An Apple A Day

On keeps taking share from $NKE ( ▼ 0.09% ) , yet $ONON ( ▲ 3.09% ) stock is down over 35% YTD. This operator with past stops at Burberry, Ralph Lauren, and SYKY now owns the job of turning brand heat into repeat buyers.

Hopping from one $5 billion apparel brand to another, Guerrieri brings the Skims playbook of stores as content to Vuori's aggressive retail rollout.

Flutter's portfolio spans FanDuel, Sisal, and Sportsbet, which makes Cooley the person reconciling one of the most complex sets of books in global gambling for $FLUT ( ▼ 2.21% ) shareholders.

A career spanning Reebok, Adidas, Overtime, and Under Armour positions Rutstein as the youth-culture marketer the PGA Tour needs to win the fans growing up on YouTube golf and TGL.

Remember The Owner’s Era from back in May? Superstar athletes increasingly partner with brands where they can have "impact, ownership, and creative input," because traditional cash-only endorsement deals don’t excite someone who made $70 million on the pitch this year. On has run this play before, and it made Roger Federer several hundred million dollars – roughly 3x what he earned in prize money over 24 seasons.

Those commercials you’ve been seeing with Nick Saban and Deion (not Aflac, the other ones) are for the Protect College Sports Act, which just cleared a key Senate vote 77-22 and now heads to a tougher fight in the House. Back in July, I sat down with Dary Stone, one of the central coordinators behind the bill. Tap in and learn how it all came together:

Steve Jobs loved to quote Picasso with, "Good artists copy, great artists steal." Apple’s new Health app already borrows heavily from Oura and Whoop, and now it's exploring a screenless band of its own. The device likely won't debut until 2028, but the headline alone could create some jitters around Oura's freshly filed IPO and Whoop's likely one to follow.

Tennessee's 99-year ground lease around Neyland Stadium is stadium-anchored, mixed-use entertainment playbook Kyle Israel walked us through in November. The project is bankrolled by Arctos with RVX and Magellan running the build. This piece runs the numbers, and the school's take looks thin: $1.5 million a year in ground rent plus a small cut of revenue above $25 million. I still expect dozens of schools to copy this model, so the lesson for the next AD is to negotiate harder than UT did.

Rolapp talked about the PGA Tour’s opportunity in two numbers: golf participation is up nearly 40% since COVID with half that growth under 35, while the average non-major telecast viewer is around 66. His fix starts with the product, a rebuilt competition model relaunching in 2028. Pair that with the recent hire of Tyler Rutstein as CMO (see People Moves above) and the Tour's plan to reach younger fans seems to be taking shape.

Shockingly, Vaught-Hemingway didn’t start selling beer until October 19, 2019.

The 2019 Tigers, led by Coach O and Joe Burrow, beat Vandy 66-38. The beer taps were the only thing in Nashville that stopped LSU that day.