Category
Analysis on the business, technology, and economics of sports — leagues, betting, wearables, and the money behind the games.
Kroenke Sports & Entertainment has agreed to buy the Los Angeles Angels at a $4bn valuation, an MLB record. The club has the longest active playoff drought in baseball. Both facts are consistent, because most of what a buyer acquires is not priced off the standings.
MLB caps a single fund at 15% of a franchise. Fifteen percent of $9.4 billion is $1.4 billion — about half the cheque. The gap is the story: most of this money is not buying equity in a ball club.
The NFL wants a 50-60% raise from its broadcast partners. Fox has said no on the merits. CBS cannot say anything at all, because an antitrust dispute in an unrelated deal has frozen its owner.
Sportradar is now supplying Polymarket with official data, live streaming and integrity monitoring across 20-plus competitions and roughly 300,000 matches a year. The counterparty argument survives. The stack argument is new.
A $245.3 million cap and a $171.2 million floor. Twelve clubs would have to add $617 million; eight would have to cut $578 million. Read those two numbers together and the proposal's real shape appears.
Renée James's Rule42 made two announcements on the same day. Read separately they are a league investment and a media acquisition. Read together they are a bet that in an emerging sport the scarce asset is discovery, not broadcast inventory.
The 2026 US Open will pay players $108 million, a record and a 20% rise on last year. The players' own statement calls it progress rather than a settlement — because what they asked for was a formula, and what they were given was an announcement.
Marc Lore fought a four-year battle and a contested arbitration for control of the Timberwolves. He agreed to sell it after about fourteen months, at three times what his group agreed to pay.
Arctos is buying 10% of the Atlanta Falcons in two tranches over 18 months. The first is 7.5% at just over $10 billion. The widely quoted $10.6 billion is a blend of a price agreed now and a price that has not been paid yet.
Liberty Media's Formula One segment booked $764 million against $1.22 billion a year earlier, on five races instead of nine. The gap between the two rates of decline is the whole story.
For the first time in years, no Premier League shirt front carries a gambling brand. Aston Villa and Everton kept the same gambling partners — Betano and Stake — and moved them to the sleeve. The cleanest natural experiment anyone has run on whether sponsorship bans reduce exposure or relocate it.
144 territories, every session live, and no disclosed fee. The absence is the story: this is a distribution deal wearing a media-rights deal's clothes.