What's going on with ESPN's digital strategy?

Plus a likeable Notre Dame coach (how??), the NBA's hottest new song, and an NHL player adjacent to greatness.

Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we break down the intersection of sports and money—with an extra bit of humor and opinion. On Saturdays we hit the biggest stories of the week, and the news that left us scratching our heads….

The Sportico Story of the Week 🏀🎤: I MIGHT SWERVE, BEND THAT CORNER WOOOOAAAHH

Have you listened to “Tweaker” yet? The Ball Family hysteria has largely died down—all three brothers went pro, two are in the NBA—but it got new life this week. The song, written by Lonzo and LiAngelo (and performed by LiAngelo), has become a sensation across sports. NBA and NFL teams are playing it in their locker rooms and PA systems, streamers are looping it, and hip-hop veterans are jockeying to be on the remix. Even America’s most famous building is quoting the lyrics.

Our colleague Eric Jackson recently broke down the viral sensation, which has blown past 16 million streams on YouTube and Spotify and could bring millions more to the family. I wonder if father LaVar Ball predicted this one too…

The Non-Sportico Story of the Week 🥅: There’s only one NHL player that was a teammate of both Wayne Gretzky and Alex Ovechkin. (It’s a player that avid hockey fans might know, but casuals wouldn’t). As Ovi nears Wayne’s all-time goals record, ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski sat down with that player. He’s mostly reverent to both stars, but you definitely get a sense of how different they are.

"Wayne revamped the game in his way,” the player tells Wyshynski, “and then Ovi revamped it again with his way—a little more flash, a little more flare. We all copied Wayne and then kids today copied Ovi."

What Made me Laugh 🤡: It was quite a week in online gambling. First a new DraftKings membership product got roundly panned in my mentions, then FanDuel announced it took a ~$370 million hit because NFL favorites kept winning. And then—and I had to check 5x that this was real—Polymarket allowed people to wager on how far the LA wildfires might spread.

None of this is funny, of course. But at a time when so much gambling content is either cringe or post-Apocalyptic, this Tweet 👇, with its own dark humor, did make me laugh.