Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic’s weekly sports business cheat sheet.
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Name-dropped today: LeBron James, Rich Paul, Cathy Engelbert, George Costanza, JP Morgan Chase, Angel Reese, Frank “The Tank” Fleming, Jackson Koivun, Luke Kuechly, The Greenbrier and more. Let’s go:
Driving the Conversation
Philly’s new LeBron-powered economy
“That’s why you don’t envision anything until it happens.”
— Steph Curry to my colleague Marcus Thompson II, about LeBron’s decision to pick the 76ers over the Warriors and everyone else.
That’s a profound (and kind of sad!) assessment, but now that something has most definitely happened, let’s map many of the big winners in Philly’s new LeBron economy.
(“LeBronomy?” No? Terrible portmanteau? Yup, that’s totally fair. They can’t all be winners, folks.)
🤑 Sixers ticket sales, corporate suite sales, sponsorship sales, marketing department, the whole business side: I’m old enough to remember Michael Jordan in D.C. Massive windfall. Rip up the revenue projections and double the goals.
📺 The NBA’s TV partners: Imagine the Sixers on opening night. On Christmas Day, once the schedule is out. Sixers vs. Celtics, Lakers, Heat and Everybody. They can appear on national TV up to nearly three dozen times in the regular season, and they surely will. Ratings bonanza. (Nice win for NBCUniversal, owner of most of NBC Sports Philadelphia, which carries locally available games. Fun fact: 25 percent of NBC Sports Philly is owned by the Phillies.)
👕 Fanatics: It owns Topps, which technically scooped everyone with the LeBron news. The James No. 23 Sixers jersey available via Fanatics has sold out and will likely continue to, until every Philly fan who wants one has one. (Also, good news for indie merch companies with NBAPA licenses and/or your local Philly/Etsy bootleg merch operator.)
📊 Prediction markets: More than $200 million sloshed around Kalshi, Polymarket and the others as onlookers tried to guess where LeBron could end up. Based on the odds, a small percentage of people walked away with all of it.
🎙️ Rich Paul: The most intriguing detail from our inside story on how LeBron ended up in Philly was the idea that team exec Bob Myers’ appearance on the podcast of LeBron’s agent … might have helped?
📝 Tony Jones: My colleague at The Athletic who covers the Sixers suddenly has the most exciting and envy-inducing beat in the newsroom.
In fact, I loved Jones’ early dive into the local impact of James’ signing: “If he wins big, Philadelphia will back him unlike anything James has seen outside of Cleveland. He has two seasons to make Philly his town.”
Ironically, LeBron — at $3.8 million for his season salary — is earning the most relatively modest portion of this windfall. But between his partnerships with companies like Fanatics, his longtime entrepreneurial zeal and his net worth north of $1 billion (not to mention the potential legacy gains of delivering wins in yet another city), he will be just fine.
Get Caught Up
Big talkers from the sports business industry:
Ohio State and Notre Dame’s jersey patch jackpot: Yesterday, the Buckeyes went first, with JP Morgan Chase in a deal reportedly valued at $17 million per year. That left observers gobsmacked … for a few hours, until Notre Dame came out with its jersey patch deal (SoFi) for a reported $18 million-$20 million. Staggering. That’s right around what the top teams in the NBA command for their jersey patches.
(Remember: The Big 12 just sold a sponsored patch on EVERY conference member’s football and basketball jerseys for $20 million total.)
More on this below.
FIFA’s $20 billion commercial spin-off: Fresh off minting cash from the 2026 World Cup, FIFA is looking ahead to new ways to mine the event: “FIFA Forward Enterprises” will be a commercially focused newco managing FIFA’s big events (including the World Cup) and sell 21 percent of itself for more than $4 billion, investment reportedly led by Josh Kushner, whose Thrive Eternal fund previously took a stake in the San Francisco Giants.
The blowback is real: “The soul and governance of football are not assets to trade — especially with zero transparency as to who gains financially,” UEFA, the European association of football leagues, said in a statement. “None of us are the owners of football. It is not FIFA’s to sell.” (Welllll: FIFA does control — and already sells, in many other ways — the World Cup, just like … UEFA controls/sells the Champions League?)
UNC football’s management debacle: “Here’s what we do know about (GM Mike) Lombardi’s time in Chapel Hill: Arrogance plus incompetence is a lethal combination.” — Bruce Feldman
MLB labor battle, cont’d: The league proposed a “50/50” split. The contentious part is a split of what? (The league IDs a LOT of “expenses” that come off the top before a split.) Highly recommend Evan Drellich’s full reporting on this to get a handle on what will be the crux of the dispute.
(Tangentially related: Stanford football players are testing the waters of labor organizing themselves.)
More on the ESPN layoffs: “It might just be the reality of the digital media world’s impact catching up to ESPN. But when there is no room for David Lloyd, Stephania Bell, Charles Davis and the rest, it says something about what type of team you are building.” — Andrew Marchand, who broke the initial story.
Cathy Engelbert vs. WNBA players, cont’d: “Engelbert might never be considered as chill, down for the cause or the kind of boss the players would want to sit down with and sip a ‘Stud Bud’ cocktail. But last we checked, the WNBA is booming.” — Candace Buckner, who adds: “No offense to these elite athletes, but a commissioner was never meant to be a camp counselor.”
Other current obsessions: The Yankees’ newest George Costanza bobblehead … Angel Reese’s Barbie collab … Former NY Met José Iglesias going to Broadway … Mayo’s All-Ireland 75-year-old curse-breaking … Mark Cuban investing in the A’s …
What I’m Wondering
More on the college jersey-patch explosion
I can point you to a handy explainer of the jersey patch basics, but to dive into why this is inevitable everywhere, I also want to share insights from my colleague Antonio Morales, who really dug into this today.
💬 “When push comes to shove, it’s difficult to envision how (programs) will resist the payday that comes with a jersey-patch agreement — especially now that it costs $40 million or more to build a roster to compete at the highest levels of college football.”
“Notre Dame and Ohio State — and the others that surely will follow — will try to uphold their winning standards by leaning into every possible competitive advantage. And while some fans might not like it, you know what they hate more? Losing.”
Grab Bag
Data Points
🎟️ 19,783
Attendance at last weekend’s 2026 WNBA All-Star Game in Chicago, the first year the WNBA had more attendees at its All-Star Game than the NBA did (15,973).
🎓 18
Number of college hoops players (that we know of) who are making more money this upcoming season than LeBron’s $3.8 million salary.
⚽ $1.39 billion
That was Real Madrid’s revenue for 2025-26, its latest world record for a football club.
Name to Know: Jackson Koivun
⛳ “He says his superpower is his mindset, not his talent. I believe him.” — Gabby Herzig, on golf’s 21-year-old mega-phenom.
📺 One more: Luke Kuechly, the next great NFL TV analyst. Per Marchand, the 2026 Pro Football Hall of Famer is locked in as Netflix’s No. 1 NFL game analyst, starting with the streamer’s Week 1 game in Australia. He will impress fans watching for the first time, and he has as high a ceiling on TV as anyone working right now.
Peak of the Week
Elise Devlin asked 13 athletes for the best mental advice they ever received. Some great answers here. Couple of my favorites:
• Steph Curry: “Next play.”
• Jason Kelce: “Embrace losing.”
• Larry Fitzgerald Jr.: “Sleep is underrated.”
‘Name-Dropped’ Bonus!
Huge thanks to all who accepted the “MoneyCall Email Forward Challenge” last week! With gratitude, here is the first batch of name-drops: Brooke Hanshaw, Gordy Woelper, Chuck Connell, Tom Smith, Peter Evangelista, Kevin O’Rourke, Matt Dishongh, Joseph Silva, Michael Lapin, Dave Lucas, Rob Quigg, Scott Greenwald, Dawn Gerdt, Scott McNevan, Chet Justice, Kent Miner, Mike Ivcic, Ned Goddard, Taylor Birks, Karen Hartman, Westby Castpersen, Clyde Foster, Dan Smith, Karen Roman.
Beat Dan in Connections: Sports Edition
Puzzle No. 674
Dan’s time: 00:37
Try the game here!
Worth Your Time
Highly recommended business-adjacent reads for your downtime or commute:
Behind the scenes at Fanatics Fest: What happens when you walk around Fanatics Fest with Fanatics founder Michael Rubin? Larry Holder found out.
Three more:
• The rise of Frank “The Tank” Fleming and the big business of being mad at the Mets (via Sam Blum)
• Why the New York Giants are in West Virginia and how they turned the Greenbrier into their home away from home (via Charlotte Carroll)
• Asli Pelit’s “Down to Business”: Can a private equity deal (featuring Pau Gasol) accelerate Spanish women’s soccer?
📫 Back next Wednesday! Text your colleagues this link so they can get MoneyCall every week for free. And check out The Athletic’s other newsletters, too.
