancy, special training and, and of course, a private equity firm. Here’s a snippet3 👇

What I Don’t Understand ⚽: What’s happening at Tottenham Hotspur. Over the past decade, Spurs forced their way into the newly-constituted “Big Six”4 in English soccer—the clubs that had reached a point of global popularity and financial heft that virtually insured they could never be bad enough to be relegated. Well… with five games left in the season, Tottenham is currently sitting in relegation position, despite having international soccer’s 14th largest payroll, an astounding $187 million. Relegation could easily cost the club a hundred million, and that doesn’t count the myriad ways it might impact the potential sale of the club, which has been rumored for years.

As a potential explanation, I was fascinated by this ESPN story about how the club may be the product of bad analytics.

What I Do Understand ⚾: The Padres are about to sell for $3.9 billion, the highest price (by far) ever paid for control of a baseball team5. Why are the Padres worth $3.9 billion?? There are a few things that make the club a bit of a unicorn in major U.S. sports. It’s a rare baseball team that has neither an NFL nor NBA franchise in its city, and it is profitable despite losing its local TV partner to bankruptcy. The Padres were second in attendance last year, trailing only their big-spending blue rivals to the north. Plus, the looming labor battle could bring an MLB salary cap, which would make every team worth a lot more. Read more here from our colleagues Kurt and Justin 👇

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Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.

Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we break down the intersection of sports and money—with an extra bit of humor and opinion. Today, 14 pictures are worth 14,000 words:

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Lev: We’re finally here. After six months of complaints about [takes deep breath] injuries, tanking, proposed tanking reforms, SGA’s push-offs, refereeing in general, the decisions of replay reviews, the length of replay reviews, gambling ads, NBA Cup courts, the Dunk Contest, the All-Star Game, awards eligibility, the awards ballots being delayed due to decisions regarding awards eligibility, the length of the season, streaming delays, etc., it’s that time of year when NBA fans immediately become the happiest people on Earth. Playoff hoops have arrived.

To celebrate, here’s a data visualization for each playoff team.

Editors’ Note: This message may be cut off by your email inbox. You can view it in full by clicking the headline ⬆️. Enjoy!

Western Conference

#1 - Oklahoma City Thunder 🌩️

The Thunder just posted the eighth-best regular season net rating in NBA history despite MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander missing 14 games and starters Jalen Williams and Isaiah Hartenstein missing about half the season. When it comes to roster building, there is basically OKC, and then there are 29 other franchises.

Also, Kings fans, shield your eyes:

#2 - San Antonio Spurs 🐴

If any franchise can challenge Oklahoma City for young roster construction, it’s San Antonio. Victor Wembanyama is 22 years old. Stephon Castle is 21 and Dylan Harper is 20. The Spurs were not supposed to be this good yet.

#3 - Denver Nuggets ⛏️

Despite injuries to several starters, the Nuggets easily finished the season with the league’s best offense, but they ranked just 21st in defense. Only one team has ever won the title with a below-average defense: the 2001 Lakers, who also ranked 21st. The next worst defense to win a championship? The 2023 Nuggets.

#4 - Los Angeles Lakers 🐟🛶

The Lakers’ season is essentially over if Luka Doncic is unable to return healthy for the postseason, but let’s just appreciate that LeBron James averaged 20.9 points per game at age 41 (!!!!). Unreal

#5 - Houston Rockets 🚀

The Rockets finished the season as a historically great offensive rebounding team, but they have been much less dominant in that department since losing Steven Adams to a season-ending injury in January.

#6 - Minnesota Timberwolves 🐺

The Timberwolves won the same number of games as they did last season, when they reached the Western Conference Finals, but vibes are down. Their attendance dropped more in 2025-26 than any other team, and DraftKings gives them just 100-to-1 odds to win the title.

#7 - Portland Trail Blazers 🔥

”You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”
- Wayne Gretzky
- Michael Scott
- Blazers head coach Tiago Splitter, maybe

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Eastern Conference

#1 - Detroit Pistons 🚗

There is a narrative out there that the Pistons are untested and can’t compete with the best teams, but they were actually 17-7 against top 10 opponents. That includes a 3-1 record versus Boston and a 3-0 record versus New York.

#2 - Boston Celtics ☘️

Joe Mazzulla is an absolute madman, and his Celtics take care of the ball like they will never see the court again if they throw it away.

#3 - New York Knicks 🩳

Led by Jalen Brunson and his crunch time reliability, the Knicks had the best fourth quarter net rating of any NBA team in the play-by-play era. I can’t say that this list below contains a meaningful collection of teams, but in a season that felt very “blah” for the Knicks, it’s something!

#4 - Cleveland Cavaliers ♞

The team with the highest payroll this season is… Cleveland??? Since the Warriors won the title in 2022, the teams that have paid the most money for their rosters have been underwhelming on the court, to say the least: the 2023 Clippers (lost 4-1 in the first round), 2024 Warriors (missed postseason), and 2025 Suns (missed postseason).

#5 - Toronto Raptors 🦖

NBA TV playoff games are no more, but I feel like they need to flex Cavs vs. Raptors to NBA TV for old time’s sake. This series only deserves one chart. Next!

#6 - Atlanta Hawks 🦅

Dear Atlanta, congratulations on making the playoffs outright, but sorry, you will always be a play-in team in my eyes:

#7 - Philadelphia 76ers 🇺🇸

Joel Embiid is questionable for the first round. What’s new?

?

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Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.

Here are six sports business items to start the week…

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What I Loved 😍: One of my biggest issues watching golf on TV is that it can be very difficult for viewers to picture exactly what the golfers are trying to do with their long shots. That’s why I absolutely loved this drone (blimp? crane?) angle that CBS showed ahead of Rory McIlroy’s title-clinching approach shot on the 18^th hole on Sunday at the Masters.

McIlroy, who is in the bottom right of the screen, hit his drive into a mess of trees, but from this vantage point, it’s clear what’s in front of him—a shot that stays to the right of the treeline, then fades left, up and over that big final tree. CBS is getting a lot of criticism for how it handled the 18^th hole, but I’m giving a golf clap for this portion. —ENW

What Didn’t Surprise Me 🔒: High Point University, the school that became famous this March for its on-campus airplane cabin and steakhouse, apparently has a partnership with Augusta National Golf Club to send 50-some students to work at the Masters. Of course it does. “Students help run one of golf’s most historic events while developing valuable professional skills,” the school explained.

“The Premier Life Skills University” keeps living up to its slogan. —JF

What Impressed Me 🏀: The culture of the W is changing before our eyes this week, with the first free agency period under the league’s new CBA leading into Monday night’s draft.

The clearest example of that culture shift is at UCLA. After winning this year’s college title, five Bruins could be drafted in the first round. During pre-draft media availability multiple players credited one of the school’s assistants—Michaela Onyenwere—with helping them navigate the transition.

Onyenwere was the 2021 WNBA rookie of the year. Having made slightly more than $400,000 over her first five seasons in the league, she joined UCLA’s staff during this most recent offseason. On Sunday, after winning a ring with her alma mater, she reportedly signed a new contract with the Washington Mystics worth more than $1.4 million.

The era of marquee W pros moonlighting as college assistants each winter might be over. (Back in the day, Dawn Staley was a WNBA All-Star while coaching Temple in her offseason). I’ll be watching to see how Onyenwere handles her former pupils when they play each other this summer. —JF

What Makes Me Sad 😔: A number of regional sports networks showed their final NBA games on Sunday. Local networks no longer carry playoff action, and next year, several teams are expected to sort out new broadcast plans following Main Street Sports Group’s ongoing wind-down. These channels were the backbone of fans’ connection to their favorite team for decades. It’s a bit surreal to see them fade out so quietly. —JF

Sportico Story of the Week 🎟️: There’s a dirty truth in airline travel that just because you buy a plane ticket, that doesn’t mean you have a seat on the plane. That’s also true with big event tickets bought on the secondary market. Our colleague Mike McCann wrote last week about a decision by a federal judge in Washington in a lawsuit about $5,000 (!) tickets for a Taylor Swift concert in Vancouver, which were allegedly swapped for $1,200 obstructed view tickets by StubHub. This happens in sports more than many people realize. —ENW

Non-Sportico Story of the Week 🎾: It’s a few weeks old now, but I was riveted by this Tennisedge account of what it looks like to sell gambling pick to a tennis betting syndicate. The author, who goes by Nishi or Nishikori, talks about how the relationship started, how he’s paid, and what the syndicate expects in yield. He’s not on the inside, so there’s a lot he doesn’t know, but he’s able to make educated guesses about what the group does with his picks once they’re given. If you’re curious about how professional sports betting works, this is a fascinating primer. —ENW

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Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.

Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we discuss the intersection of sports and money—with humor and opinion. Today we’re talking about the newest Masters competitor. But first…

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NCAA Tournament Challenge Recap: Congrats to sid and Now UCLA Me (who beat Jacob via tiebreaker) for winning Club Sportico’s men’s and women’s bracket challenges! Please reach out to us to claim your prize—and thanks to everyone who joined in the tourney fun with us this year. Here’s to even more madness in 2027.

And now on to sports’ other rite of spring…

For the first time this year, the Masters started on Amazon Prime Video … sort of.

Technically, Augusta National Golf Club’s Honorary Starters Ceremony teed off1 Thursday around 7:30 a.m. ET on Masters.com. The first competitors hit the course shortly thereafter, with only limited coverage until Prime’s show started at 1 p.m.

But the best part about golf’s most prestigious major is how reality is recreated every spring within Augusta’s bubble, so if they’re saying the tournament really starts in the afternoon, that’s fine by me.

Once Amazon’s broadcast began, it looked a whole lot like CBS and ESPN’s Masters presentations. CBS leads production, with all three using the same backbone of CBS voices, producers and equipment. Amazon’s top producer contributes to the coverage from the TV truck during the streamer’s time to shine.

Walton Goggins voiced an intro to Prime’s coverage and Jack Nicklaus added star power to a feed otherwise full of traditional CBS voices, such as Jim Nantz’s. Commercials were limited, as they always are at Augusta. Prime logos were few and far between. Amazon’s presentation felt ever-so-slightly more up-tempo at the top of its show, but viewers would be forgiven for not picking up on the distinction.

As our Anthony Crupi put it this morning, “The presentation isn’t immediately distinguishable from anything you might see on ESPN or CBS, and there’s been zero in the way of e-commerce/branding gimmickry. Because: Duh.”

That fits Amazon’s style; the company has previously offered familiarity as it jumped into the NFL, NBA and NASCAR by signing the likes of Al Michaels, Ian Eagle and Dale Earnhardt Jr. As with those other sports, Prime Video is also embracing its tech-y chops with a stats-forward altcast, Inside Amen Corner (Augusta’s 11th through 13th holes). That feed—also created in collaboration with CBS—included knee and hip-bend stat visualizations you won’t find on the traditional broadcast, but it still was fairly staid.2 The best bit I watched featured a breakdown of what exactly caddies scrawl into their pocket-sized notebooks. Inside Amen Corner will be available all weekend on Prime Video and the Masters’ apps.

On the main feed, Prime’s two hours of additional field-spanning coverage arrived as a welcome, comfortable addition.

The most surprising portion of Amazon’s coverage Thursday came just before 3 p.m. ET. As its main broadcast wrapped up, a graphic appeared for six seconds telling fans that full coverage would continue on ESPN before Prime pivoted its feed to its ongoing Inside Amen Corner option rather than a full sign-off. The experience was seamless as a viewer, but also part of what makes following the Masters a bit disorienting each year.

If you had it on in the background, you easily could miss the fact that there was now a main broadcast available on a different app. And if you followed either Amazon or ESPN online, you might not know the other had coverage too. Meanwhile, neither goes out of its way to say that basically everything is available on the Masters’ own app as well.

This is what happens when competitive broadcasters are asked to share one of sports’ most prestigious weekends. Still, given Augusta National’s emphasis on both physical and digital hospitality—and its known willingness to weigh in on the TV presentation—I’m surprised the club hasn’t gotten its network partners to make things clearer for fans.

ESPN’s telecast started with its own video essay on the beauty of the Masters and the promise of spring. Only at Augusta are we excited to see the festivities begin again and again.

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This story has been updated to clarify CBS’ production role.

Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.

1

Guest-starring Ron DeSantis for some reason?

Here are six sports business items to start the week…

A Great March Madness Photo 🏀: On Sunday Yahoo Sports published a great profile of Michigan men’s basketball coach Dusty May, whose team plays for a national title tonight in Indianapolis. It opens with an anecdote about May’s first Final Four in Indy, when he and three other Indiana student managers spent a few days in a hotel lobby trying to land jobs with coaches in town for the tournament. This is a photo of them that morning (May is in the light blue) 👇

The story covers May’s whole career trajectory, starting with his decision to stop playing college basketball and instead transfer to Indiana in the hopes of getting a very competitive student manager role with Bobby Knight’s Hoosiers1. I’ve read stories like this about dozens of coaches, and I’m always struck by how unglamourous a career this is in the beginning. Insane hours, loads of stress, little job security. It feels like investment banking but with one major difference—there’s also very little pay.

The financial rewards, of course, definitely eventually exist for the top 1% of coaches. May makes $4.6 million at Michigan, and will pocket a $400,000 bonus if the Wolverines win the title tonight.

A Great March Madness Stat 🎟️: The UCLA women’s team won its first NCAA title on Sunday with a blowout win over South Carolina. The Bruins have simmered just under the sport’s highest tier for almost a decade, a good reminder that the so-called women’s college basketball boom hasn’t hit everyone equally.

I was struck by this stat. In the 2023-24 season, when the team went 27-7 and spent time ranked No. 2 in the country, UCLA sold just $313,000 worth of women’s basketball tickets. That ranked 34^th among public FBS schools, one spot ahead of Toledo. Both Iowa and UConn, for reference, topped the list at $3.3 million.

Sign of the Times 👕: Tiger Woods’ apparel company, Sun Day Red, has been running these ads on Instagram, promoting the blue polo shirt that the golfer was wearing during his car crash and subsequent DUI arrest last week. I don’t know what’s more revealing, the fact that the company took this approach or the fact that the $125 shirt is now reportedly sold out, with vibrant sales on the secondary market.

Speaking of golf merch, I’m choosing to believe that this hat for sale at the Masters’ on-site shop is the golf establishment throwing shade at Woods.

What Made Me Laugh 🛏️: NBA social media has been obsessing recently about the city of Memphis, sparked in part by comments LeBron James made on a recent golf YouTube channel. Much of the wider hate from players, however, seems to stem from the Westin hotel that road teams use when visiting the Grizzlies. Here’s a master cut of players complaining about it.

Internet creator GFed, who gained a sizeable online following by reviewing pro and college stadiums, drove this weekend from Chicago to Memphis to stay in the now-infamous Westin. Here’s his review of the hotel.

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Sportico Story of the Week 🍶: Leo Messi’s arrival in MLS has gotten a lot of attention, and rightfully so, but there’s another great MLS business story unfolding in Los Angeles with LAFC and South Korean striker Son Heung-min. Perhaps the league’s second-biggest signing of the past half decade, Son’s arrival has opened up a wealth of commercial opportunities for the team in Korea and with the large local Korean-American population. Our colleague Justin Birnbaum wrote about this last week by focusing on my favorite Korean export, soju.

Non-Sportico Story of the Week 💰: I really enjoyed this story from The Athletic about how the richest athletes in the world make money. From team equity (Messi) and deferred payments (Ohtani) to massive bonuses (Ronaldo) and salary cap increases (Curry), it breaks down how the economies vary across leagues and sports.

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Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.

Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we discuss the intersection of sports and money—with humor and opinion. Today we’re talking about teams that will never make the Final Four.

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By most measures, the Campbell University men’s basketball team has been an unremarkable program.

Since joining Division I in 1977, Campbell has played in five different conferences and qualified for just one NCAA Tournament, losing in the first round as a No. 16 seed in 1992. The team has never been ranked and has won 20+ games just twice in the past 50 seasons.

The Fighting Camels are a perfect proxy for D-I’s lower class—a school that doesn’t have an FBS football team and spends less on men’s basketball ($2.2 million) than some Final Four players make in annual NIL money. There’s dozens of other Campbells around the country that you’ve likely never heard of.

The team caught our attention this week when first-year head coach John Andrzejek resigned via social media. In a long post on X, Andrzejek said the school had “made the decision” to deprioritize basketball.

“Despite months of intense work and collaboration with AD Hannah Bazemore and our terrific athletics administration, and several creative options that were proposed and thoroughly explored, there are no pathways that the institution will support to fund the program appropriately moving forward,” he wrote to fans.

“Simply put—the institution now has different priorities, and they are not compatible with putting the kind of team on the floor that you deserve.”

But realistically, what kind of men’s basketball team—and at what cost?—does Campbell University deserve?

Andrzejek joined Campbell last year after two seasons as an assistant at Florida, helping the Gators win a national championship. Prior to that, he’d been an assistant at Johns Hopkins, then Dartmouth, then Washington State. His move to the Fighting Camels was the logical next step in what had historically been a familiar career path for many young up-and-coming coaches: rise up the ranks as an assistant, then start back near the bottom to rise up the ranks as a head coach.

Except college basketball is fracturing in new ways. Revenue sharing, transfer freedom and NIL deals have accelerated the separation of the sport’s richer and poorer programs. That appears clear in recent March Madness tournaments, where good teams are winning at historically high rates.

It’s also clear in spending. In 2014, the 30 biggest budgets in D-I men’s basketball were on average 13.5x bigger than the 30 smallest. Ten years later, the gap was 16.6x.1 I expect it’s even wider today.

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One of the more enjoyable things about college basketball historically has been its relatively smooth sliding scale of talent and optimism. There have always been richer and poorer programs, but it was a hierarchy that felt climbable, and fans could calibrate their expectations accordingly. While some programs expected to annually compete for the national title, others could hope the stars might align in March for an upset or two. In the same way that talented coaches like Andrzejek followed that uphill climb, so too did athletes, who could play their way from a junior college onto a lower D-I roster, or from a lower D-I roster to a Power Five school.

Unlike a coach’s movement, however, player ascendency was artificially slowed. Coaches could bounce from one team to another year-in and year-out, but up until 2021, players had to sit out a year for most transfers. It slowed their upward mobility enough to keep that gradual scale.

Starting two years ago the transfer restrictions basically disappeared entirely, one of many changes forced by a prominent antitrust challenge. That change, more than anything, has been the death knell for schools like Campbell.2 Recruiting wins now last only a year. Good players are poached quickly by teams that offer way more money. Roster continuity has largely disappeared. It has many D-I programs rethinking what they’re trying to accomplish in college basketball.

And that’s a good thing! It might not be good for Andrzejek, who is giving up his head coach track to become an assistant at ACC powerhouse Louisville, or for Campbell fans who dream of March Madness glory. But it’s good for players and it’s probably good for the school.

More universities should be backing out of the financial arms race that is top-tier college basketball, and there’s evidence that they are. ESPN reported this week that St. Bonaventure would pay its new head coach about half as much as his predecessor. That’s so the team can adapt to the modern realities of college sports without additionally taxing its budget.

Others, of course, are struggling with this new reality. After Akron head coach John Groce left to take the same job at the College of Charleston, Zips AD Andrew Goodrich told the Akron Beacon Journal that the coach’s departure was due to Charleston’s willingness to share more revenue with its basketball players.

The following day, in a comment dripping with irony, Charleston athletic director Matt Roberts went on a heated rant about his program.

“If money is your main motivator, you’re not wanted at the College of Charleston,” Roberts said. “And that’s a direct message to those student athletes.”

Clearly he wasn’t talking about his new coach!

Fifteen seconds later, as if reminded by a voice in his head, Roberts added the classic college sports traditionalist’s caveat: “I love the fact that these kids get financial payments. But as an industry, what we’ve allowed—kids going to four different schools in four years—what are we doing?”

What college basketball is doing is changing, likely irreversibly. It might be time for schools like Charleston and leaders like Roberts to do the same.

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On the most recent Sporticast episode, Eben, Scott and Kurt Badenhausen discussed the 50 highest-paid athletes of all time 👇

Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.

What I Can Explain 🏀: This morning the WNBA formally announced that the Connecticut Sun would be purchased by the owner of the Houston Rockets for about $300 million and moved to Texas. We’ve known this was the league’s preference for months now, despite the outcry from Sun fans and local politicians. But it has drawn new controversy because two different investors well-known to the NBA offered more money to keep the team in the Northeast.

A group led by former Celtics owner Steve Pagliuca wanted to move the franchise to Boston; a group led by former Bucks owner Marc Lasry wanted to move it to Hartford. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D—Conn.) has already called for a DOJ investigation.

There are some pretty clear forces at play here. For one, the prior Celtics owners joined the NBA in 2002 and never participated in any WNBA expansion process (the Rockets did). Plus, the new Celtics owners want a WNBA expansion team in the future. Given all that, the league was never going to okay a Boston team for a different owner. The main arena in Hartford holds 16,000, but it’s not an NBA-style venue, and there are 2x as many people in the Greater Houston area than there are in all of Connecticut.

While I’m not surprised, it has me thinking about the other major U.S. women’s league, which is in the middle of its own relocate-or-expand drama. The NWSL is pushing to sell its next expansion team for $200 million, but the Houston Dash are on the market and would cost significantly less than that. Like the Sun, I know what will happen there—a $200+ million expansion team, and separately, a new Dash owner—but curious to see the reactions when it does.

What I Can’t Explain ⚽: Four teams from Europe will clinch World Cup bids this week in winner-take-all games, and UEFA has scheduled all four to start at the exact same time on Tuesday.

Why??? Play them over the full week, or stagger them over two days. Major U.S. sports would never make this mistake with high profile play-in games...

What Made Me Laugh 🤡: MLB has made a number of major changes in the last few years and has been widely praised for most of them. This year’s shift was the introduction of the Automated Ball-Strike System (ABS), which allows players to challenge an umpire’s call by reverting to the robots. It’s basically the tennis challenge system for baseball, and it’s also opened to largely positive reviews.

Look at the swagger on Mariners outfielder Randy Arozarena, when he was confident his third strike would be retroactively turned into a fourth ball.

And LOL at this take 👇

What I Love 🎶: A few years ago, folks who produce live basketball games decided to put microphones right under the basket to better capture the clang! of the rim and the swish! of the net. Last night’s epic UConn buzzer-beater vs. Duke featured the most perfect swish sound I’ve ever heard. Turn the volume up for this clip from the March Madness X account 👇

BTW, you’ve likely seen that clip, but have you heard the call from the Duke radio broadcast? It’s perfect 👇

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Sportico Story of the Week ⛳: I wrote this week about the economics of TGL, the indoor golf league launched two years ago by a group led by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy. After just two seasons, some teams are cash flow positive in the seven figures, and valuations have begun to top $100 million. Now the group is selling women’s franchises for $20 million. So how did TGL reach metrics that took MLS three decades? Very low overhead and a central venue, among a few other things.

Non-Sportico Story of the Week 🎓: This flew under the radar a little, but SBJ reported last week that the Big Ten is discussing a way to allow its schools to exceed the new revenue-sharing cap—currently $20.5 million—for the specific purpose of re-signing players. Think of it as a college version of the NBA’s Bird Rights.

Details are vague and this would take some convincing, but it’s yet another way that the richest conferences are starting to push their financial heft to incrementally gap off poorer schools. Many programs outside the Big Ten and SEC are already strained at the $20.5 million number.

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Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.

Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we discuss the intersection of sports and money—with humor and opinion. Today we’re talking about the Emerald City.

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The NBA is officially soliciting bids for a new franchise in Seattle. After years of casual discussion and much speculation, commissioner Adam Silver announced this week that owners had greenlit the league’s first expansion since 2004.

The Seattle Seahawks are also on the market. Shortly after winning the Super Bowl last month, the trust that owns the NFL team announced it was finally ready to sell. That was the stated wish of late owner Paul Allen, who died in 2018.

Taken separately, both the Seahawks sale and the NBA’s expansion would be massive stories in our industry. The Seahawks will be the most expensive NFL team ever sold; any new NBA franchises will be among the most expensive basketball teams ever sold. Both offer the rare opportunity for one of the world’s richest people to buy into one of its most exclusive clubs.

They also offer the unprecedented opportunity to do both! We racked our brains at Club Sportico and couldn’t think of a single instance where NFL and NBA teams were available at the same time, in the same city. A Seattle sports empire is on the table for one very rich human, who has good credit and a lot of rich friends.

There are myriad reasons this won’t actually happen. For one, it’s a lot of money. Also, buying a sports team is hard, let alone buying two, via two separate processes, at the same time. The Seahawks sale is being run by bankers at Allen & Co., while NBA expansion will be handled by bankers at PJT Partners. And while I believe that any owner the NFL might approve would also pass the NBA’s muster, expansion processes typically play out differently than estate sales.

It also would be almost entirely unprecedented. Believe it or not, in this era of Sports Empires™️, there is only one NFL owner who also owns an NBA team in the same city. (Click here for the answer -->1 ) Others are close— Stan Kroenke owns the Los Angeles Rams and the Denver Nuggets, Josh Harris owns the Washington Commanders and co-owns the Philadelphia 76ers, Jimmy Haslam owns the Cleveland Browns and a big chunk of the Milwaukee Bucks—but those portfolios all spread across multiple states and were built over multiple years.

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The biggest hurdle, of course, is the money. Sportico values the Seahawks at $6.59 billion, but the team will certainly sell for more. For our purposes today, let’s call it $9 billion. NBA expansion fees also haven’t been set, but $8 billion doesn’t seem out of the question. Owning Seattle’s NFL and NBA teams could cost $17 billion.

According to Bloomberg, there are about 150 people in the world worth $17 billion. Nearly a dozen of them already own NFL and NBA teams. Another chunk wouldn’t pass either league’s background check, and many more lack the liquidity (or interest) to pay anything close to that price. It’s a small pool.

Of course it wouldn’t require one person’s $17 billion to pull this off. Most modern sports teams are purchased by consortiums, and every league has its own rules about how exactly those groups can come together.

The NFL has a strict debt limit for new buyers of about $1.5 billion, and new control owners must purchase at least 30% of the equity in cash. After that, the group can have up to 24 minority partners, including institutional funds that take up to 10% of a team.

The NBA’s rules are a bit different. The debt limit is $475 million (there’s no special designation for new buyers), and the league also limits the number of owners at two dozen. Most notably however, the NBA allows institutional funds to own up to 30% of a team and the lead owner only has to buy 15% of the equity.

So let’s say the Seahawks sell for $9 billion and the Seattle NBA expansion team sells for $8 billion. Under those guidelines the NFL buyer could take out $1.5 billion in debt, then pay the minimum of $2.25 billion in cash. The buyer could raise $750 million from institutional funds, which leaves another $4.5 billion sprinkled across the rest of the consortium.

For the NBA buyer, the maximum $475 million in debt and $2.26 billion in institutional partners would require $1.13 billion in cash with another $4.13 billion to be spread across the humans in the group.

Now let’s combine them. To acquire this Seattle sports empire, at those prices, a buyer could take a maximum $1.975 billion in debt. After that he/she would need to put down at least $3.38 billion in cash. Add the maximum $3 billion in private equity money2, and what’s left is about $8.6 billion to be paid by humans. It wouldn’t be this clean, but for reference, that’s an average of $358 million (!) across 24 other limited partners.3

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People are already lining up to bid for the two teams, but I haven’t heard of anyone actively looking at both. The front-runner for the NBA franchise appears to be the owners of the Seattle Kraken. In addition to the NHL team, they just secured majority ownership of Climate Pledge Arena, and earlier this week announced the creation of a new umbrella company called One Roof Sports and Entertainment, which—how convenient!—will “oversee a growing portfolio of properties and fuel new opportunities.”4

On the Seahawks, I think things are wide open. Jeff Bezos ($232 billion net worth) and Steve Ballmer ($131 billion) both loom large over the process, since they have ties to Seattle and the financial heft to buy the team without batting an eye. I’ve heard contradicting things on both, but my hunch is that Ballmer is more likely than Bezos.

Ballmer already owns an NBA team in Los Angeles. Bezos does not. Does he want to own sports in Seattle? If so, the Emerald City Empire is on the table.

On the most recent Sporticast episode, Eben and Scott discussed the new WNBA labor deal 👇

Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.

What We Love ❤️: The postgame coach interview is saved. Normally one of the most bland, predictable elements of a broadcast, the chats have become stages for some fantastic player bits, including VCU’s superlative towel-stacking effort, and what appeared to be Utah State’s W-eating homage to Jameis Winston. Basketball players can’t dump Gatorade (for obvious reasons), and I’m glad to see them getting creative instead.

What We Hate 😡: If your school’s social media account has been relatively quiet amid their March Madness run, there’s a reason. The NCAA still prohibits institutions from posting their own highlights on TikTok and X. They can post up to one minute of footage per game on IG and Facebook, but only after the final whistle.

What We Think is Related ⚖️: Late Friday night, the NCAA announced it was suing DraftKings for infringing on its marketing and licensing rights. It accuses the sportsbook of illegally using trademarked terms like “March Madness,” “Elite Eight” and “Final Four.”

The NCAA has been fighting to resist (and in some cases, reverse) the seemingly-inevitable spread of sports betting, but it seems like too much of a coincidence that in the same week the governing body sued DraftKings for use of trademarks, the Virginia men’s basketball team was posting stick figure drawings in lieu of game footage.

What We’re (Not) Wearing 👟: Under Armour has dramatically scaled back its sports marketing spend in the last half decade, including the termination of many of its college sports partnerships.1 Until this year, however, that change had not been reflected in the company’s March Madness presence, where the success of a few teams covered the fissures in the overall portfolio.

The company’s college pull-back is finally starting to show. Only nine of the 68 teams in the men’s basketball tournament wear Under Armour, the lowest total in more than a decade. Of the 16 teams remaining, all but two are Nike/Jordan and none are Under Armour.

What Caught Our Eye 👀: A couple data points worth tracking: In NCAA tourney history, only twice has the Sweet 16 been made up entirely of major conference teams2. It happened in 2025 and again this year.3 This is also the fourth straight tournament that didn’t have multiple double-digit seeds in the Sweet 16. That’s never happened before.

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What I’m Feeling 🪦: There’s been so much written already about how the changing business of college sports—NIL, revenue-sharing, transfer portal, etc.—may permanently kill the upsets and Cinderella runs that many fans love.

I’m4 honestly pretty tired of that discourse, but I’ve always been confused about how the deeply-flawed bracket challenge became the default version of March Madness office pools, and I do wonder if that process will look even sillier in a future where there are far fewer upsets. You either pick chalk and do well (but despise yourself) or you pick fun and lose. There’s really no winning.

Am I alone here, or are bracket challenges less fun now?

A Club Sportico Contest Update 🏆: Speaking of brackets! A trio of Sportico insiders are currently atop the list: Kurt, Eben 🐗, and Lev. Those of us who predicted more madness are struggling.

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Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.

Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we break down the intersection of sports and money—with an extra bit of humor and opinion. Today, we’re frantically filling out brackets 🏀

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If you’re reading this before 12:15 p.m. ET, there’s still time to join Club Sportico’s bracket challenges on ESPN! Top performing paid Club Sportico members for each will win a small prize.

⛹️‍♂️ Men’s Bracket Challenge: Click here.
⛹️‍♀️ Women’s Bracket Challenge: Click here.

Instead of having an all-chalk entry, we’ll have an entry called “More Money Wins” that picks whichever school spends more on basketball. If you beat that entry, consider yourself a Moneyball aficionado.

Here’s Eben on why you should consider advancing an 11-seed deep in your bracket (if you trust him)…

Plus some more data from Lev to help inform your surely-perfect picks.

Good luck! May this be your year!

Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.

Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we break down the intersection of sports and money—with an extra bit of humor and opinion. Today, we’re winning or going home 🏀

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In an era of unending, incomprehensible college sports instability, there’s one thing you can count on1: Madness.

We’ll be doing bracket challenges for the men’s and women’s tournaments at the links below. Top performing paid Club Sportico members for each will win a small prize.

Instead of having an all-chalk entry, we’ll have an entry called “Richer Team Wins” that picks whichever school spends more on basketball. If that system beats all the other entries—and it might, if Kentucky, Ohio State and Louisville2 make deep runs—Eben will give the prize to his favorite college coach, Dan Hurley.

⛹️‍♂️ Men’s Bracket Challenge: Click here.
⛹️‍♀️ Women’s Bracket Challenge: Click here.

Good luck and bring on the bracket busters!

Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.

Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we break down the intersection of sports and money—with extra humor and opinion. Today we’re talking about turtles 🐢

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Maryland has been one of the more successful men’s basketball programs this century. The Terps have a national title, two Final Four appearances and 15 NCAA Tournament berths since 2000. Last year they…

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“Deadline” of the Week 🏀: The WNBA has told its players that if there isn’t a new labor agreement by tomorrow, March 10, the upcoming season will be impacted. And though we at Club Sportico consider this to be yet another false deadline—one of many over the past six mo…

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