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.
ICYMI: This week’s episode with Ethan Rosenbaum, Co-Managing Partner at Source Golf ⬇️
The Business of YouTube Golf · Ethan Rosenbaum, Co-Managing Partner of Source Golf | S2 E42
Sports are serious business.
I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Thursday.
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– Brent