This Week’s Most Interesting Sports Business Stories

In this week’s SportsMoney Playbook: a huge funding round for NBA Top Shot, MLB team values and a rising tennis star builds his brand. Plus: a Nascar team finds success with its side business.

Pro Basketball

Dapper Labs, the company behind the wildly popular NBA Top Shot digital collectibles, has raised $305 million as it takes on Ethereum with its scalable blockchain.

With the WNBA celebrating its 25th season, the Sparks have become the first American women’s sports team with a direct sponsorship from an alcoholic beverage company.

Pro Football

Washington Football Team majority owner Dan Snyder is on the verge of buying out his three limited partners at a huge discount, but he needed a push from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, a source tells us.

Soccer

Players from Norway’s Tromsø IL are calling for a boycott of the 2022 World Cup after a shocking report claimed that more than 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the tournament a decade ago.

Many renowned Spanish soccer players honed their talents in futsal, a soccer variant that uses a smaller, slightly heavier ball and is contested indoors by teams of five players. A new partnership will help the game grow in England.

Tennis

Daniil Medvedev is the first men’s tennis player from outside the “big four” to crack the top two in the rankings since 2005. Now, he wants to build his personal brand.

Auto Racing

Hendrick Motorsports has built a successful side business out of old and beat-up racecars, repurposing them for amateur track-day experiences with sales in the seven figures thus far.

Sports Science

Researchers in the U.K. have developed a spit test that can quickly diagnose concussions, with 94% accuracy in a study of more than 1,000 male rugby players.

Final Four participants Houston and UCLA are among the more than 100 college programs and professional sports franchises training with Sparta Science, which uses tech to manage training regimens and injury risk.

Sports Marketing

Sponsors that stuck it out through the pandemic were rewarded: Thanks to the sports world’s digital transformation and pent-up demand, sponsors of 32 pro sports properties reached more fans in 2020 than in 2019, and sponsor recall improved, according to a new study.

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Featured Story

Baseball’s Most Valuable Teams 2021: New York Yankees On Top At $5.25 Billion

A year of pandemic-related losses didn’t stop the average MLB team value from increasing 3%, to an all-time high of $1.9 billion. Leading our annual ranking of MLB’s most valuable teams, as usual, are the Yankees, who are up 5%, to $5.25 billion. But they weren’t the only top-tier franchise to see a gain like that. See who rounded out the top five.

Hot Reads:

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Upon Further Review

Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, the founder of Rocket Companies, plans to invest $500 million over the next ten years to aid community organizations and low-income residents in his home city of Detroit. The initiative comes after a rollercoaster year for Gilbert, who saw his fortune rise by more than $33 billion with his company’s IPO in August and plummet by $25 billion in a single day in March. Still, Gilbert is shooting up the ranks of the world’s richest sports team owners; he’s currently worth nearly $50 billion.

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The Last Word

“As women, we’re not afraid of those challenges. We’ll jump over those hurdles. Do whatever it takes.” – Blake Bolden

Blake Bolden became the first Black woman to play pro hockey in 2015, the NHL’s first Black female pro scout in January 2020 and the first women’s player with a signature stick last month. And she has no plans to slow down. Read more on Bolden’s path to hockey success.

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