Going Rogue

This is an infrastructure bet behind the shift from athlete-as-earner to athlete-as-owner: giving elite players real equity stakes in brands, not just “ambassador” roles, turns influence into a true skin‑in‑the‑game engine where the athlete’s upside is tied to the brand’s success, not just its marketing cycle. The McCourty twins told me about why they got involved with Patricof for this very reason…their episode will drop in the coming weeks.

College athletics is a business now, and RIFs happen in the business world. The days of campus administrative bloat are no longer in play inside the athletic facilities, where every role has to justify its own revenue contribution. I expect we’ll see more of this.

Columbus just paid $205 million for an NWSL expansion franchise. Atlanta paid $165 million at the end of last year, which was a record at the time; in 2021, you could get in for $2-5 million. Data like this is exactly why people like Terrence Murphy are so bullish on emerging leagues and teams. The Haslam Sports Group clearly agrees.

This auction is about what the market is willing to pay to bolt a full‑stack, sports‑first representation platform into a Hollywood or private‑equity engine. WME and CAA sitting it out is a bet that they’d rather own the flow than integrate the infrastructure, while UTA and Patrick Whitesell’s WIN are signaling they want to play ball. This isn’t a scandal‑driven fire sale, it’s a price-discovery moment for what a fully scaled, cross-border representation platform is actually worth.

Callisto Research and Muddy Waters dropped a coordinated short report on Sportradar, sending the stock down 20%. The allegation: roughly a third of revenue tied to unlicensed gambling operators. CEO Carsten Koerl fired back hard, calling it defamatory and manufactured. Muddy Waters deployed field‑style investigators to an industry conference…this wasn’t just a desk‑research short report. Sportradar sells picks and shovels to the modern sports‑betting economy, which means its compliance and reputational surface area is enormous and hard to fully police. Innocent until proven guilty, but this one is worth watching closely.

This is not going to be pretty. And yet, people will still act confused when we see extremely poor outcomes for a generation raised as degens.

This feels right in honor of the NFL Draft starting today. 26 years ago, the GOAT was the Patriots’ 6th round selection — check out the moment Mike Tirico and Mel Kiper covered it.