5 Charts That Capture How the Sports Economy Is Changing

Today we’re tackling petabytes of soccer, eight-figure coaches, youth sports price tags, the attention war, and prediction market mania.

Let’s dive in.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: [email protected]

– Brent