Field Notes: 4 People Moves, 3 Announcements, 2 Things Worth Your Time, and 1 Stat That Matters in the Sports Economy.

Curated and delivered every other Thursday.

4 People Moves

• Sean Eggert: Ten-plus years removed from its peak stock price, Under Armour is deep in a slide it hasn't figured out how to stop. It’s in the middle of restructuring and last fall it lost its front man, Steph Curry (to Li-Ning of all places). On the contrary, the NHL is as hot as it’s ever been, with sponsorship dollars up 26% over a two-year period to $1.7 billion.

• Brian Flinn: Padel and flag football are two of the fastest-growing sports in the United States. The US had fewer than 30 Padel courts in 2020, and is projected to have 20,000 by 2030. Flag is moving toward NCAA championship status and will make its Olympic debut at LA 2028.

• Mallory Dash: Despite serving rabid consumers who religiously spend their hard-earned money on them, pro sports have pathetic loyalty and rewards programs for fans. There is massive potential for hyper-personalized lifecycle marketing, but leagues and teams need to get their act together on the data front to get it right.

• Benjamin Katz: On Location was once a joint venture between the NFL, Redbird Capital, and Bruin Capital. It has since been traded twice, first to Endeavor in 2020 and to TKO in 2025. With SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic minting more millionaires and billionaires than any other time in history, I don’t expect On Location to have a demand problem any time soon. But don’t just take it from me, take it from Ari.

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3 Announcements

• Bob Iger, Josh Kushner explore bid for Las Vegas NBA franchise | New York Post

  • Even with speculation that Magic Johnson and Bill Foley may be in the running for majority bids, this duo still feels like a matchup nightmare for anyone. The NBA Board of Governors has approved the “exploration of potential team expansion” in Vegas and Seattle, and Adam Silver has said that the league hopes to determine by the end of the year whether to add one franchise, two franchises or none at all.

• PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp Unveils Sweeping Changes to Professional Golf | CNBC

  • The PGA Tour approved a 2028 overhaul splitting play into a premier Championship Series and a Challenger Series, connected by a soccer-style promotion-and-relegation system. Importing that logic is a smart structural move for the Tour, and the Challenger Series is the piece that makes it work. It provides a real pathway with stakes, where every relegation fight at the top creates a promotion story at the bottom.

• Novak Djokovic Joins General Atlantic as Global Strategic Advisor | General Atlantic

  • No, Djoker won’t be joining the investment committee, and frankly neither side needs the other when it comes to access. That said, this is the Owner’s Era thesis continuing apace. Tennis stars in particular (see: Federer, Serena, Sharapova, Nadal) have been strong proof of the shift from traditional endorser to cap table member, and the younger players are taking notice. These equity relationships will quickly become table stakes.

2 Things Worth Your Time

• [WATCH]: Why the Pickleball Boom is Already Over | Michael Girdley

  • Girdley connects a handful of dots that may suggest Pickleball is at a market top. Boomers are aging out with too few Gen X behind them, Padel’s emergence is very real, and the newly disclosed franchise data is ugly (The Pickler’s operators are down roughly $14 million in aggregate). On the equipment side, it’s a race to the bottom: he says about 20 factories in China make most of the paddles, slapping different logos on the same commodity product for the thousand-plus brands on the market. Personally, I read it as a directional trade: Pickleball, an American invention, is growing as an export abroad, while Padel is the import quietly taking share here at home.

• Understanding how the Prediction Game Plays Out | SBJ

  • This is the clearest breakdown I’ve seen of how prediction markets went from a commodities-derivative footnote to Kalshi alone doing $40 billion in sports volume this year. The piece maps incentives for all the key players in the equation: prediction market operators, traditional sportsbooks, leagues, teams, market makers, and data providers.

1 Stat That Matters

• $510,000 – what a single Wimbledon Centre Court debenture went for at the top of the market this April (Yahoo!)

  • The five-year seat license is now more than triple its April 2024 issue price, driven by 18 straight months of global buying and the allure of Sinner and Alcaraz.

Pull of the Week

• In 1994, $25.00 would get you in the door to most World Cup games (The Athletic)

  • Thirty-two years later, Argentina was back in Dallas and I was lucky enough to attend the game last Saturday. One Michelob Ultra was $17.50.

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ICYMI: This week’s episode with Ethan Rosenbaum, Co-Managing Partner at Source Golf ⬇️

I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Thursday.

Share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within this ecosystem — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com.

– Brent

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Field Notes: 4 People Moves, 3 Announcements, 2 Things Worth Your Time, and 1 Stat That Matters in the Sports Economy.

Curated and delivered every other Thursday.

4 People Moves

• John Dooley: After nearly a decade at IMG and a year and a half as general counsel of Diamond Baseball Holdings, the Silver Lake minor-league rollup, Dooley takes the top legal seat at Playfly Sports, the multimedia-rights platform consolidating commercial control of college and local sports, even as schools increasingly pull those rights in-house to keep all of their sponsorship, licensing, and NIL revenue in the revenue-sharing era.

• Brett Weitz: Fourteen years across Turner and WarnerMedia, where he ran TNT, TBS, and truTV as general manager, then global head of content, talent, and brand sales at X. Weitz now takes the CEO seat at BZZR, the first verified all-sports social platform, which launched in April.

• Jake Dexter: Range Media Partners, full of ex-CAA talent, made a massive splash when it launched in 2020 and has since successfully pushed through a contentious lawsuit. Dexter joins Range Sports as VP of sports content, from Paradigm.

• Stefanie Markman: Led by Jesse Sisgold, Paramount stood up its Sports Entertainment division last fall. Markman joins from Hello Sunshine, where she was general counsel. Before that she spent nearly eight years at Netflix on the scripted side, in the building as the company proved out sports content with Last Chance U in 2016 and Drive to Survive in 2019.

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3 Announcements

• L Catterton in exclusive talks to acquire stake in HYROX | SGI Europe

  • Scott Dahnke must have read last week’s essay. His $40-billion, LVMH-backed firm has a knack for timing wellness trends. It put $75 million into Peloton’s Series D in 2015, then watched membership grow 28-fold and revenue 30x before an $8.1 billion IPO four years later. After buying supplement maker Thorne for $680 million two years ago, it’s now exploring a sale for up to $4 billion.

• CAA, TPG Form $250 Million Holding Company to Acquire Businesses Led by YouTubers and Other Creators | Variety

  • A $250 million vehicle aimed at creator-led businesses reads as firmly on-trend and particularly timely given the box office success of YouTube-bred features like Obsession and Backrooms. The risk is that CAA and TPG are early rather than wrong, because outside a handful of whales like Dude Perfect, the number of creator operations that are genuinely acquirable companies is still thin, for now.

• Department of State Announces Sports Diplomacy Partnership with UFC | U.S. Department of State

  • Flying knee diplomacy? I suppose arm bars are better than arms deals. I actually love the idea of sports-as-soft-power infrastructure, particularly as the US is in the midst of the “Decade of Sport” with the 2026 World Cup, the 2028 LA Olympics, and the 2034 Salt Lake City Winter Games stacked on the calendar.

2 Things Worth Your Time

• My night inside President Trump’s UFC spectacle at the White House | WSJ

  • They actually pulled it off. Jason Gay’s dispatch reads like a skeptic who came to bury the thing and ended up half-charmed by it, somewhere between The Claw and Tyson Fury’s “Sex on Fire” walkout. Yes, the timeline we live in can be absurd. Some nights it’s also a blast.

• The Cost of FIFA’s World Cup Greed | Business of Sport

  • FIFA set an $11 billion target, but the hosts argue the last $2 billion is being extracted straight from fans. Dynamic pricing, blindfolded ballots, and alleged fake scarcity have now drawn AG subpoenas and a real risk of empty stadiums.

1 Stat That Matters

• 812 million – The number of people across Asia who have played Pickleball at least once. 282 million play at least once a month. (UPA Asia)

  • These are mind-blowing numbers. When I think of Pickleball, I immediately think of Boomers in American suburbia, but the global growth is undeniable. My wife and I went to Zambia last year and spent an afternoon dinking with kids in Lusaka.

Pull of the Week

• “Excuse me, I can’t speak English but I am EXCITED!” – Japanese soccer fan in Dallas, Texas

  • Foreigners experiencing America for the first time and documenting it on social media has been one of the highlights of my past few weeks. If you haven’t been following the travels of Freddy, you are missing out big time. This German dude has spent the last ten days discovering the wonders of SEC stadiums, Bass Pro Shops, and late night Waffle House. He may never go back, and given his newfound love for the USA I’d personally love for him to stay.

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ICYMI: This week’s episode with Barrick Prince, Co-Founder of Creator Sports Network

I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Thursday.

Share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within this ecosystem — please reach out!

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– Brent

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Field Notes: 4 People Moves, 3 Announcements, 2 Things Worth Your Time, and 1 Stat That Matters in the Sports Economy.

Curated and delivered every other Thursday.

I had a last-minute opportunity to spend 24 hours in Miami speaking to some very impressive youngsters about the Sports Economy, so yesterday was a travel day. We’ve got a Friday Field Notes this week — please excuse the tardiness.

After work and weddings have taken me to Phoenix, Austin, Palm Springs, Little Rock, NYC, Chicago, New Orleans, and Miami in consecutive weeks, your boy is ready for a travel break (spoiler: he will not get one). It’s amazing how stretches like these can be exhausting and energizing at the same time.

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4 People Moves

• Fiona Morgan: Growing pains? Over the past 12 months, SailGP had one employee departure for every arrival across the Director, VP, and C-Suite ranks, with those who left averaging just 2.3 years on the job.

• Andrew Cohen: After the Live Nation and Ticketmaster antitrust verdict, the case for alternatives in live event ticketing is getting louder. Fever has spent the past year positioning itself as the independent alternative, backed by L Catterton and Point72, fresh off acquiring DICE, and already ticketing for clubs like Real Madrid and Barcelona.

• Tim Stemp: Stemp's resume is the tell here. As Chief Commercial Officer at Lagardère Sports, he ran the commercial side of the ITU World Triathlon Series, a format that, like HYROX, put amateurs and elites on the same course on the same day. The founders are openly chasing Olympic-grade legitimacy, and the elite tier is the piece that needs real broadcast and sponsor value. By his own description, Stemp is there to build its commercial framework as the sport scales.

• Jon Werbeck: Werbeck lands at Cosm after running venue partnerships at Live Nation and a recent stretch on his own as a consultant. His brief is to lead corporate sponsorship strategy across Cosm's venues, the immersive "shared reality" domes the company is scaling from LA and Dallas into Atlanta. Bringing in a sponsorship operator with that venue pedigree is a clear read on where Cosm sees its next layer of commercial growth.

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3 Announcements

• Bipartisan college sports bill proposes salary cap, transfer limit | ESPN

  • The Protect College Sports Act is the most serious federal attempt yet to bring order to the post-2021 landscape, giving the NCAA and the new College Sports Commission antitrust cover to enforce the cap, close NIL workarounds, and reset eligibility and transfer rules. It also collides with the hardest open questions in the sport, from the Big Ten and SEC revenue gap to whether athletes eventually become employees.

• YouTubers Break Box Office Records | The Publish Press

  • Look at Obsession: a $750K budget turned into $148M worldwide because Curry Barker brought his own audience, so the film carried almost no demand risk and almost no marketing spend. This is the CAC Hack in its purest form, where the audience is the acquisition channel and creators already own it.

• Eli Manning’s private equity firm acquires licensing company for NFL Flag in bet on youth sports | CNBC

  • This consortium is the real asset. The Let Kids Play Act runs on a familiar villain, the faceless PE firm extracting fees from families, and a roster of Emmitt Smith, Larry Fitzgerald, and Jameis Winston is the cleanest counter-image money can buy. The prize underneath is flag football, where RCX already runs the largest youth league on the planet right as the sport marches toward varsity sanctioning and a spot in LA28. On that note, flag football is a fantastic development for girls’ high school athletics, with more than 20 states now recognizing it as an official varsity sport and plenty of room left to grow.

    

2 Things Worth Your Time

• At the Center 008 – Part II: the broken economics of the NCAA | Matthew Jester

  • Matthew Jester is putting together a beast of a four-part breakdown on the past, present, and future of the NCAA. Knowledge → synthesis → pattern recognition. That’s Matt’s superpower. Even if you think you have a strong grasp on this system, you'll learn something here.

• Exploring Northwestern University’s ELITE Future Football Stadium | Barstool Chicago

  • Northwestern is redefining college football by trading massive capacity for an intimate, premium experience. They have 35,000 seats, less than half of the Big Ten average (71,000+), where every fan gets a canopy-covered seat with elite sightlines and feels closer to the field than at any other venue in the conference. They're prioritizing quality over quantity, building a year-round community hub through vertical stacking, living-room boxes, and roughly twice the square footage per fan. Brian Kopp, a partner at Ryan Sports Ventures, talked about the project on the pod in December. The Ryan family's $480 million gift to Northwestern is one of the largest in the history of U.S. higher education.

1 Stat That Matters

• > $103,000 – Current price for a courtside ticket for Game 3 of the Finals at Madison Square Garden Monday (People)

  • A similar seat in San Antonio’s Frost Center goes for roughly $55,000 less. The gap is the story: this is the Garden's first Finals game since 1999, a rematch of the very Spurs team the Knicks lost to that year, and you cannot stream the room. That scarcity is the Presence Premium priced in real time.

Pull of the Week

• Art Modell buys the Cleveland Browns for an unprecedented ~$4 million in 1961.

  • Two weeks ago, Arctos took a 3% stake in the team at a $9 billion valuation.

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ICYMI: This week’s episode with REAL SLX Co-Founder Gary Spitalnik ⬇️

I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Thursday.

Share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within this ecosystem — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com.

– Brent

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Field Notes: 4 People Moves, 3 Announcements, 2 Things Worth Your Time, and 1 Stat That Matters in the Sports Economy.

Curated and delivered every other Thursday.

4 People Moves

• Farid Masmoudi: RedBird is deepening its Middle East institutional footprint, and hiring a longtime Ardian MENA operator suggests the region is becoming more deliberate in how the platform is built.

• Elizabeth Lee Cohen: MLS elevates a core strategist into the CSO seat at a moment when league planning, data, and commercial positioning matter more than ever.

• Jamie Gersch: Fanatics Commerce hiring its first true marketing leader signals a shift from licensed commerce to a more fully built consumer brand organization.

• Brenden Coleman: Emerging leagues like the PLL get one real structural advantage: they can build modern infrastructure from scratch instead of unwinding legacy tech debt.

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3 Announcements

• Ari Emanuel, Mark Shapiro among new Raiders investors as Egon Durban expands his minority stake | SBJ

  • I’ve written about MARI on multiple occasions before. Its namesake leaders, Mark + Ari, now join Michael Dell and Blackstone’s Joe Baratta as new Raiders LPs. Existing owners Egon Durban (Silver Lake) and Michael Meldman (Discovery Land) doubled down. A cap table full of world-beaters across categories (and of course, TB12 is in the mix).

• Shamrock Capital Launches Fourth Content Strategy Fund Since 2015 With $813 Million in Commitments | Variety

  • The firm that bought (and sold back) Taylor Swift’s masters just closed another $813M for content library acquisitions. While this fund is catalog-focused, Shamrock’s PE arm has had big sports hits (Learfield, Excel). Things could get interesting if this catalog playbook creeps into the sports IP market.

• NFL removes teams’ ability to protect home games from international export | Pro Football Talk

  • Owners voted this week to strip teams of their right to block home games from international export. The international appetite is real — UTN listeners know that tickets for German NFL games sell out in minutes. But there’s still a case for the league to build up, not out — pricing power comes from scarcity, not ubiquity, and every game shipped overseas trades one for the other.

2 Things Worth Your Time

• Dana White: The Operator Behind the UFC | David Senra

  • If you don’t know David Senra, consider this my gift to you and get to know him. He’s spent a decade-plus studying history’s greatest entrepreneurs (he’s 400+ biographies deep) and his ability to connect dots across them on his podcast, Founders, is unmatched. I’ve been a fan for years. This Dana White conversation is my favorite episode of his new interview series so far, and required listening if you want to understand the grind required to get UFC where it is today. You’ll be entertained, learn a ton, and at times, feel ready to run through a brick wall.

• PSA explains $200 million investment, 1,000 new jobs as card grading demand surges | The Athletic

  • There’s something poetic about a 35-year-old human-led authentication business booming in the AI era. PSA’s parent, Collectors, is pouring $200M into expansion after grading 19M cards in 2025 (up from 2M in 2020). The more synthetic the digital world gets, the more valuable a real, scarce, verified physical object becomes.

    • See: Visceral Capital (Apr 2026)

    • See: The Presence Premium (Feb 2026)

    • See: In Real Life (Dec 2025)

1 Stat That Matters

• 0.03% – The portion of artists on Spotify that generate 50% of all streams on the platform (The Write Path)

  • Remember the Shamrock thesis? When 3,300 out of ~11,000,000 suppliers drive half the demand, owning the rights to even a few of those names is one of the most durable and asymmetric bets in media.

Pull of the Week

• Jim Everett Attacks Jim Rome Live on ESPN2

  • Men used to go to war get in brawls on ESPN2 in this country. The good ole days. Why do people love live streams? Because anything can happen.

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ICYMI: This week’s episode with Carter Westfall, CEO of Natural Selection Tour, Co-Hosted by Matthew Jester, Investor at CNC Partners ⬇️

I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Thursday.

Share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within this ecosystem — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com.

– Brent

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Field Notes: 4 People Moves, 3 Announcements, 2 Things Worth Your Time, and 1 Stat That Matters in the Sports Economy.

Curated and delivered every other Thursday.

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4 People Moves

• Allen Chen: This is why we follow the talent. If I'm a VC bullish on collectibles, I'm sending this Fanatics-exec-turned-stealth-founder a DM today.

• Betty Chu: A lot of coverage lately on companies hiring "storytellers." This one makes sense for Monumental — when you own teams, media networks, and venues, you need a communicator who can thread the needle on how it all fits together.

• Kyle Schlogl: Emerging leagues like the PLL need a serious YouTube strategy — not just because it’s the king, but because it’s where you build the off-field content that makes a league stick. I’ve written before about how a Full Swing-style docuseries following stars from Yale, Princeton, Notre Dame and UVA would be must-watch content. This hire says the PLL is going after it.

• Alison Flynn: Over the past year, The IRONMAN Group has attracted talent from serious organizations like Fanatics, USTA, and the Mets. Companies in this endurance category have a real opportunity in front of them thanks to the Ozempification of society. I agree with Packy McCormick on this one — he nailed it in his recent piece, “Scarce Assets”:

  • “As more things that were traditionally scarce become abundant, we’re going to keep seeing this playing out across… everything.

    Thanks to GLP-1s, skinny isn’t what it used to be. So what will be scarce when you can take a shot or a pill to look fit? As popular as marathons and fitness competitions have become, I bet they become even more popular. You can’t fake a sub-2 hour marathon.”

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Tracking the starting lineups and MVPs at every company worth watching in sports, media and entertainment.

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3 Announcements

• William Blair Announces Acquisition of Inner Circle Sports | William Blair

  • William Blair, a firm that turned 90 last year, wants in on the sports frenzy — and buying beats building. ICS has been advising on the biggest control transactions in team sports since 2002; you don’t replicate that deal sheet by hiring laterals.

• Grant Horvat Joins Rickie Fowler & Other Elite Names as He Signs With $2 Billion Giant | Yahoo! Sports

  • Fresh off its rebrand and in the middle of its reported $3B+ auction, The Team (FKA Wasserman) is leaning into YouTube golf. Good Good wasn’t even started until the end of 2020, and now Horvat is on the same roster as Rickie Fowler, Tony Finau, and Viktor Hovland.

• Ogilvy Sports & Entertainment Expands Offering with Article 41 Investment, Names Vickie Segar Global Chief Sports & Entertainment Officer | Ogilvy

  • Same playbook as William Blair this week: legacy giant seeking increased sports economy capabilities…buy-don’t-build. Ogilvy gets NIL infrastructure overnight; Article 41 gets WPP’s global brand roster. When the world’s most iconic and creative agency network is staffing up around student-athletes, we know the category has graduated.

2 Things Worth Your Time

• McLaren Golf: Why is an F1 team making £360 golf clubs and is it a risk for Justin Rose? | The Athletic

  • McLaren only sells 3,000-5,000 units per year. Scarcity drives the appeal. Selling £360 golf clubs through fitting centers is the opposite business model and potentially dilutive. World-class IP gets them instant credibility in a new category, but Ferrari isn’t doing this for a reason. The category is also brutal: Nike had Tiger and quit clubs by 2016. Bridgestone successfully extended into golf, but they make tires, not supercars.

    • Bonus: I can think of someone who’d be all over these…

• Oura lands the US Open and pushes tennis into a new era of wearables | Hard Court

  • Whoop sparked the wearables debate in tennis this year, yet Oura secured this Grand Slam partnership. In a category where rights holders are still nervous about how in-match biometric data gets used, shared, and monetized, the brand selling sleep and recovery is a cleaner “yes” than the brand selling performance. That framing just unlocked one of the biggest accounts in the sport.

1 Stat That Matters

• 0.1% – The percentage of the accounts on Polymarket that have earned 67% of the profits. (Charlie Bilello)

  • VCs talk about how the 80/20 power law has shifted to 90/10 or even 95/5 in recent years. But 0.1/67? You just know some math kids are absolutely printing on these apps from their dorms at Caltech or MIT.

Pull of the Week

• LeBron goes to WWE Raw one week into his NBA career

  • Most 2003 video ever. It is insane that this guy is still playing — his son/teammate Bronny is now three years older than LeBron was here.

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ICYMI: This week’s episode with Dylan Robbins, Founder & CEO of Lucra ⬇️

I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Thursday.

Share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within this ecosystem — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com.

– Brent

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Field Notes: 4 People Moves, 3 Announcements, 2 Things Worth Your Time, and 1 Stat That Matters in the Sports Economy.

Curated and delivered every other Thursday.

4 People Moves

• Brian Kelly: This is the kind of hire you make when the NWSL is moving from proof‑of‑concept to nine‑figure franchise valuations and the next rights cycle is on the horizon. Big‑event, activation‑first sponsorship infrastructure is exactly what the league needs now.

• Aimee Almeleh Smith: RedBird is deploying capital across sports, media, and entertainment faster than most firms can track. Bringing in a product‑minded IR lead signals they’re serious about how the story is told, not just the checks that are cut.

• Britton Hardin: Notably, this is the second Field Notes to feature a departure from OTX. The infrastructure to monetize boxing is being built in real time—streaming‑first platforms, spectacle‑driven storytelling, and real commercial muscle. Boxing feels like it’s on the verge of a breakout.

• Avery Jessup: BSN Sports is already at scale. The bet is that no one has yet run it like a platform business, and Jessup’s background provides him the playbook to change that.

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Tracking the starting lineups and MVPs at every company worth watching in sports, media and entertainment.

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3 Announcements

• L Catterton and Patricof Co Announce Formation of CHAMP | PR Newswire

  • This is an infrastructure bet behind the shift from athlete-as-earner to athlete-as-owner: giving elite players real equity stakes in brands, not just “ambassador” roles, turns influence into a true skin‑in‑the‑game engine where the athlete’s upside is tied to the brand’s success, not just its marketing cycle. The McCourty twins told me about why they got involved with Patricof for this very reason…their episode will drop in the coming weeks.

• Cal Athletics to Lay Off Two Dozen Staffers in ‘Complete Redefinition’ of Department Operations | Athletic Business

  • College athletics is a business now, and RIFs happen in the business world. The days of campus administrative bloat are no longer in play inside the athletic facilities, where every role has to justify its own revenue contribution. I expect we’ll see more of this.

• Columbus Crew owners get 18th NWSL franchise for record fee | ESPN

  • Columbus just paid $205 million for an NWSL expansion franchise. Atlanta paid $165 million at the end of last year, which was a record at the time; in 2021, you could get in for $2-5 million. Data like this is exactly why people like Terrence Murphy are so bullish on emerging leagues and teams. The Haslam Sports Group clearly agrees.

BONUS: Front Office Sports Announces “Front Office Sports Tonight” | FOS

• Earthquakes & aftershocks. Media is in a period of punctuated equilibrium and TBPN was a major proof of concept. The fundamental edge in this new era isn’t classic reporting or journalism — it’s insiders who are actually in the arena. That five-month runway to launch is a soldier move. Interested to watch this unfold.

2 Things Worth Your Time

• Who Wants to Own a Piece of Wasserman? | The Hollywood Reporter

  • This auction is about what the market is willing to pay to bolt a full‑stack, sports‑first representation platform into a Hollywood or private‑equity engine. WME and CAA sitting it out is a bet that they’d rather own the flow than integrate the infrastructure, while UTA and Patrick Whitesell’s WIN are signaling they want to play ball. This isn’t a scandal‑driven fire sale, it’s a price-discovery moment for what a fully scaled, cross-border representation platform is actually worth.

• Sportradar Stock Falls on Research Alleging Rogue Customers | WSJ

  • Callisto Research and Muddy Waters dropped a coordinated short report on Sportradar, sending the stock down 20%. The allegation: roughly a third of revenue tied to unlicensed gambling operators. CEO Carsten Koerl fired back hard, calling it defamatory and manufactured. Muddy Waters deployed field‑style investigators to an industry conference…this wasn’t just a desk‑research short report. Sportradar sells picks and shovels to the modern sports‑betting economy, which means its compliance and reputational surface area is enormous and hard to fully police. Innocent until proven guilty, but this one is worth watching closely.

    

1 Stat That Matters

• 1/2 – The portion of 16-year-old American boys who have gambled in the past year. For 11‑year‑old boys, 1/3. (Harper’s)

  • This is not going to be pretty. And yet, people will still act confused when we see extremely poor outcomes for a generation raised as degens.

Pull of the Week

• Tom Brady gets drafted #199th overall

  • This feels right in honor of the NFL Draft starting today. 26 years ago, the GOAT was the Patriots’ 6th round selection — check out the moment Mike Tirico and Mel Kiper covered it.

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ICYMI: This week’s episode with Terrence Murphy, Founder & Managing Partner of Synergy Sports Capital ⬇️

I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Thursday.

Share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within this ecosystem — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com.

– Brent

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Field Notes: 4 People Moves, 3 Announcements, 2 Things Worth Your Time, and 1 Stat That Matters in the Sports Economy.

Curated and delivered every other Thursday.

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4 People Moves

• Daniel Lewis: After a five-plus year run at Arctos — joining in the early days and riding it all the way to a $1.4B KKR acquisition — looks like Lewis is betting on the founding team magic once more, this time at Layer Global.

• Emily Sisson: A boomerang with a promotion. Sisson left Octagon as SVP, spent 18 months at OneTeam building fluency in the fastest-growing sponsorship category in the market, and came back as EVP.

• Spencer Wolf: Wolf moves from Playfly Creates to VP of Sales Operations at Excel Sports Management, bringing senior commercial experience from one of the more active platforms in sports.

• Kristin Lamb: The second Oura leader we’ve tracked landing at Eight Sleep (four weeks ago we noted another making the same move), with Lamb arriving right as the company pushes toward FDA approval for sleep apnea detection. The timing says everything about what they’re building.

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Tracking the starting lineups and MVPs at every company worth watching in sports, media and entertainment.

People Moves is powered by Live Data Technologies. Learn more >

3 Announcements

• Former Blackstone Colleagues Isaac Harrouche and Mike Berlin Partner with David Blitzer and Announce Final Close of $400 Million Debut Fund | BusinessWire

  • Harrouche and Berlin left Blackstone, launched 154 Partners in January 2025, and hit their hard cap fifteen months later without a placement agent — that’s a clean debut. The sports and live events thread is the one to watch; Blitzer’s quote about finding businesses at the smaller end of the market where relationships create deal flow is the actual thesis.

• Source Media Group Launches Source Golf, a Creator-Driven YouTube Network Targeting Next-Gen Fans | SVG

  • The insight isn’t the creator names, it’s the packaging. Individual golf creators have built massive audiences on YouTube, but advertisers have had to buy them one by one. Source Golf builds a network layer on top of fragmented inventory, making it a single buy for brands the way linear TV used to be.

• Justice Department Opens Investigation Into NFL | WSJ

  • The Sports Broadcasting Act has shielded the NFL’s collective TV negotiating rights since 1961. Now, the DOJ is asking whether that protection has become a shield for consumer harm. The hook is the ~$1,000 it cost fans to watch every game last season across cable and streaming. The NFL’s counter is that 87% of games are on local TV, but that’s a geographic argument, not a cost one.

2 Things Worth Your Time

• Legendary ESPN Writer Wright Thompson joins David Perell

  • Wright Thompson is among the greatest living sports writers — his book The Cost of These Dreams is as good as it gets. This conversation with David Perell pulls back the curtain on his process, and his answer for why he loves sports will stick with you.

• 2025 Masters Official Film | Masters.com

  • Augusta doesn’t need a hype reel, but last year’s Masters Official Film is stunning. Cinematic, inspiring, and the perfect way to get locked in before one of the most iconic weekends in sports. Nothing quite like it.

    • Bonus: Check out the Masters Vault — a searchable archive of shots from every final round dating back to 1968…GREAT use of AI.

1 Stat That Matters

• 54% — The share of Americans who drink alcohol, the lowest level in nearly 90 years. Meanwhile, alcohol sponsorship spend across the five major U.S. pro sports is up 18% to ~$700M over the past four years. (SBJ)

  • Consumption is down but spend is up — sports is where alcohol brands still have permission to exist. Maybe I’m biased, but the ballgame beer isn’t just resilient; it’s embedded.

Pull of the Week

• Before DK Metcalf’s iconic chase-down of Budda Baker, there was Ben Watson catching Champ Bailey. Effort is everything.

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ICYMI: This week’s episode with Ryan Girardot, Co-Founder & CEO of Cerebro Sports ⬇️

I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Thursday.

Share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within this ecosystem — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com.

– Brent

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Field Notes: 4 People Moves, 3 Announcements, 2 Things Worth Your Time, and 1 Stat That Matters in the Sports Economy.

Curated and delivered every other Wednesday.

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4 People Moves

• Josh Tucker: Another key departure from Beast Industries. You’ll recall that last Field Notes we featured Jeremiah Bates’ (former MrBeast CFO) move to FirstDay. This feels like a natural fit. Anyone who follows Polymarket on socials knows they are not afraid of edgy marketing content with their bold creative moves like ‘The Polymarket Grocery Store’ and ‘The Situation Room’.

• Paul Beckles: Paul Beckles, coming off a Nike marketing role, steps into VP/GM at Boardroom as an A-player hire right when layoffs signal a strategic reset in the tightening sports media landscape. His timing positions Durant’s platform to refocus and thrive amid the shift.

• Nick Trujillo: If you’re a sponsorships guy, Sphere has to be one of the more fun gigs in entertainment. While it will take many ad slots to offset the $2.3 billion spent to build the thing, market sentiment has clearly shifted toward belief in the project—as evidenced by Sphere Entertainment’s massive stock surge. Expect many more Spheres to soon dot the global entertainment landscape.

  

• Travis Shives: Shives is jumping from FloSports’ VP of Strategy role—riding high on niche sports streaming tailwinds, owning the passionate long-tail audiences ESPN and Fox ignore—to CRO at Otto Sport AI, well timed with the youth sports tech boom. Otto Sport raised a (large!) $16.5 million seed round earlier this year to build an all-in-one youth sports management platform. As Youth Sports Business Report’s Cameron Korab said on the pod, the race for the youth sports super app is ON.

  ---

People Moves is presented by Workforce.ai by Live Data Technologies

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3 Announcements

• Pro Padel League raises $15 million as investors bet on sport’s U.S. growth | CNBC Sport

  • I’ve covered padel’s rise before — global tailwinds, affluent early adopters, smart capital. A key signal: franchises launched for $200K in 2023 are now valued at $10M+. The enclosed‑court infrastructure makes it harder to scale than pickleball — and more defensible. We’re early.

• USL’s Sporting JAX creates real estate subsidiary for stadium district project | SBJ

  • The venue-as-anchor mixed-use model keeps gaining momentum. Sporting JAX created a dedicated real estate arm to privately fund a $500M stadium district, with serious real estate operators behind it. Sports as the neighborhood glue is a real thesis. For more on this, check out Kyle Israel’s episode from November.

• Five Iron Golf announces Series E investment led by Coral Tree Partners | First Call Golf

  • Coral Tree’s Resnikoff said it directly: “In an era increasingly defined by isolation and AI, social in-person entertainment concepts will be embraced even more.” Five Iron is the right bet at the right time: serious golf infrastructure wrapped in a hospitality experience that works for both the scratch golfer and the corporate outing. Another vote for the thesis that the future of sports is IRL, community-driven, and experiential.

2 Things Worth Your Time

• The Streaming Convergence: How Netflix, Disney, and the Microdrama Revolution Will Reshape Sports Content Forever | Luis Vicente

  • Drive to Survive didn’t just grow F1’s fanbase, it rewired how a sport gets monetized. Vicente’s thesis: that model is about to go real-time. Near-live episodic content, micro-betting, digital collectibles, fan gamification — all layered on top of live sport. The broadcast is the tip of the spear. The fan relationship is where the real value gets built.

• “It reminds me of what we learned in the NBA. LeBron started spending $1 million per year on his body and here he is at age 41 still playing.” | All-In

  • Jensen expects $500K engineers to spend $250K a year on AI tokens. Different asset, same principle as LeBron spending $1M a year on his body. Tom Brady was ripping it (at 48 years old) this weekend in the Fanatics Flag Football Classic. The athletes who once looked crazy for treating their body as a capital asset turned out to be the smartest ones in the room. This is increasingly becoming the norm, not the exception.

1 Stat That Matters

• 12.5 million — The number of viewers for the primetime Thursday first-round window of March Madness 2026, the most-watched first-round window in tournament history. (Yahoo! Sports)

  • Live sports is the only true appointment TV left, and it’s stronger than ever.

Pull of the Week

Tom Brady wanted to transfer out of Michigan. His sports psychologist told him to go ahead.

"You haven't done sh*t here anyway and no one's going to care if you go."

From my November episode with ESPN’s Seth Wickersham:

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ICYMI: Last week’s 🔁 UTN Replay episode with Marques Colston ⬇️

I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Wednesday.

Share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within this ecosystem — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com.

– Brent

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Field Notes: 4 People Moves, 3 Announcements, 2 Things Worth Your Time, and 1 Stat That Matters in the Sports Economy.

Curated and delivered every other Wednesday.

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4 People Moves

• Jeremiah Bates: Jeremiah didn’t just manage the finances behind the world’s biggest creator. He was CFO of Feastables, the CPG brand that turned MrBeast’s audience into a legitimate retail juggernaut. Scaling a consumer brand at that speed is a masterclass in hypergrowth finance. First Day gets a CFO who’s already built the financial infrastructure for a fast-moving consumer company and knows what it takes to hold it together while it scales.

• Meghan Reynolds: Ōura to Eight Sleep (hot off a $50M raise at $1.5B valuation last week) is about as direct a competitor jump as it gets in the sleep-tech arms race. When your rival poaches your global growth marketing lead — and promotes her in the process — that’s not subtle. Eight Sleep is making it clear they want to own the category, not share it.

• Brandon Rhodes: GameChanger is a Dick’s Sporting Goods-backed platform with massive youth sports distribution. The “Emerging Sports” title tells you everything: GameChanger isn’t just a scorekeeping app anymore, and they’re hiring operators who know how to build new verticals from zero.

• Karl Gambin: Fraud and payments infrastructure is the unsexy backbone of every sports betting company. Karl moving from Underdog to Novig, the peer-to-peer betting exchange with $75 million of fresh capital, makes a lot of sense. As Novig scales into a model regulators haven’t fully stress-tested yet, this is exactly the kind of hire you make early, not late.

People Moves is presented by Workforce.ai by Live Data Technologies

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3 Announcements

• NBA considering a national broadcast hub | SBJ

  • Media runs in cycles: bundle, unbundle, re-bundle. The RSN golden era was peak bundle…cable subsidized local sports rights regardless of viewership, and teams collected fees like clockwork. Then streaming killed the cable bundle, RSNs collapsed, and the unbundle phase broke the distribution model entirely. Now the NBA, with up to 22 teams potentially orphaned from local broadcast deals, is doing what the best operators do at the turn of a cycle — engineering the re-bundle on their own terms, with better economics, before someone else does it for them.

• Troon Launches Access, Ushering In A New Era In Golf Rewards | Troon

  • Loyalty in sports is almost redundant — fans and participants show up regardless. The problem has never been earning loyalty, it’s been rewarding it intelligently. Loyalty & Rewards is a giant, neglected opportunity in the sports economy. Troon’s Access platform is a step in the right direction: a unified stack that actually connects behavior to benefit. Most of the industry is still guessing at loyalty instead of measuring it. When you finally have the data infrastructure to understand the participant, the rewards loop becomes a real growth lever.

• Hurricanes Owner Agrees to Sell Minority Stake at Record Valuation | Breakaway SI

  • Tom Dundon bought the Hurricanes for $420 million in 2018 when they were coming off nine straight playoff misses and had near-empty arenas. He’s now sold a 12.5% stake at a $2.66 billion valuation while simultaneously acquiring the Trail Blazers for $4.25 billion. Dundon is building a sports empire brick by brick — NHL, NBA, PPA Tour, Major League Pickleball, and he’s actively pushing to land an MLB franchise in Raleigh-Durham.

2 Things Worth Your Time

• The State of Video Gaming in 2026 (Early Access Edition) | Epyllion

  • Gaming, with $200 billion in annual spend, is the largest category of media — bigger than film, TV, and music combined. I’m not a gamer myself…but over 3.3 billion people are. This report is full of eye-opening charts and stats spanning everything from iGaming to sports betting to OnlyFans. The contents of these 167 slides will amaze, disturb, and dumbfound you all at once.

    

• Paul Rabil: Why Owning a Team Is a 100x Bet | Portfolio Players

  • Rabil made a bet on media as PLL’s foundation, securing ESPN deals with prime windows before even setting a game schedule. The narrative upside is underexplored: a Full Swing-style docuseries following stars from Yale, Princeton, Notre Dame and UVA would be must-watch content. Today, the PLL ‘TopCo’ owns everything (teams, IP, the WLL, youth academies, etc.), but when it starts selling franchises, buyers inherit a serious media machine—that’s the real hidden asset.

1 Stat That Matters

• $17 Billion: The amount of net losses in online sports betting in the United States in 2025, up 35x from 2019 and growing 35% a year. (Epyllion)

  • What happens when you turn smartphones into sports books…

Pull of the Week

Not exactly a traditional throwback for this section, but it was too good not to share. This is a W for jocks everywhere.

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ICYMI: Last week’s episode with Kyle Rudolph, Founder & CEO of Alltroo ⬇️

I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Wednesday.

Share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within this ecosystem — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com.

– Brent

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Field Notes: 4 People Moves, 3 Announcements, 2 Things Worth Your Time, and 1 Stat That Matters in the Sports Economy.

Curated and delivered every other Wednesday.

Subscribe now

🔔 Job alert: I’m helping a Chicago-based Series A company in the Sports Economy find cracked full-stack engineers. They’re hiring for two roles:

• Staff SWE (6+ years of experience, up to $220K + equity)

• Senior SWE (3+ years of experience, up to $170K + equity)

If this is you or someone you know, hit me at underthenumberpod@gmail.com.

4 People Moves

• Joshua Rabenovets: The collectibles category is white hot. Logan Paul sold a Pokémon card last week for $16.5 million (to AJ Scaramucci, son of “The Mooch” - wild times). Rabenovets led DTC product marketing at the league office, making him a natural fit for a company evolving from authentication infrastructure into a consumer brand. Another company to watch in this space: Triumph, specifically their Rips product. Sidenote — this week’s ILTB episode with D1 Capital founder Dan Sundheim, who sits on the Collectors board, is worth a listen.

• Jay Askinasi: Four months into the job and things are... hectic. As of today, Paramount raised its hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery to $31 per share with a $7 billion regulatory termination fee. Netflix wants the studio and streaming assets. Paramount wants everything — CNN, Discovery, all of it. The DOJ is circling, and the political dynamics around Skydance, Larry Ellison, and the Trump administration add another layer.

• Zo Obradovic: We’ve all seen Hawkeye on the tennis court. The ABS system is coming this to the MLB this season. Trackman (and CourseCast) for golf. Technology keeps taking subjectivity out of ultra-high-stakes decisions in sports…which makes tons of sense. The NBA investing in ML leadership signals how seriously the league is building around data-driven solutions. Notably, Zo’s stated focus is “Automated Officiating.” Meanwhile in the NFL...

  

• John H. Yang: Disproportionate gains accrue to the category leader. PrizePicks generated adjusted EBITDA of $339 million in the 12 months to June 2025, 60% YoY revenue growth. Yang’s arrival from UTA’s corp dev group signals PrizePicks is gearing up for M&A and strategic partnerships. The broader read: expect more consolidation in gambling, DFS, and prediction markets. Lots of companies are ripping right now, but it’s unsustainable for the house to stay this crowded for long.

People moves data via Workforce.ai by Live Data Technologies

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3 Announcements

• Creator Management Firm Night Raises $70 Million in Gaming, Music and Sports Push | The Hollywood Reporter

  • Founded by ex-MrBeast manager Reed Duchscher, Night has been quietly building something that looks less like a talent management company and more like a vertically integrated media holding company. They’ve already acquired an experiential events firm and the Roost Podcast Network from Warner Bros Discovery, and they have Night Ventures for strategic investing. One of their investors is K5 Global, founded by Michael Kives. Kives spent 15 years as an agent at CAA—the OG of vertically integrated capital, events, talent, and services. They know the playbook.

    

• Mountain West athletes streaming games on personal social accounts in groundbreaking distribution deal | Awful Announcing

  • “We’ve heard this sentence for so long: The athlete is a media company. Well, now, the athlete is the distributor.” There are individual athletes with more engagement than the regional media companies that cover them. Two things worth noting: this is distribution following attention, not the other way around. And it’s an NIL play hiding inside a media rights deal — athletes get paid to be the channel. If this works, it could be a real recruiting edge for mid-majors. Challenges create opportunities…

• Phillies Reach Pre-Agreement With 11-Year-Old Shortstop | Newsweek

  • The Phillies have reached a $1.8 million “pre-agreement” with an 11 year old Venezuelan shortstop named David Basabe. My sophisticated take: This is dumb. The Phillies have the 4th largest payroll in the MLB ($311.2 Million) – $1.8 million is nothing for them, but puts tremendous pressure on the kid.

    Back in the day, I trained alongside Tate Martell (committed to Washington at 14) and David Sills (committed to USC at 13). Martell flipped his commitment to Texas A&M, then signed with Ohio St., then transferred to Miami, then transferred to UNLV where he attempted 6 passes. Sills flipped his commitment to West Virginia, transferred to El Camino Junior College, returned to WVU, switched to receiver, and ended up spending a handful of seasons in the NFL as a wideout.

    Odds are, Basabe never becomes a Phillie.

    

2 Things Worth Your Time

• The Timeless Portfolio: Humans First Investing | Alumni Ventures

  • Keaton Nankivil lays out an investment framework built on a simple premise: human nature doesn’t change, so invest accordingly. Movement, entertainment, community, growth, leisure — builders iterate on modern delivery mechanisms for instincts that are eternal and behaviors that are timeless. This rhymes with something I wrote with the GSV team two years ago:

    “We seem to think we’re all so radically different from the people of the past. Human nature is the same today as it was back when 99% of us were hunters and gatherers. We want to love and be loved. We are motivated by fear and greed. People look to reduce pain or increase pleasure. That’s who we are, that’s who we’ve always been, and that’s who we will be.”

    Investors are putting real money behind this macro thesis — Sideline Group, MARI, TCG, and now Alumni Ventures with a dedicated syndicate.

• Inside Fanatics’s Battle to Block a Polymarket Hire | Front Office Sports

  • Quite the cluster here: unsealed documents reveal that Michael Rubin and Fanatics Betting & Gaming CEO Matt King (the former CEO of FanDuel) are both personally invested in Kalshi, and sued to block an executive from leaving to join Polymarket…all while simultaneously launching their own prediction market product. Enough logos for you? The exec, Ari Borod, has since been announced as Polymarket’s President of Sports Business Development. People moves matter.

1 Stat That Matters

• 5 million – The number of new Instagram followers Alysa Liu gained while competing in Italy. (Joe Pompliano)

  • Looks like Liu—whose gripping backstory of family Tiananmen activism and spy threats made for one of the best storylines of this year’s games—will join the long list of Olympians earning exponentially more off the ice than on it. Good for her.

Pull of the Week

• AND1 was way ahead of its time.

It launched in 1998, and would have CRUSHED on YouTube and socials if it had started 25 years later. If anyone has an emerging league concept involving on-court MCs, comically large shorts, and a cast of characters like “The Professor”, “Hot Sauce”, and “Escalade” — count me in.

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ICYMI: Last week’s episode with Will Johnson, Founder & CEO of CourseCast ⬇️

I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Wednesday.

Share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within this ecosystem — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com.

– Brent

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Field Notes: 4 People Moves, 3 Announcements, 2 Things Worth Your Time, and 1 Stat That Matters in the Sports Economy.

Curated and delivered every other Wednesday.

🔔 Job alert: I’m helping a Chicago-based Series A company in the Sports Economy find cracked full-stack engineers.

They’re hiring for two roles:

• Senior SWE (3+ years of experience, up to $170K + equity)

• Staff SWE (6+ years of experience, up to $220K + equity).

If this is you or someone you know, hit me at underthenumberpod@gmail.com.

4 People Moves

• Andrew Morelock: After 12+ years at Nike, Andrew took off to join the C-Suite of KKR-backed Bond, “The first premium fractional aviation company.” The business is set to launch early next year–if you’re in the market for a slice of a Bombardier Global 7500, these might be your people.

• Saurabh Tejwani: When your platform just did $1B in Super Bowl volume and regulators are watching closely, you don’t hire a CFO for maintenance, you hire one to fortify the company’s financial infrastructure.

• Kathy Tran: Kathy’s resume is a run through legacy heavyweights — Estée Lauder, Unilever Prestige, Columbia — with 30+ country launches under her belt. Bringing that kind of global infrastructure experience to an ever-growing player like Fabletics says they’re ready to scale like the big boys.

• Tara Shick: On ($ONON) is roughly one-sixth Nike’s size, but it’s recruiting like a company that doesn’t plan to stay there long. Hiring proven product leaders is how you close that gap.

People moves data via Workforce.ai by Live Data Technologies

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3 Announcements

• Kalshi says Super Bowl trading volume surpassed $1 billion | CNBC

  • $1B in Super Bowl volume — up 2,700% YoY — with >$100 million in bets placed on Bad Bunny’s first song. Our guy Saurabh (see above) has his work cut out for him.

  

• Brands increase in-person experiences for Super Bowl LX, going beyond big game ads | ABC

  • The Super Bowl IRL wave — Rao’s pop-ups, Cîroc vineyard activations, Pepsi restaurant pairings — reinforces a trend we’ve been tracking: the highest-value marketing moments are shifting from screens to spaces. The brands winning the Super Bowl aren’t just buying airtime, they’re building rooms worth being in. Keep an eye on what Gary Spitalnik & co. are building with REAL SLX…I’m bullish.

• D1 Training Is Latest Youth Sports Company Up for Sale | Sportico

  • D1 seeking a buyer is the latest signal that youth sports’ consolidation era is here. Capital is flowing toward anything that touches where kids train and compete. A $62B market heading toward $155B by 2032 with emotionally-driven, recurring demand? PE’s dream.

2 Things Worth Your Time

• An Early Look at the $2.5B Bluejack Ranch, Tiger Woods’ Private Club in Fort Worth | D Magazine

  • 914 acres, a Tiger-designed course, an equestrian center, and 550 homes max. Bluejack Ranch isn’t a country club — it’s a full-blown ecosystem. North Texas’ massive growth as a golf hub continues apace.

    

• Bringing cap management on campus | SBJ

  • NCAA front offices are speedrunning 50 years of pro sports infrastructure with Front Office 360, a tool for player evaluation and cap strategy. Cliff Stein managed the Bears’ salary cap for two decades, and now he’s selling that playbook to Michigan State, Wisconsin, and Clemson.

1 Stat That Matters

• ~7.7x — The increase in the Seahawks franchise value since their last Super Bowl win.

  • The team was valued at ~$1.3 billion back in 2014, and it’s expected that it’ll sell for between $9-11 billion this time around.

Pull of the Week

• Sam Darnold’s first career NFL pass was a pick-six. His draft file flagged one trait above the rest: “Not affected by failure.”

  

  Eight years later—after the Jets train wreck, bench time in Carolina and San Francisco, and the Minnesota rise that nobody saw coming—that’s the only line that mattered.

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ICYMI: Last week’s episode with CiCi Bellis, Founder of Cartan Capital ⬇️

I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Wednesday.

Share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the sports economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within this ecosystem — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com.

– Brent

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Field Notes: 4 People Moves, 3 Announcements, 2 Things Worth Your Time, and 1 Stat That Matters in the Sports Economy.

Curated and delivered every other Wednesday.

4 People Moves

• Laurence Herbert: Hudl is no longer just building tools for teams, it’s building intelligence infrastructure for the next generation of performance data. Two decades in, the company is approaching the billion‑dollar revenue mark, and with elite talent hires plus an aggressive M&A streak, it’s showing no signs of slowing down.

• Jamie Wei: From Peloton to Netflix, this isn’t a random hop across industries, it’s an evolution of the immersive growth model. Netflix Experiences extends IP into IRL worlds; parts of the Peloton playbook make lots of sense here.

• Jessica Boer: After riding the wellness boom to record highs — then experiencing a pronounced correction in 2025 — Deckers seems to be recalibrating for its next growth run. With Hoka maturing into a global performance-lifestyle brand, Jessica brings the retail discipline to turn momentum into durable scale.

• Tyler Greenwald: From Rubicon to UEG as Director of Athlete Talent — a big one within sports marketing, and a personal favorite. Congrats to my great friend of nearly 15 years on the new gig!

People moves data via Workforce.ai by Live Data Technologies

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3 Announcements

• NCAA votes to approve jersey patch sponsorships in college sports | On3

  • Jersey patches formalize what NIL already exposed: college sports is no longer pretending to be amateur. For schools, patches are low-lift, high-margin inventory. For brands, they’re a chance to buy proximity to tribal loyalty at scale. The smartest programs will sell alignment, not airtime. Raising Cane’s belongs on LSU jerseys, REI on UW, Ford for Michigan, Gatorade with the Gators…these partnerships should feel inevitable, not transactional.

• AO Invests in Padel Haus | Australian Open

  • Padel Haus isn’t just selling matches; it’s selling membership, hospitality, and community. CEO Santiago Gomez says, “Padel is still early in its global journey” – and that’s a serious understatement. 50% more Aussies played Padel in 2025 than in 2024 — it seems AO is betting on similar growth trends in the U.S.

• GTCR Leans Into Youth Sports With $400M Deal for LiveBarn | Sportico

  • This move reinforces a broader thesis: youth sports isn’t simply a passion economy anymore, it’s a recurring revenue business with defensible demand. I learned the 5 Ps at GSV – one of which is predictability – and few things are steadier than parents funding their kids’ sports dreams.

BONUS: New sport unlocked >

It’s called Typti, and this tennis-pickle hybrid’s commercial launch is backed by an 80-person-investor group led by Steve Bellamy (Founder of the Tennis Channel), and including Drew Brees, Nick Kyrgios, Tony Robbins, Chris Pine, JJ Abrams, Tiffany Haddish, and Bert Kreischer. (FOS)

2 Things Worth Your Time

• Disney’s Missing $1 Billion | Evan Shapiro

  • Legacy media spent a decade fighting gravity and now it’s catch-up time. The BBC’s move to YouTube shows they finally get it — but by only producing new content instead of uploading their vast archives, they’re leaving reach on the table. Disney’s doing the same, sitting on a gold mine of films that could generate hundreds of millions in pure profit if released free with ads on YouTube.

• Jordi Hays and John Coogan’s Buzzy Tech Show ‘TBPN’ Signs With CAA (Exclusive) | The Hollywood Reporter

  • I first called out John & Jordi’s show ~11 months ago (back when they were still the “Technology Brothers Podcast”), and the progress they’ve made since then is insane. With TBPN, they’ve built a SportsCenter‑style show for the tech era. They go direct, livestream daily, and keep it niche — by insiders, for insiders. They move fast, stay irreverent, and, as some have joked, already make All‑In feel like a boomer institution by comparison. Keep your head on a swivel.

1 Stat That Matters

• 49% – Year-over-year viewership growth for SEC football, compared to an 11% decline for the Big Ten. [SBJ]

  • Two years ago, the conferences were drawing comparable television audiences. In the second season post-expansion, that parity has vanished. SEC regular-season games averaged 4.9 million viewers, versus 2.8 million for the Big Ten — a widening gap that underscores the key scoreboard in modern college sports: broadcast revenue.

BONUS: Realignment is not working out for everyone…

Pull of the Week

• Pat McAfee showed his media instincts long before he became ESPN’s $85 million man when he introduced the “Pat McAfee Show” at the 2008 Fiesta Bowl. (FOS)

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ICYMI: Last week’s episode with Parker Graham, Founder & CEO of Vestible ⬇️

I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Wednesday.

Share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the sports economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within this ecosystem — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com.

– Brent

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Field Notes: 4 People Moves, 3 Announcements, 2 Things Worth Your Time, and 1 Stat That Matters in the Sports Economy.

Curated and delivered every other Wednesday.

4 People Moves

• Kati Fernandez: This move from ESPN to Togethxr isn’t just a job change — it’s a read on the market. Fernandez is trading legacy scale for cultural momentum and betting that the surge in women’s sports content, commerce, and community is just getting started.

• Tom Gracey: Moving from SailGP to the PGA looks less like a pivot and more like a recalibration—exchanging the volatility of an emerging league for the predictable cash flows and global reach of the Tour’s business machine.

• Stephanie Webber: Collectibles may seem niche at first glance, but with the sports memorabilia market estimated to be worth $33 billion with a 22% CAGR, that label doesn’t hold. Darren Rovell’s company, Cllct, already works with Fanatics, eBay, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame—adding Stephanie signals they plan to grow that roster significantly.

• Joshua Glessing: Becoming the President of an NBA franchise before age 40 isn’t just impressive, it’s emblematic of a league shifting toward executive youth, data fluency, and leaders who think like investors, not administrators.

People moves data via Workforce.ai by Live Data Technologies

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3 Announcements

• Fanatics and OBB Media Launch Joint Venture, Fanatics Studios, a New, Transformative Global Sports and Entertainment Studio | Fanatics

  • It was only a matter of time before Fanatics built a studio. When you own the rights, data, athletes, and apparel, the next logical move is to own the story. The partnership with OBB makes sense: Rubin brings distribution and access, Ratner brings culture and production muscle. Together, they’re not just making content; they’re positioning Fanatics as the ESPN + Netflix of sports fandom.

• Gabelli Launches Sports-Focused ETF: GOLS – Gabelli Opportunities in Live and Sports | Globe NewsWire

  • No one paying attention to the sports economy should be surprised by this. The asset class has matured; sports isn’t just culture, it’s infrastructure…and an ETF like this was inevitable.

• Jake Paul Buys 6,000 Acre Georgia Sporting Property for $40,000,000 | The Land Report

  • Jake Paul may be an abrasive provocateur, but he’s quietly proving to be one of the savviest operators in modern entertainment. At 28, he’s evolved from YouTube chaos agent to empire builder—turning branding into venture capital and prize fights into asset acquisition. At nearly 6,000 acres, the Paul Reserve—complete with off-road tracks, a private airstrip, an F1-style circuit, and of course a boxing ring—is a monetization machine. If executed correctly, Paul’s $40 million entry price may eventually look like a bargain.

2 Things Worth Your Time

• Lacoste has just opened two Padel courts in Courchevel | Nick Tran

  • Lacoste’s move into Padel isn’t a stunt — it’s strategy. By planting courts in Courchevel, the brand is staking a claim in performance leisure’s next frontier: hospitality and experience as the new points of luxury distribution.

• Kalshi Tees Up First Athlete Deal With Bryson DeChambeau | Front Office Sports

  • Kalshi’s partnership with Bryson DeChambeau is a calculated play for a mainstream milestone at a moment of non-trivial regulatory friction. By signing its first pro athlete, the platform is moving prediction markets from a “crypto niche” to a cultural asset class. However, with state regulators in New York and Tennessee currently issuing cease-and-desist orders, this remains a volatile frontier: Kalshi is betting that athlete-led cultural momentum can outrun the mounting legal pressure.

1 Stat That Matters

• The United States has ~16,000 golf courses and 13,794 McDonald’s locations.

  • Shoutout to my friend Will Johnson for pointing this one out to me.

Pull of the Week

• Keller Chryst (UTN Ep. 14) demonstrates what servant leadership really looks like:

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ICYMI: Last week’s episode with Michael Moe, Founder & CEO of GSV ⬇️

Another big shoutout to Austin Kretzschmar—a fellow Stanford alum here in Dallas—for helping out with this week’s edition.

I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Wednesday.

Share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the sports economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within this ecosystem — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com.

– Brent

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Field Notes: 4 People Moves, 3 Announcements, 2 Things Worth Your Time, and 1 Stat That Matters in the Sports Economy.

Curated and delivered every other Wednesday.

4 People Moves

• James Rushton: After 11 years in executive roles at DAZN, Rushton takes the helm at Bruin Capital-backed TGI Sport. TGI has quietly transformed from a traditional rights agency into a tech-focused operation—LED perimeter ads, virtual advertising, broadcast solutions. Rushton’s streaming background suggests the next phase is scaling that tech globally.

• Max Crowley: After just two months leading partnerships at Polymarket, Crowley crossed enemy lines to rival Kalshi, the other half of the prediction‑markets duopoly. This is some high‑profile poaching: Crowley was early Uber employee (#25) and a founder who sold his startup to GoPuff. The move adds muscle to Kalshi as the two horse race rages on.

• Jason Podolsky: Seven years at Bruin Capital to one of the most audience‑rich content brands in the world. With Dude Perfect evolving from five creators to a lifestyle IP platform, bringing in a serious finance operator signals a coming phase of acquisitions and brand consolidation. I sat down with Highmount Capital’s Jason Illian last week—Dude Perfect’s lead investor—and his vision for where DP is headed is worth the listen.

• Dario Zarrabian: Two years in strategy at MLB, a Stanford MBA, and now the inner circle of Michael Rubin. Fanatics has been “about to IPO” for quite a while now, but the rumors are heating up again—and either way, it’s a front-row seat at one of the most consequential companies in sports.

People moves data via Workforce.ai by Live Data Technologies

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3 Announcements

• Beware, college sports, private equity has arrived | ESPN

  • Utah is spinning out a for-profit entity called Utah Sports & Entertainment with Otro Capital—the first deal of its kind. The financials tell the story: football made $26.8M, men’s basketball added $2.6M, and the other 17 programs lost $21.2M combined. The hope is that Otro’s capital and expertise is a rising tide that lifts all boats. If not, expect hard conversations about which programs are sustainable.

    Feels like the floodgates are about to open.

• San Francisco 49ers to sell 1% stake to OpenAI Chairman | Insider Sport

  • The nerds have entered the skybox. Bret Taylor — Google Maps co-creator, former Salesforce Co-CEO, Twitter Chairman during the Musk takeover, OpenAI Chairman, decacorn founder — is joining the 49ers ownership group. The cap table already reads like a Bay Area VC all-star team with leaders from Bessemer (Byron Deeter), Iconiq (Will Griffith), and Khosla (Vinod Khosla) involved. The deal values the franchise at $9 billion, making it the fourth most valuable in the NFL behind the Cowboys, Rams, and Giants.

• PlayMetrics Sells Student Sports to Elysian Park Ventures, Sharpens Focus on Operations Platform | Youth Sports Business Report

  • Student Sports owns legacy properties like Elite 11, The Opening, and Area Code Baseball. While past their prime, these were the stars of elite high school athletics not long ago (was anything more legit than seeing on Twitter that some prospect #GotOpen circa ~2014?). The Overtime playbook—media-first distribution, talent pipeline ownership, NIL infrastructure—offers a template for revival. The assets still have brand equity; the question is whether Elysian can modernize the model or if these properties got left behind when recruiting went direct-to-consumer.

2 Things Worth Your Time

• Kyle and Drew Talk Private Equity’s Future in College Sports and the Vision Behind Add More Athletes | Momentous Sports Podcast

  • Recent Under the Number guest Kyle Israel (Managing Partner, Momentous Sports) sits down with Drew Weatherford, co-founder of Weatherford Capital and former FSU QB. Last year, Weatherford partnered with RedBird to launch Collegiate Athletic Solutions—so yes, he’s talking his book here. But he does an excellent job articulating why PE is flooding into college athletics right now. Particularly worth hearing: his take on the future of elite training academies (Weatherford co-invested with EQT on the 2023 IMG Academy deal).

• Sports Next Wave | Michael Broughton

  • The smart money in sport isn’t just chasing clubs anymore, it’s chasing the infrastructure they depend on. Bruin showed how value can be hidden in the plumbing. The next winners will run the rails under the whole industry.

1 Stat That Matters

• 13 out of 20 - The number of quarterbacks from 2023 Elite 11 who are either heading into the portal or have already transferred. (Bruce Feldman)

  • As my recent guest Seth Wickersham explained, “A lot of NFL people are asking, ‘Has this guy really been through some sh*t? How did he deal with it?’ Because it’s never been easier to avoid dealing with the sh*t.”

Pull of the Week

• Louisville Head Coach (and potential candidate for the Michigan job) Jeff Brohm shares his perspective on the importance of pain tolerance:

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ICYMI: Last week’s episode with Jason Illian, Co-Founder & General Partner of Highmount Capital ⬇️

Shoutout to Austin Kretzschmar—a fellow Stanford alum here in Dallas—for helping out with this week’s edition.

I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Wednesday.

Share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the sports economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within this ecosystem — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com.

– Brent

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Field Notes: 4 People Moves, 3 Announcements, 2 Things Worth Your Time, and 1 Stat That Matters in the Sports Economy.

Curated and delivered every other Wednesday.

4 People Moves

Matt Anderson: Last valued at $2.2 billion, Strava is reportedly eyeing an IPO in 2026. Adding a six-year finance leader from Nextdoor (NYSE: NXDR) signals they’re serious about getting their house in order ahead of going public.

Massimo Calvelli: RedBird adds former ATP CEO Massimo Calvelli to lead International Development. A global sports operator joining one of the sector’s most active investors hints at bigger ambitions abroad.

Nick Heitz: Overtime keeps pushing as one of the most innovative platforms in sports. Elite partnerships, original content, and massive distribution remain a winning mix.

Jonathan Nabavi: FanDuel is set to launch a new prediction markets platform this month. Smart move to bring in more legal firepower from the NFL—regulatory scrutiny will only keep tightening.

People moves data via Workforce.ai by Live Data Technologies

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3 Announcements

Chiefs-Cowboys Thanksgiving day game breaks viewership record | Adam Schefter

• At 57.23 million viewers, this SMASHED the regular season record by 36%. This is why, as Ari Emanuel puts it, the NFL is the “beast of all beasts.” It’s the last unmissable appointment television in America. And yet, teams are still leaving money on the table: betting integrations, international expansion, loyalty programs, stadium monetization…the revenue ceiling hasn’t even been sniffed yet.

New restaurants, sports club to transform Dallas’ Design District | Dallas Business Journal

• If you thought pickleball took America by storm, wait until padel proliferates—long popular in Europe and Latin America, it’s doubles-only, fast-paced, and built for community. I was blown away when I first visited Padel Haus’ Brooklyn location in 2023, so I’m fired up to have one coming to my backyard.

You Won’t Believe the Sweetheart Terms in Lane Kiffin’s LSU Contract | The Rich Eisen Show

• If there’s a Lane Train crash in Baton Rouge, Kiffin will still be owed a $73,000,000 buyout. Brian Kelly will receive a direct deposit from LSU of ~$800,000 every month for over six years. The President of the university has an annual salary of $750,000. Magical things better happen in Death Valley between now and 2032 for this one to pencil.

2 Things Worth Your Time

WATCH: Ari Emanuel’s “Anti-AI” Bet on Live Entertainment | Invest Like The Best

• This might be my single favorite podcast episode of 2025. From bull riding to boxing, the world’s most famous super-agent turned global dealmaker isn’t slowing down at 64. Ari runs TKO Group Holdings (UFC, WWE, PBR), just launched MARI (Frieze art fairs, Barrett-Jackson, IMG events) in October, and still holds a stake in WME. His thesis is simple: as the world automates, the things you have to experience in person only get more valuable.

READ: Sports tech market undergoing rapid consolidation — what’s driving it? | SBJ

• Teams don’t want point solutions anymore—they want platforms. That’s fueling consolidation as disproportionate gains accrue to category leaders. Can acquirers stay nimble while scaling inorganically? How many of these tools get shelved post-deal? When will we see the the killer app for sports?

1 Stat That Matters

>$32 Billion – The total amount of disclosed deal value across 233 sports tech M&A deals in the first half of 2025. (Drake Star)

• While mega-deals grab headlines, this transaction volume shows how much action is in strategic tuck-ins quietly reshaping competitive landscapes.

Pull of the Week

WATCH: The greatest 2 yard run of all time.

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I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Wednesday.

Stay tuned and share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the sports economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within this ecosystem — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com.

– Brent

Shane O’Mara: Proof that DraftKings is taking the prediction market threat seriously. This hire, combined with DK’s October acquisition of Railbird, signals quite a bit about what’s coming down the pike.

Miranda Bose: The wearable wars continue apace. We’ll look back at these years as the infancy of where this technology is headed. It’s on, and it’s global. Data is the new oil…

Chris Stango: WWE → Barstool → PrizePicks → C-Suite at Lucra. Backed by Wayne Kimmel’s SeventySix Capital, the company already counts Dave & Buster’s and Puttshack as customers. Keep an eye on this one…

Karan Jain: After a decade at Apple, Karan joined Oura to revolutionize wearable technology and “make health a daily practice”. It takes serious conviction to leave the world’s greatest hardware company to bet on one that’s 360 times smaller.

People moves data via Workforce.ai by Live Data Technologies

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3 Announcements

TKO And Polymarket Announce First-Of-Its-Kind Sports Partnership | UFC News

• This move captures the shift from passive viewership to active participation. For Gen Z audiences, simply watching isn’t enough — engagement has to feel real-time and responsive. UFC’s partnership with Polymarket turns fan sentiment into on-screen sport, merging attention, data, and narrative into a single layer of entertainment. Dana White and Ari Emanuel are making sure UFC doesn’t just broadcast fights, it streams the crowd’s collective mind.

Sixth Street’s sports fund gets $775M from California pension fund | SBJ

• CalPERS just dropped $775 million into Sixth Street’s sports fund. Sixth Street has stated that it will focus (focus?) on “college sports, stadium debt or similar financings, real estate, strategic arrangements, entertainment, media, licensing, data, merchandising, ticketing, sports agencies, talent agencies, sponsorship and other related or adjacent rights and assets.”

  Brace yourselves.

Goldman Sachs Buys Talent Agency of Tiger Woods, Caitlin Clark | Sportico

• Goldman knows the demand for sports and starpower isn’t cyclical, it’s compounding. They just put $1 billion behind that belief to bring a major part of the Sports Economy in-house.

2 Things I Liked

WATCH: Saving College Sports, NIL, & A $7B Opportunity - Cody Campbell - #398 | Powers Podcast

• 17 years ago, four years removed from his playing days as an offensive lineman at Texas Tech, Cody Campbell Co-Founded Double Eagle Energy. Today, the 44-year-old billionaire is one of the biggest fundraisers and personal check writers in college sports.

  The student section at Cody Campbell Field is all for it:

READ: Fort Worth Proposes $82M Youth Sports Infrastructure Investment to Address Field Shortages | Youth Sports Business Report

• It’s in the proposal stage, but Fort Worth’s plan reflects a national need: investing in youth sports as both community service and economic engine. These projects thrive when cities combine public funding with private‑sector creativity to accelerate timelines and keep facilities active year‑round.

1 Stat That Matters

>$30 million – the amount of money that Disney lost per week during the YouTube TV / ESPN standoff. (Newsweek)

• At a time when the perception of ESPN is already at an all-time low, losing millions of viewers (myself included) for MNF didn’t help the brand. The (finally) agreed upon new deal integrates the full features of ESPN Unlimited into YouTube TV—another step towards making it the nation’s top distributor (FOS).

Pull of the Week

Patrick Willis demonstrates the power of leverage:

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Let me know what you think about this format! The plan is to release Field Notes every other Wednesday.

No essay next week, we’ll be back December 3rd 🦃🫡

–Brent