Business & Deals

The contracts, investments, sponsorships, media rights, licensing arrangements, and transactions driving sports and entertainment.

Business & Deals

+2

The Endorsement Deal Is Becoming an Ownership Deal

Sep 19, 2026

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10 min read

The Endorsement Deal Is Becoming an Ownership Deal

The old endorsement agreement rented a celebrity’s attention. The emerging model gives athletes, actors, musicians and creators a piece of the business their attention helps build. That changes the economics—but it also changes the risk, the law and what sophisticated talent should negotiate.

High School Sports

+1

Youth Sports Is Becoming Big Business. The Business Model Is Writing the Regulatory Agenda.

Sep 19, 2026

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10 min read

Youth Sports Is Becoming Big Business. The Business Model Is Writing the Regulatory Agenda.

Private capital is scaling youth sports by integrating facilities, clubs, tournaments, travel, software, streaming, and data. The same integration that makes the sector attractive to investors creates its biggest legal vulnerability: when access to play becomes leverage to force purchases, limit choice, or monetize children’s information.

Business & Deals

+1

Women’s Sports Is No Longer a Growth Story. It Is Becoming an Asset Class.

Sep 19, 2026

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9 min read

Women’s Sports Is No Longer a Growth Story. It Is Becoming an Asset Class.

The important shift is not that more people are watching women’s sports. It is that capital can now see what it is buying: scarce franchises, contracted media inventory, repeatable ticket and sponsorship revenue, dedicated infrastructure, and increasingly mature labor and governance systems. The next fight will be over who captures the value those assets create.

Business & Deals

Sports and Entertainment Are Becoming One Fandom Business

Sep 19, 2026

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10 min read

Sports and Entertainment Are Becoming One Fandom Business

The old industry sold games, shows, tickets, ads and merchandise through separate businesses. The emerging industry is built around a different asset: the fan relationship. IP attracts attention; live events create urgency; creators distribute culture; streaming owns the interface; and commerce, collectibles and wagering turn attention into transactions.

Business & Deals

+2

AI Is Turning “Consent” Into the Most Valuable Word in Talent Contracts

Sep 19, 2026

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10 min read

AI Is Turning “Consent” Into the Most Valuable Word in Talent Contracts

Digital replicas can turn one recording session, scan, or appearance into an effectively unlimited supply of future performances. That changes the central bargain in talent agreements: the most valuable asset may no longer be the footage, recording, or likeness itself, but the continuing permission to make the person perform when the person is not there.

Business & Deals

+2

The Endorsement Deal Is Becoming a Cap-Table Deal

Sep 19, 2026

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10 min read

The Endorsement Deal Is Becoming a Cap-Table Deal

Athletes are increasingly taking ownership alongside endorsement money. The deeper shift is that brands are learning to finance growth with athlete influence—and athletes are deciding that renting out their fame may be less valuable than owning part of what it builds.

Business & Deals

+1

The RSN Didn’t Die. It Was Unbundled.

Sep 19, 2026

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11 min read

The RSN Didn’t Die. It Was Unbundled.

Local sports television is not moving from cable to streaming so much as from one integrated business model to a menu of interchangeable parts. Teams and leagues are gaining control over production, distribution, and the fan relationship—but they are also taking back the financial risk that regional sports networks once absorbed.

Business & Deals

+1

The Media-Rights Deal Is Becoming an Equity Deal—and That Changes Who Owns the Upside

Sep 19, 2026

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8 min read

The Media-Rights Deal Is Becoming an Equity Deal—and That Changes Who Owns the Upside

The NFL’s stake in ESPN is more than an unusual media transaction. It points toward a different model for sports distribution—one in which leagues increasingly ask why they should merely license the content that creates a platform’s value instead of owning part of the platform, participating in its economics, or controlling distribution themselves.

Business & Deals

+1

The Next Sports Empire Won’t Just Own the Team. It Will Own the Fan Relationship.

Sep 19, 2026

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9 min read

The Next Sports Empire Won’t Just Own the Team. It Will Own the Fan Relationship.

The franchise is becoming the anchor of a much larger operating system spanning media, venues, real estate, data, betting, commerce, content and hospitality. The real prize is not another revenue stream. It is control over what happens before, during and after the game.

Business & Deals

+1

Private Equity Isn’t Just Buying Sports Teams. It’s Building the Sports Economy Around Them.

Sep 19, 2026

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10 min read

Private Equity Isn’t Just Buying Sports Teams. It’s Building the Sports Economy Around Them.

The biggest private-capital story in sports is no longer who owns the team. Investors are moving into the infrastructure surrounding the game—media, data, venues, college athletics, youth sports, agencies and technology—and turning a fragmented industry into an interconnected investment platform.

Gambling

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If Prediction Markets Win, Sportsbooks Will Have to Become Something Else

Sep 19, 2026

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9 min read

If Prediction Markets Win, Sportsbooks Will Have to Become Something Else

DraftKings and FanDuel are no longer choosing between defending the state-regulated sportsbook model and competing with prediction markets. They are building for both. If federally regulated sports event contracts survive, the biggest disruption may not be to the companies that run sportsbooks—but to the legal and economic architecture that made a sportsbook license so valuable in the first place.

Gambling

+2

Prediction Markets Are Testing the Architecture of American Sports Betting

Sep 19, 2026

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9 min read

Prediction Markets Are Testing the Architecture of American Sports Betting

Prediction markets are forcing courts to answer a question much bigger than whether Kalshi looks like a sportsbook: when the same sports outcome can be packaged as either a wager or a federally regulated contract, which legal system gets to define the transaction first? The answer could determine whether American sports betting remains fundamentally state-by-state—or whether a national derivatives market can exist alongside it.

Business & Deals

+2

The NCAA’s Biggest Antitrust Problem May Now Be Its Own Record

Sep 19, 2026

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9 min read

The NCAA’s Biggest Antitrust Problem May Now Be Its Own Record

For decades, the NCAA defended major restraints as necessary to preserve college sports. Then many of those restraints disappeared—and college sports kept going. That history does not make the NCAA’s remaining rules unlawful, but it is making “necessity” harder to prove.

Business & Deals

+1

The NFL Has Already Decided Prediction Markets Aren’t Sportsbooks

Sep 18, 2026

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5 min read

The NFL Has Already Decided Prediction Markets Aren’t Sportsbooks

Courts and regulators are still fighting over what sports-event contracts are. The NFL has drawn its own line—and even DraftKings, FanDuel and Fanatics cannot cross it with prediction-market products.

Business & Deals

+2

College Football Finally Has Player Contracts. Ole Miss Is Trying to Enforce One.

Sep 18, 2026

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10 min read

College Football Finally Has Player Contracts. Ole Miss Is Trying to Enforce One.

Ole Miss says Princewill Umanmielen owes $550,000 for transferring to LSU just weeks after signing a revenue-sharing agreement. No court has ruled that he owes a dollar—but the case may help determine whether college sports’ new player contracts function like real contracts when an athlete wants out.

Business & Deals

+2

Lucki’s Former Manager Says He Bankrolled the Career. The Hard Part May Be Proving the Deal.

Sep 18, 2026

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11 min read

Lucki’s Former Manager Says He Bankrolled the Career. The Hard Part May Be Proving the Deal.

Mark Buol says an oral management deal entitled him to 15% of Lucki’s entertainment income—and that he ultimately became the rapper’s lender, tour financier and unpaid creditor. The lawsuit shows why the most dangerous entertainment contract can be the one everyone thinks they understand without writing down.

Business & Deals

+1

The Trail Blazers Cannot Just Leave Portland. Adam Silver Made That Clear.

Sep 16, 2026

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4 min read

The Trail Blazers Cannot Just Leave Portland. Adam Silver Made That Clear.

The NBA commissioner’s intervention does not resolve Portland’s arena fight. But it matters because relocation is not Tom Dundon’s decision alone—and the league just publicly signaled where it stands.

Business & Deals

+1

Private Equity Doesn't Need to Own the Team. It Can Own the Agency Across the Table.

Sep 16, 2026

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9 min read

Private Equity Doesn't Need to Own the Team. It Can Own the Agency Across the Table.

Partners Group's investment in Sports Entertainment Group is not really a story about private equity discovering sports agents. It is a story about athlete representation becoming a scalable financial platform—and about what happens when institutional capital starts consolidating the businesses standing between talent and nearly every way talent gets paid.

Business & Deals

+1

One Company Owns 41% of the Minors. It Is Building Something Bigger Than a Team Portfolio.

Sep 16, 2026

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8 min read

One Company Owns 41% of the Minors. It Is Building Something Bigger Than a Team Portfolio.

Diamond Baseball Holdings now owns 49 of Minor League Baseball’s 120 affiliated clubs—one team shy of MLB’s current ownership cap. But the real story is not the number of franchises it has collected. MLB’s 2021 overhaul turned a fragmented local business into something that could be operated at national scale, and DBH is becoming part owner, part commercial platform, and increasingly part real-estate company.

Business & Deals

+2

College Sports Built a Payroll. Now UCLA and Berkeley Are Fighting to Keep It Private.

Sep 15, 2026

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10 min read

College Sports Built a Payroll. Now UCLA and Berkeley Are Fighting to Keep It Private.

CalMatters is now suing two of California’s flagship public universities over the same post-House question: when a government university pays athletes millions of dollars, how much of that payroll belongs to the public—and how much remains protected as a student record?

Business & Deals

+2

USC Promised Chad Baker-Mazara Millions. His Lawsuit Asks What That Promise Was Really Worth.

Sep 15, 2026

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10 min read

USC Promised Chad Baker-Mazara Millions. His Lawsuit Asks What That Promise Was Really Worth.

Chad Baker-Mazara says USC stopped paying once its season stopped mattering, kicked him off the team and invoked a “morals clause” to erase the balance. No court has decided whether that happened. But the lawsuit exposes the contractual problem college sports can no longer avoid: when NIL money helps recruit an athlete to play basketball, what happens to the money when the basketball relationship ends?

Business & Deals

+3

Threaten an Athlete, Lose Your Right to Bet: Major Leagues Push for Lifetime Sportsbook Bans

Sep 15, 2026

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5 min read

Threaten an Athlete, Lose Your Right to Bet: Major Leagues Push for Lifetime Sportsbook Bans

The NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS—and their players unions—want betting-related harassment to carry a new consequence: permanent exclusion from regulated sportsbooks.

Business & Deals

+2

The $20 Billion FIFA Deal Died. Now UEFA Wants the Deal Files.

Sep 14, 2026

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10 min read

The $20 Billion FIFA Deal Died. Now UEFA Wants the Deal Files.

UEFA is trying to use a little-known U.S. discovery statute to obtain investor emails, valuation work, deal documents, and testimony for a contemplated Swiss criminal complaint involving FIFA President Gianni Infantino. The first fight is not over guilt. It is over whether the foreign proceeding is real enough to justify American discovery before it even exists.

Business & Deals

+2

College Sports Built a Payroll. UC Berkeley May Have to Open the Books.

Sep 14, 2026

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9 min read

College Sports Built a Payroll. UC Berkeley May Have to Open the Books.

CalMatters wants to know exactly how a public university distributed $20.5 million to its athletes. No court has ordered Berkeley to disclose anything yet—but the lawsuit could force college sports to confront a problem the House settlement never solved: professional-style compensation inside institutions still governed by public-records, student-privacy, and potentially Title IX laws.

Business & Deals

+1

College Athletes Are Getting Paid. The Knight Commission Says They Should Get a Vote, Too.

Sep 14, 2026

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4 min read

College Athletes Are Getting Paid. The Knight Commission Says They Should Get a Vote, Too.

The reform group says athlete voting power should extend beyond the NCAA to the College Football Playoff—putting a new question into the federal college-sports debate: who actually gets to govern the business?

The Game Behind The Game

Sports & Entertainment Law + Business Analysis

© 2026 The Game Behind The Game

The Game Behind The Game provides commentary and analysis for informational purposes only. Nothing published here constitutes legal advice, creates an attorney-client relationship, or should be relied upon as a substitute for advice from qualified counsel regarding a particular matter. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author’s law firm, its attorneys, or its clients.

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