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:
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
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.
ICYMI: Last week’s episode with Will Johnson, Founder & CEO of CourseCast ⬇️
I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Wednesday.
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If you’re building, investing, or advising within this ecosystem — please reach out!
Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com.
– Brent