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A quick tour of what’s there:

• Podcasts — Insider conversations with the leaders driving the Sports Economy, from elite athletes and investors to visionary founders and executives.

• Essays — Deep dives into the trends, companies, and category-defining shifts shaping the Sports Economy.

• Field Notes — 4 people moves, 3 announcements, 2 things worth your time, and 1 stat that matters in the Sports Economy.

Same voice, better format. If anything looks off in your inbox over the next couple of weeks, just reply and I’ll sort it out.

I’m grateful to everyone who has followed along.

Onward!

– Brent

SKYBOX >

Sports are serious business.

On Under the Number, Brent Peus goes deep with the leaders driving the Sports Economy, from elite athletes and investors to visionary founders and executives.

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🎥 Watch on YouTube:

Spotify:

🎧 Apple Podcasts >

🏟️ Know someone trying to break into the Sports Economy? Do them a favor—share this episode and help them stay ahead of the game.

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The Connection:

Dary is Dallas-based, and I was introduced to him by my friend Wyatt Smith.

Quote of the Episode:

"If you pick a cause that, if you're successful, benefits a whole lot of people for a really long time — that's the deal you want to spend your time on. The art of the deal is picking the right cause."

Bet You Didn’t Know:

By Dary's account, football is about 85% of all the media value in college sports. When everyone's fighting over college sports money, they're really fighting over football.

Learn more about the Protect College Sports Act >

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ICYMI: Last week’s essay, 5 Charts That Capture How the Sports Economy Is Changing ⬇️

BONUS: Check out the third installment of Clubhouse with Dominyck Bullard (Athletiverse), Matthew Jester (CNC Partners), and me:

Stay tuned and share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within sports, media & entertainment — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com

– Brent

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Let’s dive in.

1. The beautiful game has been digitized

Roughly 45x more data will be captured at this year's World Cup than in 2022 (though that compares a 104-match tournament to a 64-match one, so the honest per-match number is closer to 28x). It’s a massive increase either way, and it's coming from every facet of the game at once: from event data like passes, shots, and xG, to optical tracking and wearables measuring fatigue and recovery, to fan-side data from streaming, fantasy, and betting apps.

Downstream, this enables more precise player health management, more dynamic viewing experiences, and, inevitably, more gambling — see #5.

2. CFB is minting millionaire coaches

In 2016, I was a freshman on the Stanford football team and David Shaw had reported compensation of $4.4 million. He was fresh off his second Rose Bowl victory and third appearance in four years, and even then the number was astounding. In 2025, 47 coaches in the FBS took home more than $5 million for the year. Today, 13 coaches are earning more than $10 million per year.

Back to 2016 — none of my teammates, not even this guy, earned a penny that season.

3. Youth sports’ price of admission is ticking up

Family spending on a child’s primary sport climbed 46% overall in five years. Take a look at the mix, and you’ll see that a lot of the uptick comes from logistics and lodging. Fastbreak AI CEO John Stewart described the supply side of this equation on the podcast when he said, “Sports tourism, especially for the hotels, is probably even more reliable than business travel in this day and age.” Check out my episodes with Cameron Korab (YSBR) and Carrie Gamper & Mark Dvoroznak (BASE Sports Group) to understand how commercial partnerships, when done right, can subsidize a lot of these logistics costs and allow more kids to play and more coaches to benefit.

Worth noting: for a family in serious club sports, $1,016 is closer to a single month than a full year.

4. YouTube is dominating under-55s

Substack’s expert “media cartographer” Evan Shapiro curates incredible data on this category. His cross-screen index is a serious attempt to treat attention as zero-sum. If you're scrolling with the television on, that time gets credited to the phone, not the TV. Measured that way, among people 13-54, YouTube alone pulls more attention than Disney, WBD, Paramount, NBC Universal, and Fox combined.

Which is why, for the first time, YouTube and Netflix are at the table for World Cup rights.

5. Prediction market volume is skyrocketing

Kalshi’s volume went from $1.9 billion in 2024 to $24.2 billion in 2025 to $127 billion so far this year. The company is reportedly in talks to raise at a $40+ billion valuation, nearly double where it stood in May. Sports drives nearly all of its volume — 80 to 90% of wagers placed on the platform — which is why David Forman, VP of research at the American Gaming Association, calls it “a sportsbook with a small prediction market business attached to it.” Darren Rovell noted that $497.7 million was traded on Kalshi on Super Bowl LX, compared to $133.8 million wagered in all of Nevada.

The company’s argument that it isn’t a sportsbook may not hold much longer.

Shoutout to Rex Woodbury for the inspiration on this format. Each quarter, he publishes 10 Charts That Capture How the World Is Changing on Digital Native.

ICYMI: This week’s UTN Replay episode with Brian Kopp, Partner at Ryan Sports Ventures ⬇️

BONUS: Check out the third installment of Clubhouse with Dominyck Bullard (Athletiverse), Matthew Jester (CNC Partners), and me:

I publish an essay every other Thursday.

Stay tuned and share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within the Sports Economy — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com

– Brent

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→ Watch on Spotify or listen on Apple Podcasts >

This conversation with Brian is a UTN Replay, originally published on December 5, 2025.

Sports are serious business.

On Under the Number, Brent Peus goes deep with the innovators driving the Sports Economy—from elite athletes and investors to visionary founders and executives.

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🏟️ Know someone trying to break into the Sports Economy? Do them a favor—share this episode and help them stay ahead of the game.

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The Connection:

I first reached out to Brian on LinkedIn, mentioning our mutual friend, P3 Founder Dr. Marcus Elliott (check out Marcus’s episode here).

Quotes of the Episode:

“When we were first pitching [Ryan Sports Ventures] to the Ryan family, one of their questions was ‘Will there be enough deal flow?’ And that kind of made me chuckle because I knew that wouldn’t be the problem, the problem would be choosing the right ones.”

“How do you talk to, engage with, and eventually monetize and commercialize that next generation of fans? That’s a challenge for sports properties, for media companies, for sports sponsors—really anybody who touches the sports ecosystem and landscape is trying to figure that out.”

On Ryan Sports Ventures’ Investment in The Snow League: “There are more skiers and snowboarders globally than there are golfers. And yet, other than the Olympics, there have not been a lot of ways for them to engage in that sport at the highest level.”

Bet You Didn’t Know:

The Ryan family made one of the largest gifts in the history of U.S. higher education, a $480 million donation to Northwestern University that is helping fund the new Ryan Field.

Brian is a Partner at Ryan Sports Ventures and the Founder of Stretch 4 Advisory. Through Stretch 4 Advisory, Brian provides strategic business services to sports technology and data companies including Riddell Sports, Wilson Sporting Goods, Peak Performance Project (P3), and FastModel Sports.

Brian was previously Partner and Group CEO of Phoenix Sports Partners, a sports investment and operating company. Before his role at Phoenix, Brian served as President of North America for Catapult Sports, a global provider of sports analytics and performance products. Prior to Catapult, Brian served as Senior Vice President of Sports Solutions for STATS LLC. At STATS, Brian was responsible for the revolutionary SportVU player tracking technology as well as building innovative analytics solutions for NBA, NFL and NCAA teams. Prior to his career in sports business, Brian worked in investment banking and private equity before transitioning into corporate strategy and M&A roles.

Brian received his BA in Economics from Wabash College, where he played basketball. He also received his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Brian resides in the Chicago area with his wife Rita and their five children.

Bio via Ryan Sports Ventures

ICYMI: Last episode with BASE Sports Group Co-Founders Mark Dvoroznak & Carrie Gamper ⬇️

BONUS: Check out the second installment of Clubhouse with Dominyck Bullard (Athletiverse), Matthew Jester (CNC Partners), and me:

Stay tuned and share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within sports, media & entertainment — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com

– Brent

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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.

We have a Friday Field Notes this week. I spent yesterday in smoky NYC at Gameplan, where I got to catch up with a handful of friends from various parts of the Skybox universe. The event featured fireside chats from LeBron, Dana White, Jimmy Pitaro, and Lindsey Vonn.

Hottest take: In his chat with Andrew Ross Sorkin, White said he thinks Power Slap can be as big as the UFC.

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4 People Moves

• Khalid Jones: Jones takes the reins as Chief Executive of North America. Lucerne-headquartered Allwyn is the operator of the UK National Lottery, a majority shareholder in PrizePicks, and sponsors the F1 formation lap.

• James Ruth: An SMU grad returning to Big D, Ruth built Austin FC's brand from launch into MLS's longest active sellout streak and a 24,000-seat season ticket waitlist.

• Hannah Pym: Liverpool’s new marketing leader arrives after ten years at THG, where she climbed from marketing director of UK Beauty to Group Chief Brand Officer. With LFC’s 200-million-person fanbase, Pym has her work cut out for her.

• Dirk-Jan van Hameren: WHOOP’s new CMO started in the Nike mailroom and finished in the c-suite after a 32-year run. With $575 million raised in March and an IPO named as the next step, WHOOP now has ex-Nike professionals in their CMO, CFO, and CCO seats.

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Tracking the starting lineups and MVPs at every company worth watching in sports, media and entertainment.

People Moves is powered by Live Data Technologies. Learn more >

3 Announcements

• Khosla family agrees to purchase defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks for $9.612 billion, sources say | CNBC Sport

  • Shoutout to UTN guest Seth Wickersham for getting this scoop. The number shatters league comps — 59% above the then-record $6.05B Josh Harris paid for the Commanders three years ago, and more than double Rob Walton's 2022 Broncos price. Khosla will divest his 49ers minority slice, which he held alongside Silicon Valley peers Bret Taylor (Sierra/OpenAI), Byron Deeter (Bessemer), and Will Griffith (ICONIQ) — to take control in Seattle. Expect more moves like this from hyper-liquid tech leaders in the coming years.

• Bluestone Equity Partners Leads $55 Million Growth Investment in Poolhouse | Business Wire

  • I flagged Poolhouse eight months ago as a business that fits squarely in the IRL-community node of the Sports Economy value chain. But it's the data play that makes these businesses legible to growth investors. Bluestone calls the venues "the most visible expression of the brand," while the $55 million primarily funds BillyQ (its proprietary gameplay system) as they push it into hotels, casinos, bars, and eventually residences. I brought Poolhouse up with Lucra CEO Dylan Robbins because once these activities get a data layer, the room for gamification and wagering shows up immediately.

• New York Yankees in Talks With Apollo Over $3 Billion Financing Deal | Bloomberg

  • The Yankees are in advanced talks with Apollo for roughly $3 billion in financing (mostly debt with some equity), which Hal Steinbrenner would use to refinance existing obligations and fund future projects. As a reminder, MLB caps individual institutional funds at a maximum 15% ownership stake in a single franchise.

2 Things Worth Your Time

• Sean Payton’s second chance: Inside the Denver Broncos’ Super Bowl quest | ESPN

  • Sean Payton gave Seth Wickersham (see above) unprecedented access during Denver's playoff push, and the piece captures the intensity, quirks, and obsessiveness inside an NFL facility. Fans only see the finished product on Sunday. This takes us behind the curtain, into the long days and the late, and I mean LATE, nights that produce it.

• Alexis Ohanian Live on TBPN

  • The Reddit co-founder, Seven Seven Six GP, and husband to Serena Williams gives an articulate breakdown of why sports and live events are booming. UTN regulars will do a lot of nodding watching this one. Can't say I'm sold on Coogan's robot circus, though.

1 Stat That Matters

• >$400 Million - Total ticket sales for The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere in Las Vegas. (Brad Thomas / Wide Moat Research)

  • So far this year, only five movies — counting their full global theatrical runs across thousands of screens in hundreds of countries — have earned more at the box office than Sphere has made from its single-venue run of The Wizard of Oz.

Pull of the Week

• Lionel Messi gives baby Lamine Yamal a bath in 2007 photoshoot

  • This is one of the most mind-boggling, odds-defying things I’ve ever seen. 19 years ago, families entered a raffle and Barcelona players were matched to them by a random draw, and by chance a 20-year-old Messi was paired with five-month-old baby Lamine Yamal. Yes, it’s real.

ICYMI: This week’s episode with Mark Dvoroznak and Carrie Gamper of BASE Sports Group ⬇️

BONUS: Check out the second installment of Clubhouse with Dominyck Bullard (Athletiverse), Matthew Jester (CNC Partners), and me:

I publish Field Notes every other Thursday.

Stay tuned and share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within the Sports Economy — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com

– Brent

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Sports are serious business.

On Under the Number, Brent Peus goes deep with the leaders driving the Sports Economy, from elite athletes and investors to visionary founders and executives.

Share

Subscribe now

🎥 Watch on YouTube:

Spotify:

🎧 Apple Podcasts >

🏟️ Know someone trying to break into the Sports Economy? Do them a favor—share this episode and help them stay ahead of the game.

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The Connection:

Mark and I connected via LinkedIn back in December, and we first chatted in January. He introduced me to Carrie in mid-May, and we recorded this episode later that month.

Quote of the Episode:

“Mom’s favorite team isn’t the college she went to. It isn’t the major league team. It isn’t the NBA team. It isn’t the NFL team or the pro soccer team in her area. It’s her kid’s team.

Engaging with parents and athletes at the grassroots level, where they’re training and competing — the affinity it creates, the awareness it creates, the connection to the brand it creates — that’s why every brand should be engaging at the youth sports level.”

Bet You Didn’t Know:

Both were D-I athletes: Carrie played lacrosse at the University of Denver, Mark baseball at West Virginia University.

Learn more about BASE Sports Group >

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ICYMI: This week’s podcast episode with 4x NBA Champion John Paxson, former Chicago Bulls player, coach and GM ⬇️

Stay tuned and share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within sports, media & entertainment — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com

– Brent

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2.6 grams of carbs, 4.2% ABV, and 93% water. Pairs extremely well with ballparks, stadiums, and arenas.

I bought one at the Argentina vs. Jordan World Cup match in Dallas last month. It cost $17.50. Proportionately, 1.1 ounces of the liquid I consumed was non-water.

I was in the middle of an absolutely electric evening, basking in the glory that is a live sporting event of that caliber. And yet, I walked away from the concession stand ticked off. That’s the type of pricing that doesn’t just make you think, “wow, that’s expensive” but “wow, that’s offensive.”

I’m not trying to sound like a cheapskate. Combined with $120 parking, these are some of the only things that can poke holes in the otherwise giddy fan experience in environments like these.

The spectacle and everywhere-all-the-time nature of live sports has never been bigger. It’s been on full display this summer with a star-studded NBA finals, the first US-hosted World Cup in 32 years, bloody hand-to-hand combat on the White House Lawn, and of course Wimbledon. And yet, access for fans has never felt harder.

I’m not talking about the six-figure courtside seats, midfield boxes, or Centre Court debentures. I’m talking about the ordinary cost of being a fan: concessions, parking, tickets, merch, and streaming (it cost over $1,000 to watch every NFL game last year across streaming providers). The fee-stacking and downright price gouging is an unrelenting beat down.

The structural expansion is real and it’s happening all around us. The NFL added a 17th regular-season game in 2021; an 18th is already on the table, and the overseas slate keeps growing — we’ll have nine games abroad this season, and the league has its eyes on sixteen. College football took the Playoff from four teams to twelve in 2024, and is openly debating a jump to as many as twenty-four by 2027. Several groups are finalizing bids for NBA expansion franchises in Las Vegas and Seattle — reportedly valued at $7 to $10 billion apiece, a windfall that would hand each of the league's thirty existing owners a check around $500 million simply for agreeing to split the pie two more ways. March Madness has scope creep too, with both the men's and women's tournaments expanding from 68 to 76 teams next year. More games, more rounds, more markets, more inventory.

Here’s the thing about all that expansion — it only happens because the appetite is insatiable. The growth is the proof of the hunger. The extractive price gouging is the wrong strategy because it’s the only thing that could possibly alienate a team's most ravenous customers: the fans.

Teams and leagues need to be less like Ticketmaster, and more like Costco.

Costco’s iconic hot dog combo has been priced at $1.50 since 1985, and it is beloved. A recent Instagram video of CEO Ron Vachris ordering one and saying “The hotdog price won’t change as long as I’m around” has 18.5 million views and nearly 1 million likes. The point of the Costco Dog — which would be around $5 adjusted for inflation — has never been the margin.

The point is you walk out feeling like you got away with something, so you come back next weekend, and you renew the membership, and you do it for thirty years. Low margin, high trust, repeat business. There is a reason Costco has a world-class NPS score.

One sports group is already running this play beautifully, and it’s Arthur Blank’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. It has $2 hot dogs, $3 pizza, $5 beers, free refills — the same prices since the doors opened in 2017, and it even managed to stiff arm FIFA and hold strong through the World Cup.

What may at first glance sound like a charity to the fans has had the opposite effect. The first year Atlanta cut concession prices by 50%, per-fan spending increased 16% and the stadium ranked number one in the league in fan satisfaction. Understanding consumer psychology allows you to win the relationship and better monetize the appetite that everyone else is trying to strip-mine.

And to be clear, none of this means flattening the top end. Keep the ultra-luxury suites and front rows for the people who will pay anything and never once glance at a price tag. That revenue is real, and I’d never tell anyone to leave it on the table. But don’t let the core product — the ordinary fan’s night — get quietly chipped away.

There’s no real strategy behind price gouging when fan demand runs as deep as it does. It’s merely impatient greed and failure to play the long game with the exact people whose passion is the only reason any of this is worth billions in the first place.

Now, to acknowledge a rebuttal to all of this: nobody’s actually staying home. The stadiums are full. Some teams have season ticket waiting lists that are a decade long. Media rights deals and franchise valuations continue to climb to new record highs. Fans complain about the $17.50 beer and then promptly buy the $17.50 beer. If people were really being pushed too far, wouldn’t the numbers say so?

That’s exactly why this up-and-to-the-right moment matters – because nothing looks broken yet. I’m writing this because I believe that if this continues, things eventually will. Revealed preference is a lagging indicator that tells us what people tolerated last season, not what they’ll walk away from next decade. A packed stadium and a quietly eroding one look identical from the owner’s box, right up until they don’t.

For the 2025 season, a family of four could expect to pay $1,898.02 to attend a Lions game at Ford Field with four of the cheapest tickets, two 16-ounce beers, two 20-ounce sodas, four hot dogs and parking. The median household income in Detroit is $39,938.

When that stadium fills up 70,000 strong on Sundays in the fall, a lot of those seats are being financed — the splurge going on a credit card, the debt racked up. Reckless, maybe. But understandable, because for many of these people, there is genuinely nothing on Earth they would rather spend that money on.

A stadium is the last room in America where billionaires and bricklayers stand under the same roof and lose their voices for the same team. It would be a tragedy if the next era of sports slowly priced its back rows all the way out, until the only people left are the ones who were never really stretching to be there.

Most teams and leagues are running an extractive model where they maximize every touchpoint, fragment the access, raise prices until they finally hit resistance. It works, but has an expiration date. The damage never shows up on a statement they’ll read this year.

The alternative is the endurance model: deliberately underprice the things people notice, eat a thinner margin on the hot dog to win the decade on the membership, and build a place people want to spend time (and, not coincidentally, money) inside. One model treats the fans as transactions to be maximized. The other treats them as a relationship to be compounded. With media rights deals, expansion fees, and the biggest stars in history in their uniforms, there has never been more room to fund the second model.

The best operators guard the endurance model like zealots. Vachris is just the latest to hold that line at Costco. Years ago, then-CEO Craig Jelinek floated raising the price of the $1.50 hot dog to cofounder Jim Sinegal. Sinegal didn’t debate the unit economics. He said, “If you raise the f*cking hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out.”

That sounds unhinged until you understand what he was actually protecting. The hot dog is the proof — the small yet unmissable signal that this is a place not trying to get one over on you. Raise it and you don’t just cost the customer a quarter; you break the perception. That’s the part leagues need to keep in mind – pricing isn’t only hitting fans’ wallets, it’s rearranging how they feel about the whole enterprise. Fan goodwill is an asset that compounds and should not be extracted from. Squeeze it for near term ARPU, and you end up damaging the LTV.

This is not some anti-capitalist manifesto. I want these leagues to be worth more, not less. It’s just the feedback of an enthusiastic patron, one who’d like them to thrive for decades and decades.

The fan appetite is real. The money is spectacular. I hope it never stops. But more, chased mindlessly, is exactly how you lose the people whose love for the game made the whole thing valuable in the first place.

Easy now.

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ICYMI: This week’s podcast episode with 4x NBA Champion John Paxson, former Chicago Bulls player, coach and GM ⬇️

BONUS: Check out the first installment of Clubhouse with Dominyck Bullard (Athletiverse), Matthew Jester (CNC Partners), and me:

I publish an essay every other Thursday.

Stay tuned and share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within the Sports Economy — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com

– Brent

Subscribe now

Share

Sports are serious business.

On Under the Number, Brent Peus goes deep with the leaders driving the Sports Economy, from elite athletes and investors to visionary founders and executives.

Share

🎥 Watch on YouTube:

Spotify:

🎧 Apple Podcasts >

🏟️ Know someone trying to break into the Sports Economy? Do them a favor—share this episode and help them stay ahead of the game.

Share

The Connection:

I was introduced to John by a family friend in Santa Barbara named Rich Branning. Rich and John were teammates at Notre Dame during the 1979-1980 season.

Quote of the Episode:

“I’ll say this until the day I can’t speak anymore. The mistakes I made in terms of decisions in an executive role were basketball character mistakes. I’ll go down with guys that are tough and competitive and fight every night — those are the guys I want on our team.”

Bet You Didn’t Know:

The Chicago Bulls didn’t have their own dedicated practice facility until the 1990s. Before that, they practiced at a suburban health club, using a single court that wasn’t even regulation length.

John Paxson has been a cornerstone of the Chicago Bulls for more than 40 years—a rare and remarkable tenure that spans nearly every facet of the game: player, coach, broadcaster, executive and advisor.

After being selected 19th overall by the San Antonio Spurs in the 1983 NBA Draft, Paxson joined the Bulls as a free agent in 1985. A steady and savvy point guard, he became a key contributor during Chicago’s first dynasty during the early 1990s.

Known for clutch shooting and unselfish play, Paxson delivered when it mattered most. During the 1991 NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers, Paxson averaged 13.4 points per game and shot a remarkable .653 from the field. In the title-clinching Game 5 played in Los Angeles, Paxson recorded 20 points, including ten in the closing minutes on a perfect 5-for-5 shooting, helping seal Chicago’s 108-101 victory to capture the franchise’s first NBA Championship.

In what was perhaps the defining moment of his career, Paxson hit a game-winning three-pointer in Game 6 of the 1993 NBA Finals against the Phoenix Suns. With Chicago trailing 98-96 and just seconds remaining, the ball - off of timely passes from teammates Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant - found Paxson at the top of the arc. With calm precision, he drained a three-pointer, giving the Bulls a 99-98 lead with seconds remaining, ultimately securing their third straight championship. That shot remains one of the most clutch plays in NBA Finals history and forever cemented Paxson’s place in Bulls lore.

Following his retirement in 1994, Paxson joined Phil Jackson’s coaching staff for the 1995-96 season—a historic campaign in which the Bulls posted a then-record 72-10 regular season and captured their fourth NBA title. That season, Paxson worked closely with the team’s guards, offering mentorship and tactical insight in areas like decision-making, spacing, and shooting. His presence also helped maintain continuity in the locker room, especially for players who had once been his teammates.

Paxson’s next chapter came in broadcasting, where he served as a color commentator for Bulls television and radio broadcasts during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Working alongside longtime play-by-play voices like Neil Funk, Tom Dore, and Wayne Larrivee, Paxson’s understanding of the Bulls’ triangle offense, defensive schemes, and team culture made him a trusted voice for fans.

After seven seasons as a broadcaster, Paxson became the Bulls General Manager - tasked with building a team strong in character, defense, and team-first values. Paxson was responsible for drafting Bulls icons Kirk Hinrich, Ben Gordon, Luol Deng, Andrés Nocioni, Joakim Noah, and Derrick Rose, among others. Under Paxson’s leadership, the Bulls returned to playoff contention, making the postseason 11 times. His teams were always known for their grit, chemistry, and defensive identity—hallmarks of Paxson’s playing career.

Bio via NBA.com

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ICYMI: Last week’s episode with Ethan Rosenbaum, Co-Managing Partner of Source Golf ⬇️

Stay tuned and share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within sports, media & entertainment — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com

– Brent

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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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Tracking the starting lineups and MVPs at every company worth watching in sports, media and entertainment.

People Moves is powered by Live Data Technologies. Learn more >

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.

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ICYMI: This week’s episode with Ethan Rosenbaum, Co-Managing Partner at Source Golf ⬇️

I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Thursday.

Share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within this ecosystem — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com.

– Brent

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Sports are serious business.

On Under the Number, Brent Peus goes deep with the leaders driving the Sports Economy, from elite athletes and investors to visionary founders and executives.

Share

🎥 Watch on YouTube:

Spotify:

🎧 Apple Podcasts >

🏟️ Know someone trying to break into the Sports Economy? Do them a favor—share this episode and help them stay ahead of the game.

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The Connection:

Last month, Matthew Jester told me I had to meet Ethan Rosenbaum. The thread between them is Rick Hess — Matthew’s current partner and Ethan’s former colleague. Jester made the intro over text, and a week later Ethan and I were sitting down for breakfast in NYC.

Quote of the Episode:

“When I saw the Hot Ones deal, I thought, it would be so interesting to acquire IP on YouTube with financing. Not like an LBO with traditional debt financing, but with brand financing.”

Bet You Didn’t Know:

Stack up every golf creator's channel, strip out the overlap, and YouTube golf still reaches more than 14 million de-duplicated viewers a month. As a platform, YouTube delivers more reach among adults 18 to 49 than all cable networks combined.

Learn more about Source Golf >

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ICYMI: Last episode with Paul Rigault, CEO of Døds Diving League ⬇️

Stay tuned and share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within sports, media & entertainment — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com

– Brent

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Subscribe now

Sports are serious business.

On Under the Number, Brent Peus goes deep with the leaders driving the Sports Economy, from elite athletes and investors to visionary founders and executives.

Share

🎥 Watch on YouTube:

Spotify:

🎧 Apple Podcasts >

🏟️ Know someone trying to break into the Sports Economy? Do them a favor—share this episode and help them stay ahead of the game.

Share

The Connection:

Paul reached out on LinkedIn in March, and we recorded in April once we found a slot that bridged Norway and Texas.

Quote of the Episode:

“These dudes and dudettes are insane. It’s a full professional athlete program. They train every day — they train impact, they train muscle, they train speed…everything you need to be the best diver ever.”

Bet You Didn’t Know:

While half of DDL divers come from traditional diving, the other half comes from a mix of snowboarding, skating, surfing, parkour, and BMX backgrounds.

Learn more about Døds Diving League >

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ICYMI: Last episode with Lewis Burik, Co-Founder & CEO of DubClub ⬇️

Stay tuned and share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within sports, media & entertainment — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com

– Brent

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A global brand born out of a motorcycle crash.

An ultra-premium hospitality business built on the word no.

A once-paralyzed NFL player who reviews a hundred deals a week.

A nine-figure investor betting on the evolution of the trick shot.

Four best friends building their own golf universe.

Identical twins with four Super Bowl rings between them.

A founder who hired a private investigator to track down beloved 90s IP.

An emerging manager who won a US Open match at age fifteen.

A father whose son sits under the brightest spotlight in college football.

An investor who walked into a Seattle coffee shop in 1992 and bet on the people.

All real people, all real conversations. Here’s the full run >

There’s no better way to learn an industry than going direct to the people running it and asking the questions you actually want answered. I’ve treated these past forty episodes as an ongoing education, and I'm learning in public on purpose. One-on-one, unscripted conversations with the decision makers building, investing in, and operating the Sports Economy. Every one of them was generous with time they didn’t owe me, and every single conversation handed me something different to carry forward.

What I didn’t expect was how much would compound. These conversations, paired with my own research, have helped me build real conviction about what I believe in across sports, media, and entertainment. Every few episodes, someone changes my mind on something I thought I’d settled, and that’s exactly the point. Best of all, this has been an incredible way to build real relationships in the space.

Here’s a recap of who joined me over the past 40 episodes, grouped by category:

Investors

• Brian Kopp, Partner at Ryan Sports Ventures

• Jason Illian, Founder & GP of Highmount Capital

• Ben Gardner, Partner at Will Ventures

• CiCi Bellis, Founder & GP of Cartan Capital

• Terrence Murphy, Founder & Managing Partner of Synergy Sports Capital

• Marques Colston, Co-Founder of Champion Capital

• Michael Moe, Founder & CEO of GSV

• Wayne Kimmel, Managing Partner at SeventySix Capital

• Devin & Jason McCourty

• Ty Montgomery, Investor at Next Legacy

• Kyle Israel, Managing Partner at Momentous Sports

• Sean Clifford, Founder & GP of Clifford Capital

Founders & CEOs

• Dr. Jason Wersland, Founder of Therabody

• Gary Spitalnik, Co-Founder of REAL SLX

• Dr. Marcus Elliott, Founder of P3 Sport Science

• Chip Paucek, Co-Founder & CEO of Pro Athlete Community

• Kyle Rudolph, CEO of Alltroo

• Christian Ponder, Founder & CEO of The Post

• Carter Westfall, Co-Founder and CEO of Natural Selection Tour

• Dylan Robbins, Founder & CEO of Lucra

• Lindsay Barnett, Founder & CEO of Playground Productions/Backyard Sports

• Pete Wilson, Co-Founder of the Grass League

• Lewis Burik, Co-Founder & CEO of DubClub

• Matthew Lloyd-Thomas, Founder & CEO of Milky Way Park

• Austin Ekeler, Founder & CEO of Fantasy Royale

• John Stewart, Founder & CEO of Fastbreak AI

• Will Johnson, Founder & CEO of CourseCast

• Ryan Girardot, Co-Founder & CEO of Cerebro Sports

• Barrick Prince, Co-Founder of Creator Sports Network

• Jack Jones, Co-Founder of SūmerSports

• Jack Liechtung, Co-Founder & CEO of Canopy

• Parker Graham, Founder & CEO of Vestible

• Ryan Petkoff, Founder of Petkoff Strategies

• Skyler Logsdon, Co-Founder & CEO of Boomerang

Media

• Cooper Manning, Fox Sports

• Seth Wickersham, ESPN & author of American Kings

• Sid Balaga and Suraj Peramanu, The 4th Quarter

• Yogi Roth, NBC Sports, Big Ten Network, Y-Option

• Cameron Korab, Youth Sports Business Report

A few quotes that have particularly stuck with me:

“Our potential is this big dining room table, but we spend almost all our time living on a little platter in the middle of it. Push out to the edge once in a while, and you find out what you can actually do.” – Dr. Marcus Elliott

“Luck is being prepared when the time is right.” – Dr. Jason Wersland

“Put yourself under extreme pressure in practice, or you’ll never be ready for the big moments in a match.” – CiCi Bellis

“You bet on people. The investment business isn’t complicated. You find these exceptional people, and then you ride that horse.” – Michael Moe

“I don’t need to be admired. I just need to be respected for the work.” – Marques Colston

“Put me in the desert, I’ll find my way to the water.” – Terrence Murphy

“The good guy rule goes so far. The wind blows a bunch of different ways. But if you’re around good people who work hard and do the right thing, at the end of the day you’re going to sleep well.” – Cooper Manning

Here’s to the next 40. I hope you’ll follow along.

ICYMI: This week’s podcast episode with Lewis Burik, Co-Founder & CEO of DubClub ⬇️

I publish an essay every other Thursday.

Stay tuned and share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within the Sports Economy — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com

– Brent

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Subscribe now

Sports are serious business.

On Under the Number, Brent Peus goes deep with the leaders driving the Sports Economy, from elite athletes and investors to visionary founders and executives.

Share

🎥 Watch on YouTube:

Spotify:

🎧 Apple Podcasts >

🏟️ Know someone trying to break into the Sports Economy? Do them a favor—share this episode and help them stay ahead of the game.

Share

The Connection:

Lewis and I first met as teammates at Stanford in 2016 — we’ve been great friends for a decade.

Quote of the Episode:

"I don't think anything really matters besides how we execute, because everybody else is going to have to out-execute us. And if we're killing it, good f*cking luck."

Bet You Didn’t Know:

Some of DubClub’s most popular creators are weather experts who break down microclimates at MLB ballparks and let bettors do the rest.

Learn more about DubClub >

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ICYMI: Last week’s episode with Creator Sports Network Co-Founder Barrick Prince ⬇️

Stay tuned and share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within sports, media & entertainment — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com

– Brent

Subscribe now

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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

• John Dooley: After nearly a decade at IMG and a year and a half as general counsel of Diamond Baseball Holdings, the Silver Lake minor-league rollup, Dooley takes the top legal seat at Playfly Sports, the multimedia-rights platform consolidating commercial control of college and local sports, even as schools increasingly pull those rights in-house to keep all of their sponsorship, licensing, and NIL revenue in the revenue-sharing era.

• Brett Weitz: Fourteen years across Turner and WarnerMedia, where he ran TNT, TBS, and truTV as general manager, then global head of content, talent, and brand sales at X. Weitz now takes the CEO seat at BZZR, the first verified all-sports social platform, which launched in April.

• Jake Dexter: Range Media Partners, full of ex-CAA talent, made a massive splash when it launched in 2020 and has since successfully pushed through a contentious lawsuit. Dexter joins Range Sports as VP of sports content, from Paradigm.

• Stefanie Markman: Led by Jesse Sisgold, Paramount stood up its Sports Entertainment division last fall. Markman joins from Hello Sunshine, where she was general counsel. Before that she spent nearly eight years at Netflix on the scripted side, in the building as the company proved out sports content with Last Chance U in 2016 and Drive to Survive in 2019.

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Tracking the starting lineups and MVPs at every company worth watching in sports, media and entertainment.

People Moves is powered by Live Data Technologies. Learn more >

3 Announcements

• L Catterton in exclusive talks to acquire stake in HYROX | SGI Europe

  • Scott Dahnke must have read last week’s essay. His $40-billion, LVMH-backed firm has a knack for timing wellness trends. It put $75 million into Peloton’s Series D in 2015, then watched membership grow 28-fold and revenue 30x before an $8.1 billion IPO four years later. After buying supplement maker Thorne for $680 million two years ago, it’s now exploring a sale for up to $4 billion.

• CAA, TPG Form $250 Million Holding Company to Acquire Businesses Led by YouTubers and Other Creators | Variety

  • A $250 million vehicle aimed at creator-led businesses reads as firmly on-trend and particularly timely given the box office success of YouTube-bred features like Obsession and Backrooms. The risk is that CAA and TPG are early rather than wrong, because outside a handful of whales like Dude Perfect, the number of creator operations that are genuinely acquirable companies is still thin, for now.

• Department of State Announces Sports Diplomacy Partnership with UFC | U.S. Department of State

  • Flying knee diplomacy? I suppose arm bars are better than arms deals. I actually love the idea of sports-as-soft-power infrastructure, particularly as the US is in the midst of the “Decade of Sport” with the 2026 World Cup, the 2028 LA Olympics, and the 2034 Salt Lake City Winter Games stacked on the calendar.

2 Things Worth Your Time

• My night inside President Trump’s UFC spectacle at the White House | WSJ

  • They actually pulled it off. Jason Gay’s dispatch reads like a skeptic who came to bury the thing and ended up half-charmed by it, somewhere between The Claw and Tyson Fury’s “Sex on Fire” walkout. Yes, the timeline we live in can be absurd. Some nights it’s also a blast.

• The Cost of FIFA’s World Cup Greed | Business of Sport

  • FIFA set an $11 billion target, but the hosts argue the last $2 billion is being extracted straight from fans. Dynamic pricing, blindfolded ballots, and alleged fake scarcity have now drawn AG subpoenas and a real risk of empty stadiums.

1 Stat That Matters

• 812 million – The number of people across Asia who have played Pickleball at least once. 282 million play at least once a month. (UPA Asia)

  • These are mind-blowing numbers. When I think of Pickleball, I immediately think of Boomers in American suburbia, but the global growth is undeniable. My wife and I went to Zambia last year and spent an afternoon dinking with kids in Lusaka.

Pull of the Week

• “Excuse me, I can’t speak English but I am EXCITED!” – Japanese soccer fan in Dallas, Texas

  • Foreigners experiencing America for the first time and documenting it on social media has been one of the highlights of my past few weeks. If you haven’t been following the travels of Freddy, you are missing out big time. This German dude has spent the last ten days discovering the wonders of SEC stadiums, Bass Pro Shops, and late night Waffle House. He may never go back, and given his newfound love for the USA I’d personally love for him to stay.

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ICYMI: This week’s episode with Barrick Prince, Co-Founder of Creator Sports Network

I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Thursday.

Share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within this ecosystem — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com.

– Brent

Subscribe now

Share

Sports are serious business.

On Under the Number, Brent Peus goes deep with the leaders driving the Sports Economy, from elite athletes and investors to visionary founders and executives.

Share

Subscribe now

🎥 Watch on YouTube:

Spotify:

🎧 Apple Podcasts >

🏟️ Know someone trying to break into the Sports Economy? Do them a favor—share this episode and help them stay ahead of the game.

Share

The Connection:

Shoutout to Adam Folsom for putting Creator Sports Network on my radar and making the introduction to Barrick back in March.

Quote of the Episode:

“They’re the new superstars. It used to be Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts, but content creators are the new superstars.”

Bet You Didn’t Know:

When COVID hit, Barrick was a brand new full-time Twitch employee. Within days of the outbreak, the team shipped Stream Aid, a 12-hour live marathon that blended music, sports, and gaming and raised more than $2.77 million for the WHO. It was one of the first events of its kind anywhere, and the kind of standing start almost no other company could have pulled off.

Creator Sports Network is a creator-led broadcaster that empowers creators to legally stream live sports across their own social channels. Check out CSN >

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ICYMI: Last week’s episode with Milky Way Park Founder & CEO Matthew Lloyd-Thomas ⬇️

Stay tuned and share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within sports, media & entertainment — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com

– Brent

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Ok, not Ari Gold. The guy who inspired the character. Ari Emanuel.

In November, MARI acquired IMG’s action sports portfolio, including the Nike Melbourne Marathon and the Escape from Alcatraz triathlon. Then in March it added the Bondi to Manly Ultra, an 80km coastal race in Sydney, to a stable that already includes the Great Ocean Road Running Festival.

UTN readers will remember MARI from Bare Knuckle Brawl, Visceral Capital, Crowded House, and We’ll Do It LIVE!

In The Presence Premium (which came to life on this week’s podcast), I pointed to three converging trends:

• Longevity & wellness

• Identity-driven affinity groups

• Changing status games

These three trends are why the world of endurance competition is booming and capital and talent are flowing in.

Expect even more growth here in the coming years. The driver: GLP-1s. The reason: status.

Not because more people will exercise. Because a prescription alone can’t take you to a finish line.

Let me be clear: the GLP-1 revolution is one of the great public health wins of our lifetime. Eradicating obesity at scale is an unambiguous good. And it’s no longer just a rich-person story.

Roughly one in eight Americans have already used a GLP-1. Under the TrumpRx deals with Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound prices have been slashed. The truly determined can get the molecule for the price of a Netflix subscription on the gray market. It feels like every other ad on TV is for a GLP-1.

The price of leanness is collapsing toward zero from every direction at once. There is no version of the future where looking fit stays scarce.

Packy McCormick made the same observation in Scarce Assets, his essay on what happens when abundance arrives: as he put it, you can't fake a sub-2 hour marathon.

Which means the status symbol of "perceived fitness” packs less of a punch. Lose weight in 2026 the old fashioned way and you might find yourself telling everyone you did it “natty”.

A sub-3 marathon, a competitive Hyrox time, an ultra finish line…these can’t be prescribed. A race result is ranked, timestamped, witnessed, and on a clock.

Then there’s the next category: peptides, TRT, and PEDs.
This is no longer just about weight loss or recovery. It’s about enhancement, and it’s just getting started.

The stack is going mainstream—testosterone, peptides for recovery, and anti-aging protocols. Soon, names like sermorelin, retatrutide, and BPC-157 may carry the same cultural weight that Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound do now. These won't stay confined to medspas in Miami and podcasters in Austin for long.

Much of it is already available through the same compounding pharmacies that democratized GLP-1s. Injury recovery, muscle growth, longevity: people want these things, and the infrastructure to deliver them legally is being built right now.

Pro leagues will hold the line. Peptides are banned across the NFL, NBA, MLB, and the Olympics, and they’ll likely stay that way.

Even so, players quietly spend tens of thousands on offseason stem cell trips to Nicaragua and Costa Rica to rebuild the knees and shoulders that only made it through the season thanks to copious amounts of Toradol. The official posture and the operational reality are two different things. They always have been.

One company to watch: Hone Health.

As enhancement gets normalized, the market around it fragments too: verified divisions, premium natural categories, testing, and the businesses built to serve each lane. And that creates more places for money to flow — event fees, sponsorships, media, recovery brands, diagnostics, and premium communities. The Enhanced Games isn’t my cup of tea, but it’s an intriguing concept and a sign of more to come.

I had never heard of Hyrox until 2023. I now personally know 10+ people who have traveled to compete in one.

When status migrates, capital chases it. The company had fewer than 700 participants at its 2017 Hamburg debut, over 550,000 athletes last season, and a projected 1.3 million across 85 cities this year. Revenue went from ~$130 million to ~$225 million, without paid marketing. Infront bought majority control in 2022 — institutions moved swiftly on this one.

Once medicine lowers the floor, the ceiling becomes the only thing worth signaling. Endurance races become the new “proof of work” for the body. Which is why Ari is buying marathons.

The leanest decade in American history is coming. So is the most competitive one.

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ICYMI: This week’s podcast episode with Matthew Lloyd-Thomas, Founder & CEO of Milky Way Park ⬇️

I publish an essay every other Thursday.

Stay tuned and share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within the Sports Economy — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com

– Brent

Share

Sports are serious business.

On Under the Number, Brent Peus goes deep with the leaders driving the Sports Economy, from elite athletes and investors to visionary founders and executives.

Share

🎥 Watch on YouTube:

Spotify:

🎧 Apple Podcasts >

🏟️ Know someone trying to break into the Sports Economy? Do them a favor—share this episode and help them stay ahead of the game.

💼 JOB ALERT: Milky Way Park is hiring a Head of Marketing and Engagement in NYC. Email me at underthenumberpod@gmail.com if you’d like to learn more.

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The Connection:

This episode traces back to “The Presence Premium,” an essay I published almost four months ago about why companies built around in-real-life, experiential offerings are so well positioned right now. I flagged Milky Way Park as maybe the most on-trend business of them all, and within 48 hours of posting the piece I was on a call with Matt.

Quote of the Episode:

“It’s really hard for me to overstate how important these sports have been in my life. When you do something hard with other people in the outdoors, you build a bond with them that is really special and very hard to replicate.”

Bet You Didn’t Know:

Matt earned his partnership with Thomson Bike Tours partly by passing a test he did not know was a test. Founder Peter Thomson invited him to Barcelona to go riding and quietly brought along one of his fittest guides. Matt put up what he thinks was his highest-ever five-minute power output getting over the climb.

Matthew Lloyd-Thomas is the Founder & CEO of Milky Way Park.

Prior to starting MWP, he was a Vice President at TCG. Prior to joining the firm, he was the Executive Director of Corporate Development at The New York Times, where he led the acquisitions of The Athletic, Wordle, and Serial Productions. He also oversaw The Times’s venture portfolio, leading investments in OpenWeb and Trint, and led operations for The Times’s audio business. Prior to The Times, Matthew worked at TA Associates and Bain & Company. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Yale Daily News Foundation.

Matthew is a graduate of Yale University and holds a B.A. in economics and history.

Bio via TCG

Check out Milky Way Park >

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ICYMI: Last week’s episode with REAL SLX President & Co-Founder (and former Co-Founder of Wheels Up) Gary Spitalnik

Stay tuned and share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within sports, media & entertainment — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com

– Brent

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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.

I had a last-minute opportunity to spend 24 hours in Miami speaking to some very impressive youngsters about the Sports Economy, so yesterday was a travel day. We’ve got a Friday Field Notes this week — please excuse the tardiness.

After work and weddings have taken me to Phoenix, Austin, Palm Springs, Little Rock, NYC, Chicago, New Orleans, and Miami in consecutive weeks, your boy is ready for a travel break (spoiler: he will not get one). It’s amazing how stretches like these can be exhausting and energizing at the same time.

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4 People Moves

• Fiona Morgan: Growing pains? Over the past 12 months, SailGP had one employee departure for every arrival across the Director, VP, and C-Suite ranks, with those who left averaging just 2.3 years on the job.

• Andrew Cohen: After the Live Nation and Ticketmaster antitrust verdict, the case for alternatives in live event ticketing is getting louder. Fever has spent the past year positioning itself as the independent alternative, backed by L Catterton and Point72, fresh off acquiring DICE, and already ticketing for clubs like Real Madrid and Barcelona.

• Tim Stemp: Stemp's resume is the tell here. As Chief Commercial Officer at Lagardère Sports, he ran the commercial side of the ITU World Triathlon Series, a format that, like HYROX, put amateurs and elites on the same course on the same day. The founders are openly chasing Olympic-grade legitimacy, and the elite tier is the piece that needs real broadcast and sponsor value. By his own description, Stemp is there to build its commercial framework as the sport scales.

• Jon Werbeck: Werbeck lands at Cosm after running venue partnerships at Live Nation and a recent stretch on his own as a consultant. His brief is to lead corporate sponsorship strategy across Cosm's venues, the immersive "shared reality" domes the company is scaling from LA and Dallas into Atlanta. Bringing in a sponsorship operator with that venue pedigree is a clear read on where Cosm sees its next layer of commercial growth.

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Tracking the starting lineups and MVPs at every company worth watching in sports, media and entertainment.

People Moves is powered by Live Data Technologies. Learn more >

3 Announcements

• Bipartisan college sports bill proposes salary cap, transfer limit | ESPN

  • The Protect College Sports Act is the most serious federal attempt yet to bring order to the post-2021 landscape, giving the NCAA and the new College Sports Commission antitrust cover to enforce the cap, close NIL workarounds, and reset eligibility and transfer rules. It also collides with the hardest open questions in the sport, from the Big Ten and SEC revenue gap to whether athletes eventually become employees.

• YouTubers Break Box Office Records | The Publish Press

  • Look at Obsession: a $750K budget turned into $148M worldwide because Curry Barker brought his own audience, so the film carried almost no demand risk and almost no marketing spend. This is the CAC Hack in its purest form, where the audience is the acquisition channel and creators already own it.

• Eli Manning’s private equity firm acquires licensing company for NFL Flag in bet on youth sports | CNBC

  • This consortium is the real asset. The Let Kids Play Act runs on a familiar villain, the faceless PE firm extracting fees from families, and a roster of Emmitt Smith, Larry Fitzgerald, and Jameis Winston is the cleanest counter-image money can buy. The prize underneath is flag football, where RCX already runs the largest youth league on the planet right as the sport marches toward varsity sanctioning and a spot in LA28. On that note, flag football is a fantastic development for girls’ high school athletics, with more than 20 states now recognizing it as an official varsity sport and plenty of room left to grow.

    

2 Things Worth Your Time

• At the Center 008 – Part II: the broken economics of the NCAA | Matthew Jester

  • Matthew Jester is putting together a beast of a four-part breakdown on the past, present, and future of the NCAA. Knowledge → synthesis → pattern recognition. That’s Matt’s superpower. Even if you think you have a strong grasp on this system, you'll learn something here.

• Exploring Northwestern University’s ELITE Future Football Stadium | Barstool Chicago

  • Northwestern is redefining college football by trading massive capacity for an intimate, premium experience. They have 35,000 seats, less than half of the Big Ten average (71,000+), where every fan gets a canopy-covered seat with elite sightlines and feels closer to the field than at any other venue in the conference. They're prioritizing quality over quantity, building a year-round community hub through vertical stacking, living-room boxes, and roughly twice the square footage per fan. Brian Kopp, a partner at Ryan Sports Ventures, talked about the project on the pod in December. The Ryan family's $480 million gift to Northwestern is one of the largest in the history of U.S. higher education.

1 Stat That Matters

• > $103,000 – Current price for a courtside ticket for Game 3 of the Finals at Madison Square Garden Monday (People)

  • A similar seat in San Antonio’s Frost Center goes for roughly $55,000 less. The gap is the story: this is the Garden's first Finals game since 1999, a rematch of the very Spurs team the Knicks lost to that year, and you cannot stream the room. That scarcity is the Presence Premium priced in real time.

Pull of the Week

• Art Modell buys the Cleveland Browns for an unprecedented ~$4 million in 1961.

  • Two weeks ago, Arctos took a 3% stake in the team at a $9 billion valuation.

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ICYMI: This week’s episode with REAL SLX Co-Founder Gary Spitalnik ⬇️

I’ll be publishing Field Notes every other Thursday.

Share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within this ecosystem — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com.

– Brent

Share

Subscribe now

Sports are serious business.

On Under the Number, Brent Peus goes deep with the leaders driving the Sports Economy, from elite athletes and investors to visionary founders and executives.

🎥 Watch on YouTube:

Spotify:

🎧 Apple Podcasts >

🏟️ Know someone trying to break into the Sports Economy? Do them a favor—share this episode and help them stay ahead of the game.

Share

The Connection:

I was sitting at the WME x TKO hospitality house during Super Bowl week in San Francisco when Myles Nuzzi called Gary over to our table. He rattled off a handful of wild stories on the spot, mentioned he’d be in Dallas a few days later, and we ended up getting dinner at Mi Cocina. I had the pleasure of hearing even more tales from his incredible career over fajitas and ranch waters.

You’ll struggle to find another podcast that’s had Gary on — I feel honored he took the time to join me for this one.

Quotes of the Episode:

“Memories, not merchandise. In the world we’re living in today, things don’t matter the way they once did. It’s about creating the memories.”

“We could have our events in a garage and they’d be amazing. It’s all about the people.”

“The more you say no, the more people want it.”

Bet You Didn’t Know:

Gary co-wrote "Go New York Go" with his college roommate Jesse Itzler. Thirty-plus years later they still play a version of it at Knicks games. Listen for it on Monday when game 3 takes the finals back to Madison Square Garden.

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ICYMI: Last week’s episode with The 4th Quarter Co-Founders Sid Balaga & Suraj Peramanu ⬇️

Stay tuned and share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within sports, media & entertainment — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com

– Brent

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I wrote the following piece in 2024. The argument was simple: many faceless media brands had become commodities, and the future belonged to the people willing to put their name on the work and go direct.

Last week, James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems agreed to buy a large chunk of Vox Media for ~$300 million. Look closely at what he bought and what he left behind, because the line he drew is the entire argument.

What Murdoch wanted: New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. That network is anchored by shows like “Pivot” and “The Prof G Pod”. Take a look at any piece of Prof G content and you immediately know it’s Scott Galloway’s brand. That is the parasocial premium in action: a face, a voice, a person you feel you know. High signal, hard to commoditize.

Now look at what he passed on: The Dodo, Popsugar, and Eater. This bundle is the purest artifact of the era I wrote about. When I think back to scrolling Facebook in the early to mid 2010s, I remember the deluge of useless listicles and viral videos engineered to be watched, shared, and forgotten. Though we didn’t have a word for it yet, this was, of course, brainrot. Same incentive then as now: cheap algorithmic reach, monetizable for as long as the platform allowed it, only now with the humans removed.

The Facebook algorithm shifted, the cheap Meta ad arbitrage that turned viral clicks into ad-supported page views dried up, and the music stopped abruptly. These brands were commodity content farms all along, and they got exposed.

BuzzFeed down 86 percent. Vice down 93 percent. Mic down 95 percent. Food52 down 96 percent. Same era, same structural flaw. The mighty fell, confirming the thesis we described.

– BP

Here is the original piece:

“Go direct or go home.” – Lulu Cheng Meservey

“The toughest thing about the power of trust is that it’s very difficult to build and very easy to destroy.” – Thomas J. Watson

“Legacy media was shrinking—but now it’s imploding.” – Ted Gioia

Remember playing the game of “telephone” as a kid? It begins with one person whispering a message into someone else’s ear, and the message travels around the circle. Typically, by the time it reaches the last person, it’s unrecognizable from the original content.

The more friction between a news source and its recipient, the more distortion.

Newspaper revenue peaked in 2006.

That same year, Twitter was founded.

The iPhone came out in 2007, Facebook reached 100 million users in 2008, and Instagram was launched in 2010. This was a knockout combo for our collective attention spans. Businesses and media publishers realized this, and the fight for clicks and eyeballs was on.

In this early 2010s period, our Facebook feeds were flooded with silly, strange, and mostly vacuous content from groups like Buzzfeed and Vice. Changes to the Facebook algorithm (de-prioritizing features that send users off their platform to publishers’ sites) slashed traffic to the webpages where publishers hosted advertisements – in many cases their far-too-concentrated source of revenue.

Many media darlings of the 2010s have died or put on life support in the past ~5 years.

In many cases, this is because they were nearsighted in their strategy. They opted for clickbait when young people crave community. This is a key element in the shift from the attention economy to the intimacy economy. Communities (and, in the most successful cases, cult-like followings) are built through audience trust. Trust is built through transparency, authenticity, and consistency. The best way for individuals and businesses to do this is DIRECTLY.

The media businesses that have faltered in recent years have platforms like Substack, X, YouTube, and Spotify to blame. These democratized content creation and distribution — no one needs a news network to hire them for their voice to be heard. We want to hear from smart, interesting people – we don’t want to read faceless, quantity-over-quality content from difficult-to-define digital publishing brands.

From Bari Weiss to Dave Portnoy to Marc Andreessen to Tobi Lutke, business leaders are pulling back the curtain on their companies, missions, and personas by cutting out the middlemen and speaking directly to their tribes.

Why does this private equity CEO have 1 million followers on TikTok? Because he knows that at the end of the day, businesses are just people. He creates content so others can understand what motivates him as a leader, who he enjoys working with, and to pay it forward to others with wisdom and advice. His short-form videos set the tone for who he is and what he has built.

With each tweet, Substack essay, and podcast appearance, these bosses are marketing their businesses, building their brands, attracting talent, and lowering customer acquisition costs. Their content serves as the top of the funnel for many key areas of business development.

They’re not at the mercy of countless committees or consultants who carefully craft their every word before sending out a clunky press release. Instead, they’re controlling the narrative as the person who is actually in the trenches.

Who is the head of the Free Press? Bari Weiss, duh.

Who is the CEO of CNN? Fox News? Uhh…

Who is the boss at Barstool Sports? Dave Portnoy, obviously.

Who is the CEO of ESPN? Couldn’t tell ya.

Who is the CEO of Mr. Beast? Well, Mr. Beast (Jimmy Donaldson) of course.

Who is the CEO of Nickelodeon? No clue.

It’s no wonder why young people are so much more passionate about the former in each of these examples. They feel like they know the leaders and they feel a part of a community.

You can hardly set foot in a bar, visit a golf course, or even walk through the airport without seeing someone wearing Barstool merchandise. When is the last time you saw someone wearing an “ESPN” hat?

On top of everything else, going direct is just flat-out efficient. In July, Joe Biden took to X to announce his resignation from the Presidential race. There was a 16-minute gap between his post and the first report by a legacy media company.

People need leaders, and leaders need to take ownership. The leaders of the stars of tomorrow will cut out the middlemen, take communications by the reins, and earn the trust of their employees, customers, and prospects.

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This piece was originally published on Dash Media on October 6, 2024.

ICYMI: This week’s podcast episode with Sid Balaga & Suraj Peramanu, Co-Founders of The 4th Quarter:

I publish an essay every other Thursday.

Stay tuned and share this with someone who should be paying attention to where the Sports Economy is headed.

 If you’re building, investing, or advising within the Sports Economy — please reach out!

Email: underthenumberpod@gmail.com

– Brent

Subscribe now

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