The Athletic has live coverage of Knicks vs. Spurs in Game 1 of the 2026 NBA Finals.
Welcome to MoneyCall, The Athletic’s weekly sports business cheat sheet.
Name-dropped today: Mike Breen, Donald Trump, Zohran Mamdani, Ben Stiller, Serena Williams, Tom Dundon, Shrey Parikh, Bunny Shaw, Tim Payne, Gabriel, Soccer Moms and more.
I’m your host, Dan Shanoff, The Athletic’s managing editor for sports business. We’ve published more than 140 sports business stories , all just since last Wednesday morning. Let’s go:
Driving the Conversation
Go NBA, go NBA, go!
It feels like eons ago (if only more like 10 weeks) there was widespread griping about the state of the NBA: Crisis! Tanking! Boring! Streaming! Flopping!
Now tonight, the league starts its most highly anticipated NBA Finals series since the launch of LeBron James versus Steph Curry more than a decade ago — Knicks versus Wemby, its loudest market versus its most intriguing talent, arguably the ideal pairing.
The Western Conference finals topped ratings records, comparable to last year’s NBA Finals. As discussed here two weeks ago, that’s the impact of Wembynomics.
Now layer in a New York fanbase whose narcissism is only matched by the novelty of its first finals since ‘99. (I lived in NYC that year; the cultural takeover is unmatched.)
• You’ve got Zohran Mamdani issuing mayoral proclamations that kids can stay up past their bedtimes to watch games.
• You’ve got President Donald Trump floating that he wants to get to a game at Madison Square Garden.
• You’ve got Ben Stiller, part of the best celebrity row in sports, out there tweeting Andrew Marchand columns about ESPN’s Mike Breen.
• You’ve got endless numbers of Knicks-centric creators vying for clout, virality or fame-adjacency.
• You’ve got viral NYC subway art. (Orange and blue is the new …)
• You’ve got some of the worst-located Game 3 seats available in MSG going for a minimum of $4,663 EACH, per a search on StubHub I did this morning.
If curiosity around Victor Wembanyama was enough to get more than 10 million fans tuning in for games in San Antonio and Oklahoma City, what will it look like when The Alien invades Manhattan? When the nation tunes in for, at best, the intrigue of watching this seemingly unprecedented player, to, at worst, hate-watching the Knicks en route to either insufferable triumph or schadenfreude-laden failure?
A few finals TV audience benchmarks to watch for:
• 1999 (Knicks-Spurs I) — 16.1M average
• 2016/17 (peak Warriors-Cavs) — 20.3M (21st century high)
• 2025 (Thunder-Pacers) — 10.2M (16.4M for Game 7)
The 2026 prediction: Less than peak LeBron/Curry, more than Celtics-Lakers in ‘08 (14.9M). In fact, let’s go with a tick above that original Knicks-Spurs battle in 1999, which truly feels like it happened far, far longer than a quarter-century ago.
That said: How quickly things change. Just this spring, from hand-wringing about the state of the league to, today, a finals that has everyone excited to tune in.
Get Caught Up
Big talkers from the sports business industry:
World Cup countdown: ONE WEEK.The coolest thing I will point you to is a series by my colleagues, “The Language of Soccer,” with a defining word or phrase for all 48 teams as an entry point to explaining that country’s unique soccer culture. (“No Scotland, No Party!”) More samples:
• Brazil: “Rumo ao hexa.”• Bosnia: “Nad nama nebo ima da gori.”• Morocco: “Dima Maghreb.”
(Well worth your time to check out the entire lineup. More coming daily through next week.)
Also very cool: Our World Cup hotel cost data visualizations. This is amazing work by Emily Giambalvo and Jonah Smith.
(Speaking of costs, looks like few fans want to pay $98 to get to New Jersey by local public transit. More promising: cheap tix to see warmup games!)
And speaking of cool: A recurring motif over the next eight weeks will be the fascinating intersection of the World Cup with fashion and style. Get ready with Asli Pelit’s dive into “high brow blokecore.”
Reminder! Your WC must-have is our free World Cup Briefing daily email newsletter. It will be the foundation of how I keep up with things. Two-second signup here.
Serena is back: “Women’s tennis in 2026 has plenty of stars and all-time greats. It has crossover stars like Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka. Does it have anyone on the order of Serena Williams, whose presence takes over a venue the way Beyoncé’s or Taylor Swift’s does?” — Matt Futterman, with your must-read on The Comeback.
Peak of the Week: “The world needs more people with the guts to care.” — Performance expert Brad Stulberg to my colleague Elise Devlin, on Wemby’s healthy public displays of emotion.
Stanley Cup Finals: What a start! Meanwhile: On the one hand, I found Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon highly credible in explaining to skeptical NBA fans that his austere approach wins. On the other hand, the Golden Knights have a really fun Pokémon subplot.
Steph Curry signs with Li-Ning: It’s a 10-year deal with Curry as the new face of a rising (if domestically obscure) sneaker company, an expression of his overtly global ambition and (as I note in the story) the tantalizing potential to shake up the NIL scene.
Sports x Politics: As Congress discusses the latest college sports reform bill today, I think the most interesting question is: Could Congress actually preclude realignment? (cc: SEC, Big Ten)
Women’s College World Series: Texas Tech versus Texas title tilt II + TikTok = another successful spring for one of the most exciting postseasons in sports.
(Speaking of exciting postseasons: More fans tuned in to watch my alma mater Northwestern win its ninth women’s lacrosse national championship than any women’s lacrosse game on record: Nearly 500K viewers. Shoutout to the Lake Show.)
Bears relocating to Indiana? If fans don’t mind the “New York” Jets and Giants playing home games in New Jersey, should the Bears playing in a Chicago exurb across a state line really bother anyone? (If it even happens …)
Other current obsessions: ESPN’s revamped NBA Finals TV team … the Larry O’Brien Trophy back at center court of the finals … Curt Cignetti, video game cover star (Caleb Williams, too) … “Ninja Warrior” at the 2028 Olympics … the hockey romance novelist (zeitgeisty!) … Remember that incredible Nike “Secret Tournament” World Cup ad? … “Tarps Off” in St. Louis … congrats to my colleague Paul Tenorio on the release of his new book, “The Messi Effect” …
What I’m Wondering
Who will blink first in MLB labor battle?
At its core, the MLB labor battle is pretty simple:
Players: No salary capOwners: Yes salary cap
The existential question: Which side is the more stubborn on that specific issue — the less likely to blink in the face of lost games in 2027, perhaps even a lost SEASON in 2027? The more likely to be comfortable inflicting pain on the other side (and on fans)?
I checked in with Evan Drellich, who is leading our coverage of an MLB storyline that will be an undercurrent for the next year (gulp, if not longer). Here’s what Evan had to say:
💬 “Which side would blink first is a question worth billions of dollars, without exaggeration. But it’s almost impossible to answer in advance. In a labor negotiation, no one is incentivized to seem anything but intractable. History says the players will fight for a long time: They went on strike for 232 days to avoid a cap from 1994-95.
“Meanwhile, the owners are wealthier, billionaires all. But neither side is a monolith: The owners, for example, have varying levels of debt. Everyone likes to make money, rookies and elderly owners alike, and the way to make money is to play. The wild card: Do enough owners decide that their franchise values would be so greatly improved in a cap system that they should suffer whatever pain is required to get there? Check back in April.”
Grab Bag
Name to Know: Shrey ParikhWinner of the 2026 Scripps National Spelling Bee (hosted on Ion with aplomb by Mina Kimes), in a “spell-off” that saw Parikh, an eighth grader from Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., astonishingly zip through more than 30 tough words in 90 seconds to claim the title over 12-year-old Ishaan Gupta from New Jersey. It was an epic spectacle of intellectual and competitive bravura.
Speaking of the Spelling Bee: The MoneyCall community (along with the Pulse community, which was also polled) was adamant in our survey: The Bee is NOT sports, by a margin of nearly 75/25.
I received a ton of emails about it, all variations on that larger theme, although almost everyone was happy to affirm that it is most definitely a great “competition” and that the participants clearly work exceptionally hard to make it to the final stage.
One more name: Bunny Shaw, now the highest-paid women’s soccer player in the world (£1.6M, or around $2.15M, per year).
Wait, one more: Tim Payne, and the wild backstory behind the World Cup’s most viral player.
Data Point: 350%That’s the sales increase in Gabriel’s shirts after the Arsenal star muffed the decisive PK in the shootout that ended the Champions League final with a PSG title redux. Nice to see fans rally around him, given his critical role in Arsenal’s overwhelming success this season.
Beat Dan in Connections: Sports EditionPuzzle No. 618Dan’s time: 00:24Try it here!
Worth Your Time
Great business-adjacent reads for your downtime or commute:
This week, I want to focus this entire section on the important reporting done by my colleagues on the intersection of soccer and motherhood. Pick any one of these stories to start, and you will likely find yourself making time for the others.
• Melanie Anzidei and Megan Feringa — The science of elite soccer players returning to play after pregnancy and managing pressure
• Asli Pelit — Transfers, moving and motherhood: The hidden cost of traveling as an NWSL player and mom
• Katie Whyatt — Fertility journeys of footballers in same-sex relationships: “I really wanted to carry”
• Charlotte Harpur — The world’s largest domestic sporting union announces first-of-its-kind fertility care
• Whyatt — The reality of motherhood and football management: “There’s a superpower to it”
• Anzidei — How collective bargaining agreements gave NWSL players autonomy: “It does take a village”
• Pelit — Emma Hayes discusses her role in helping Sophia Wilson and Mallory Swanson return to the USWNT
Back next Wednesday! And, as always, check out The Athletic’s other (free!) newsletters.
.webp?ssl=1 "Funniest moment, best radio message and much more – F1’s 2025 alternative awards")
