What's going on with MLB and ESPN?

Plus: The Yankees finally found reason, a hockey hot take, and an MLS owner unlike any other.

Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we break down the intersection of sports and money—with an extra bit of humor and opinion. Here’s a six-pack of items to start the weekend.

The Sportico Story of the Week ⚽️: The newest MLS club, San Diego FC, debuts this weekend. On Friday I wrote a profile of the club’s majority owner, Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Mansour. He comes to MLS with a very unique series of soccer assets: a global network of youth academies and smaller pro teams that will all roll up to the new MLS team. It’s a system unlike any other MLS club.

The story also doubles as a primer for MLS’s leaguewide academy efforts, an underdiscussed (and maybe underemphasized) revenue opportunity for teams. In 2022, for example, FC Dallas sold Ricardo Pepi to a German club for $20 million plus future considerations. The club’s revenue that year, outside player sales, was $51 million total.

The Non-Sportico Story of the Week 🎽:

Nike this week did something it has never done before: it partnered with another company on a new global clothing brand. That second company is Skims, the uber-popular shapewear brand backed by Kim Kardashian. There are so many good business angles here—Nike’s issues with its women’s business, the sheer scale of the Skims brand, Kim’s royalty cut, a possible future acquisition—and they’re all covered in this Lauren Sherman piece for Puck.

What Made Me Laugh 🤡: A whole bunch of Americans were introduced to (or re-introduced to) hockey this past week. Two of them—NBA lovers Lev and Matt—are part of the Club Sportico crew. I suspected some hot takes, but I wasn’t expecting this on the internal slack channel Thursday afternoon 👇