The year is 1933. Art Rooney has had a busy past decade.

He’s been an amateur boxing champion, Olympic hopeful, three-sport college athlete, semi-pro football player-owner, and minor league baseball player-manager with the Wheeling, West Virginia “Stogies” — where he played alongside his brother and led the league in nearly every offensive category.

And now, thanks to a major regulatory shakeup in Pennsylvania — the repeal of Blue Laws prohibiting non-religious activity from taking place on Sundays — Art sees his opportunity to bring an NFL team to the state.

The 32-year-old pays a $2,500 franchise fee to start the team we now know as the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The early years were lean and the team struggled to finish above .500. Money was tight.

Rooney’s luck turned at the Saratoga Race Course in 1938. A tip from Giants owner Tim Mara netted him $160,000 on a long shot parlay…enough to fund the franchise for five years.

Then came WWII, depleting rosters and bank accounts. Rooney was forced to merge the Steelers with the Eagles (the “Steagles”) in 1943 and the Cardinals (“Card-Pitt”) in 1944 just to keep the franchise alive.

31 gritty years later, the Steelers won the first of their four Super Bowls of the Art Rooney I era.

Today, the combined value of the NFL’s 32 teams ($227 billion) is greater than the GDP of Qatar ($218 billion).

What changed?

Driven by scarcity, media rights, global fandom, and institutional capital, sports franchises have become one of the most lucrative and stable assets on the planet.

Professional team ownership is the most exclusive and strategic investment in the category. The Lakers sold for $10 billion in a deal that closed less than two weeks ago, the largest transaction in sports history. Just yesterday, Sixth Street bought 3% of the New England Patriots at a $9 billion valuation. Apollo Co-Founder Josh Harris paid over $6 billion to acquire the Washington Commanders in 2023. Clearlake Capital became the majority shareholder of Chelsea FC in a $5.2 billion deal in 2022. The list goes on…

Franchise ownership is a pillar that provides unmatched connectivity across the sports ecosystem, positioning owners to deploy capital and add value across countless adjacent opportunities ranging from real estate to gambling to media.

However, the opportunity goes far beyond team ownership — and it isn’t reserved only for the wealthiest people on Earth.

Capital is deployed across all links of the sports economy value chain every day. Venture capitalists, private equity investors, family offices, and sovereign wealth funds are diving into a world beyond Mr. Rooney’s wildest imagination: a diversified, multi-trillion dollar ecosystem with compounding growth across dozens of categories.

For investors today, sports aren’t just a passion play. They’re a gateway into one of the most rapidly expanding economies in the world.

I’ve hosted nearly 40 long-form conversations on the Under the Number podcast with leaders across the industry — founders, investors, professional athletes, and executives — who’ve given me a front-row seat to how the sports economy actually works.

I’ll dig into the nitty gritty of the value chain with deep dives in the weeks and months ahead.

In the meantime, take it from the experts ⬇️

None of this happens without them.

You know, the guys who can have a casual conversation with their coaches mid-70 yard touchdown, nail a full court buzzer beater with the flick of a wrist, or hit three home runs and throw ten strikeouts in the same NLCS game. Those guys.

For teams, they are the product. For trainers, CPG companies, and marketing agencies, they are the customer. And they’re starting younger and playing longer than ever, which is why infrastructure around athlete development and care now spans from grade school to retirement.

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From humble clubs that evolved into empires to bold new leagues fighting for recognition, this is where vision meets execution. Identity-defining franchises are engineered through time, trust, and tenacity, all while orchestrating hundreds of employees and multiple revenue streams at scale.

Sports has a distinct advantage over every other category. Fans bring more passion than any other consumer base, and it’s not even close. They show it with their wallets, regularly buying merch, paying for parking, drinking $18 beers, and shelling out four‑figures on tickets for their families.

Name another industry where people spend hundreds of dollars to put a paper bag on their head, boo their coach, and come back for more the next week. They spend the whole offseason following personnel changes, draft picks, and defending their team to anyone who will listen.

It’s personal. It’s generational. It’s core to who they are.

Communities form around shared affinity. When once-niche groups prove their scale and legitimacy, new formats and professional leagues follow — think Sail GP, League One Volleyball, and OT7.

Across conversations with former elite athletes, one theme keeps coming up: they miss the sense of belonging that came with the locker room. That craving for connection is fueling the rise of sports‑centric membership clubs (see PAC & The Post below).

For the rest of the population (those who Stanford athletes affectionately referred to as NARPs), the obsession with wellness combined with everyday isolation has made people want to move, play, and sweat together. Big businesses are emerging at the convergence of these trends.

Topgolf may be an OG, but newer concepts like Padel Haus, Sweatpals, and Poolhouse are taking it further, blending competition, community, and culture.

And while I’m not a gamer personally, 3.3 billion people are — and the vast web of gaming communities and subcultures shows just how powerful shared passions can be.

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I’ll be publishing this newsletter every other Wednesday.

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 this ecosystem — please reach out!

Email: [email protected].

– Brent

Shoutout to , , and . You all publish some of my favorite content on Substack. Thank you for the work you put in.

P.S. – I think Art Rooney deserves consideration for a Founders episode…