Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic’s weekly sports business cheat sheet. (Want to get MoneyCall in your email every Wednesday morning? Subscribe here.)
(New to MoneyCall? Thanks for giving it a try! The goal is to help you make sense of the most interesting dynamics at the intersection of sports and business, taking not even two minutes of your time. Let me and my newsletter colleagues help you win the group chat or impress your colleagues on Slack.
Name-dropped today: Bryce Underwood, Lee Corso, Dave Portnoy, Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, Taylor Swift, IShowSpeed, Caitlin Clark, George Costanza, Kevin O’Leary, Bama Rush, Sergio Perez, Valtteri Bottas and more. Let’s go:
Driving the Conversation
College football’s ultimate scoreboard: Revenue
Heading into the start of the 2025 season (the best opening-weekend lineup of games ever?), the business dynamics of college football have never been more intense. Let’s quickly get you level-set on the big storylines:
Revenue, revenue, revenue. Teams are getting creative/aggressive, by necessity. Oklahoma is selling access for fans to the postgame media session with coaches. ($461.61 for a pair of passes for the postgame against FCS Illinois State — and it sold out!)
The rise of the program GM. Part roster management, part fundraising, part investment management. It’s a very cool gig, to be sure — and schools need to nail this hire no less than when they hire a head coach.
Can you spend your way to success? Short answer: Yes, at least to an extent. (Most interesting team case study: Texas Tech. Most interesting player case study: Michigan’s freshman QB1 Bryce Underwood. Tens of millions being deployed!)
NIL gets new guidelines, oversight. Name to know: College Sports Commission, led by former MLB exec Bryan Seeley and powered by a cavalcade of Deloitte consultants.
(One of my favorite things from The Athletic this week: How college players spend all that NIL money.)
TV: Lee Corso era ends, Dave Portnoy era begins. These Corso stories compiled by my colleagues Christopher Kamrani and Justin Williams were amazing. Portnoy, the Barstool Sports impresario, is already impacting the attention around Fox’s games.
Bill Belichick, Inc. “Chapel Bill” wins and losses are … kinda beside the point? From a prime-time slot on Labor Day to an upcoming Hulu docuseries, UNC football has never been more relevant or interesting to follow.
How to watch: ESPN’s new service? Fox’s new service? Cable or YouTube TV? (This current contretemps between YTTV and Fox better not mess with my Saturday viewing of Texas-Ohio State!)
My top rec to enjoy the season? Be sure you’re subscribed to our incredible (free) college football newsletter, Until Saturday.
Get Caught Up
Big talkers from the sports business industry
An engagement with ripple effects. Plus: Vote in our poll!
Big talkers from the sports business industry:
The end of the “Brady Rules”: New this AM from my colleague Andrew Marchand, Fox NFL analyst Tom Brady will no longer be constrained by the rules that hamstrung him from talking with teams ahead of his Sunday broadcasts because of his Raiders ownership stake. (Those guidelines were relaxed for the Super Bowl, a policy which will be extended into this season.)
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce get engaged: “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.” That’s an A+ IG caption worthy of the gazillion likes it got.
Regardless of your level of fandom for Swift (or Kelce), this long-anticipated engagement is the sports x celebrity news of the moment/summer/decade, with gravitational forces applied to media coverage that will impact the fall NFL season and beyond.
YouTube taps massive influencer for NFL opener: The Chiefs-Chargers Week 1 game Friday in Brazil was already going to be huge (much more in next week’s MoneyCall). Adding Gen Z creator IShowSpeed (43M YouTube subscribers!) as a “Watch With” streamer will move the needle.
ESPN DTC service, app launch: As a YouTube TV sub, I think ESPN’s access via its app is a nice-to-have (once I can actually have it, which may take a while). “Verts” tab (aka “ESPNTok”) has potential, once the algo learns what I *don’t* want to see/hear.
Don’t miss: Marchand setting you up for the next ESPN-MLB media deal, which has everything to do with ESPN’s DTC service mentioned above.
Netflix acquires World Baseball Classic (in Japan): “Eventize”-able? Check. International audience? Check. MLB eager for the check? Check.
2026 World Cup draw coming to D.C.: Like a heist caper, Las Vegas is still trying to figure out what happened. (FIFA’s head prioritizes presidencies over residencies.)
Caitlin Clark has a new logo: It’s … fine? Chanel-ish? Take our poll so I can figure out how MoneyCall readers feel about it. Check back next week for results.
Other current obsessions: Tommy Fleetwood finally winning a Tour event … Bob Uecker Day … fantasy football cheat sheets … the Yankees’ latest George Costanza bobblehead … the return of MLB’s “Field of Dreams” game … sports x parenting stories … new Premier League stadiums (Everton’s Hill Dickinson) …
What I’m Wondering
Women’s soccer: STILL undervalued?
A fascinating new economic study about women’s soccer shows that there is a significant link between sponsorship and fan willingness to transact with those brands. My colleague Asli Pelit wrote about the study in her latest business-of-soccer column.
What’s a big takeaway?
Pelit: “While North America is known for its Big Four men’s leagues, both Parity and SU’s reports underline the steady growth of soccer fandom, and it is not just the game that’s becoming more popular. Parity’s data shows advertising in soccer pays like no other sport, something brands should consider in the lead-up to the upcoming FIFA World Cups and the NWSL and Super League’s combined year-round domestic calendar.”
The whole thing is worth your time.
Speaking of which …
Grab Bag
Data Point: 40,091That’s the number of fans who went to San Francisco’s Oracle Park last weekend and broke the NWSL single-game attendance record.
Related: This analysis of the 2025 surge of record-breaking transfer fees in women’s soccer.
Investor of the Week: Kevin O’LearyShark Tank’s “Mr. Wonderful” led an investor group that broke the record for spending on a single sports card: $12.932 million for a 1-of-1 Michael Jordan-Kobe Bryant card.
(Interesting follow-up: What could be the *next* card to set a record? The return of Mantle Mania?)
Elevator PitchThe U.S. Open is the best fan crowd in U.S. sports. Do I want every tennis tournament to be this raucous? Absolutely not. But for one fortnight-plus, it’s a blast.
Case Study: Bama Rush 2025Lois Sakany writes a newsletter (Snobette) about streetwear and sneaker news. Last week’s edition was brilliant: She charted 60 University of Alabama sorority rush (aka “Bama Rush”) TikTok OOTD (“Outfit of the Day”) videos to see which sneaker brands dominated on the first two days of rush (before, as Sakany noted, sneakers are swapped for dressier sandals and heels).
On: 30 percent shareHoka: 25 percent shareGolden Goose: “Fading”Nike/adidas: “Bleak”
(Sakany noted to me via email: “Nike definitely has some work to do where college-aged women are concerned, especially in what’s been described to me in the geography as the ‘SEC Belt.’”)
Names to Know: Sergio Pérez and Valtteri BottasThe face(s) of Cadillac’s new F1 team, debuting in 2026. My colleague Luke Smith has a great breakdown of why the well-known vets were selected over, say, up-and-coming U.S. drivers.
Beat Dan in Connections: Sports EditionPuzzle #338Dan’s time: 00:24Play here!
Worth Your Time
Great business-adjacent reads for your downtime or commute:
(1) Excellent Peak story from my colleague Elise Devlin: How Michael Phelps and Jay Glazer collaborated to take on mental health challenges.
Two more:
(2) First-hand reporting from the rollicking college football opener in Dublin.
(3) SLC? Nashville? Raleigh? Portland? Orlando? Austin? Examining the state of MLB expansion prospects across six cities.
Back next Wednesday! If you enjoyed MoneyCall, please forward to a couple of friends or colleagues with your recommendation to subscribe! (It’s free – they don’t have to be subscribers to The Athletic.) And, as always, give a try to all The Athletic’s other newsletters. (Again: All always free.)
(Photo: Mike Mulholland / Getty Images for ONIT)
