Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic’s weekly sports business cheat sheet. (Don’t miss a week: Get MoneyCall delivered to your email inbox every Wednesday morning. It’s free. Easy sign-up here.)
Name-dropped today: Jordon Hudson, Bill Belichick, the Jackson Five, Journalism (yes, that’s a name), Bob Baffert, Ryan Reynolds, Shedeur Sanders, Stan Van Gundy, Jax Ulbrich (boooo!) and more. Let’s go:
Driving The Conversation
Questions it’s fair to have about Bill Belichick now
It’s been an exhausting 72 hours since the viral contretemps between Bill Belichick, his girlfriend Jordon Hudson and “CBS Sunday Morning” host Tony Dokoupil over interview protocols. (ICYMI, the 24-year-old Hudson shut down a question posed to Belichick, 73, about how the couple met, though that information was already public.)
Layered on top of an already-awkward series of FOIA requests, social-media posts and general irk/ick/ehh, the moment yields more questions than answers about Belichick Inc. and its new joint venture, Jordon Brand:
1. At the time North Carolina inked Belichick to a $50 million deal to transform its football program, did the school realize it signed up for this?
2. Does UNC’s sports information team find out about all this stuff when the rest of us do?
3. Why reject UNC being the subject of “Hard Knocks” if things are going to be a reality show anyway?
4. Is this all just a Nathan Fielder-level marketing campaign to sell Belichick’s new book, “The Art of Winning”?
5. Is Hudson a lock to win Miss Maine USA in two weeks?
6. How many offers have there been from streaming services to do a documentary at the pageant?
7. Does “we’re not talking about this” get a trademark application like “Do Your Job (Bill’s Version)”?
8. Who was more of an internet main character this past weekend: Hudson on Sunday or Mel Kiper Jr. on Saturday?
9. How many games does Belichick need to win for everyone to find this quirky, not a distraction?
10. As my colleague Steve Buckley asked yesterday: Will any of this “help get Belichick back on the radar for a head coaching job in the NFL?”
11. Have we reached Peak Awkward on this yet?
My best answers as of now:
1. Probably not; 2. *Wince* presumably?; 3. New answers here; 4. They wish; 5. A sportsbook will have odds on this by the end of the week; 6. Over/under 2.5; 7. That would be really clever; 8. Hudson; 9. Nine wins; 10. As Buckley said, “That’s looking less likely”; 11. Not even close.
Intrigued by the “Hard Knocks” thing? New answers: Why did the deal for Belichick and UNC football to appear on HBO’s insider show fall apart at the last minute? Brand-new exclusive reporting this morning from my colleagues Matt Baker, Andrew Marchand and Brendan Marks, including a trove of new documents acquired by The Athletic, helps get us closer to an answer on that question.
Get Caught Up
Big talkers from the sports business industry:
New Commanders stadium in D.C., plus Shedeur’s (likely) record jersey sales
NFL returning to D.C.: I grew up in the D.C. suburbs going to old RFK Stadium, not just for NFL games, but for original NASL “Dips” games, the 1994 World Cup and my first concert ever (the epic Jackson Five Victory Tour!)
Other than the symbolically and economically powerful return of the Commanders and a stadium within the borders of D.C., the single most interesting detail of the plan (pending its approval, of course) is that the facility will have a roof, allowing D.C. to host Super Bowls, Final Fours, WrestleMania, the biggest concerts and any mega-event that might be created after the stadium opens in 2030.
It’s Kentucky Derby week: Horse racing has largely become a once-a-year sport for most sports fans, but Saturday’s Derby is the “once,” and it still retains its julep-infused aura. Don’t miss this Dana O’Neil profile of legendary trainer Bob Baffert, who returns to the Derby after a three-year suspension he still hasn’t quite reconciled.
My Kentucky Derby picks
Win: Journalism (3-1) Place: Publisher
Show: Render Judgment
Wrexham rolls onward (and upward): Among the most fascinating sports business stories of the 2020s is the one about two Hollywood pals, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, buying a distressed fifth-division UK football club, injecting it with investment (and attention) and earning promotion three consecutive years — now just one top-of-the-table season from reaching the Premier League. Definitely read this analysis of Wrexham’s success this season.
What is Wrexham now playing for? The best way to understand it is to read this breakdown of all the jaw-dropping financial benefits accruing to Leeds United for earning promotion this season from the second-division Championship to the top-flight Premiership.
Shedeur Sanders’ jersey sells big: No. 3 in sales among draftees, which I’m going to guess (with zero data) is a record for a fifth-round pick.
Speaking of Shedeur: ICYMI, after Mel Kiper’s umpteenth rant about Shedeur throughout the three days of the draft, I convened Andrew Marchand and Richard Deitsch to break down Kiper’s breakdown. It was a really fascinating conversation.
College sports prop bet ban coming? Individual player “prop” bets — the ability to bet on the over or under for a single statistic by a player in a game — remain arguably THE biggest challenge for the college sports industry embracing sports gambling amid the erosion of competitive integrity. Keep an eye on this new licensing agreement between the NCAA and Genius Sports, which would put the kibosh on sports books offering player props on college games if they’re using NCAA data.
Pac-12 (Pac-2) inks national TV deal: Shoutout to Pac-12 Conference commissioner Teresa Gould and Octagon for being able to turn a two-team league into a national TV deal across CBS, ESPN and The CW. It doesn’t matter how much money is changing hands; this is a stop-gap before the league adds a half-dozen new teams next year and can attempt to increase its media rights.
(Also, low-key, I am fascinated by The CW’s strategy to roll up a hodgepodge of undervalued sports rights: Oregon State and Washington State football, ACC football and hoops, AVP volleyball, Grand Slam Track, WWE NXT and, most notably, NASCAR’s Xfinity series, which is crushing in the ratings.)
Second-division women’s pro soccer: The NWSL intends to launch a second division. WPSL Pro wants to be in the second division. “More is better,” or a cluttered quandary?
Other current obsessions: NBA possibly adopting a 4 Nations-style All-Star format … Stan Van Gundy on Amazon’s NBA broadcasts next season … 2026 NFL mock drafts … Sacramento State basketball GM Shaquille O’Neal …
What I’m Wondering
Why did Fanatics launch its first trading card store in London?
The answer was in my colleague Andrew Mackie’s coverage of the store’s boisterous launch last Friday, including thousands there to see Lewis Hamilton help open the store.
This quote from Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin stood out:
“In America, there’s more than a thousand hobby shops. And when you look across the rest of the world, there’s maybe a hundred stores. This is really about everyone who comes through and passes the store and open their minds to this.”
Mackie made a great observation about the hobby’s position:
Fanatics’ challenge is converting a nation where collectibles has only reached the mainstream through sticker book collections for the Premier League, UEFA and FIFA competitions since the 1970s, whereas trading cards have been collected in America dating back to the 1800s.
To that end, the store is even selling some competitor products, like Pokémon and Panini cards. “We’re all about growing the industry,” Rubin said.
Grab Bag
Time for a lightning round.
Comp of the Week: $4M vs. $4.3M
That’s “compensation” AND “comparison.”
The former is what my colleague Chris Vannini estimates Texas QB Quinn Ewers would have gotten in NIL (at the very least) for a final college football season had he transferred elsewhere and not gone into the NFL Draft.
Instead, Ewers slid in the draft, to a seventh-round slot where he will make roughly $4.3M over four years.
I was intrigued by the point made by our Texpert and CFB roster management reporter Sam Khan Jr. in his conversation with Vannini about Ewers’ decision, noting Ewers financially “did well for himself at Texas” and he “doesn’t think money was a huge motivating factor in the decision for him to go pro.”
Runner-up “comp”: This week’s eyebrow-raising MLB series between the dueling payrolls of the $476M Dodgers and $69M Marlins.
Data Point: 600,000
The number of fans who made their way to the NFL Draft experience in Green Bay, Wis., the league’s smallest market (population: 105,000). It was the second-highest total since the league started rotating locations a decade ago. (Prediction to file away: 2026 in Pittsburgh will top the record of 775,000 from 2024 in Detroit.)
Related: 81,000. That’s the number of fans who packed into Clemson’s football stadium on Saturday to watch baseball’s Savannah Bananas barnstormers. Arguably the No. 1 case study in sports business entrepreneurship.
Save the Date: Wednesday, May 14
NFL schedule release day, which is always a fierce competition between 32 teams’ social media squads to come up with the best video. (The announcement about this announcement came during the draft …)
Name to Know: Jax Ulbrich
There are 650-plus comments (!!!) on our news story about the perpetrator of the cruel, viral, mid-draft prank on Shedeur Sanders: the 21-year-old son of Falcons DC Jeff Ulbrich. Yikes.
Ratings Point: NFL Draft
Thu./Round 1: Up 11 percent from 2024. Fri./Rounds 2-3: Up 40 percent.
Sat./Rounds 4-7: Most ever.
They’ll call it the “Shedeur Effect.”
Beat Dan in Connections: Sports Edition
Puzzle #219 Time? :27
Worth Your Time
Great business-adjacent reads for your downtime or commute:
Bookend Jourdan Rodrigue’s profile last week of 34-year-old Jaguars GM wunderkind James Gladstone with this fascinating behind-the-scenes story from Michael Silver, who was embedded in the Jaguars’ draft room all weekend for an up-close look at the organizational transformation.
Two more reads worth your time:
(1) I am not the target audience (and neither is my colleague Stuart James), but the Baller League sure seems like foreshadowing for sports a decade from now.
(2) How Atlanta is preparing (already) for the 2026 World Cup.
Back next Wednesday! This week’s challenge: Hit that “forward” button and send this to a couple friends or colleagues with your rec to sign up to receive it (totally free, as are all The Athletic’s other newsletters, too.)
(Photo: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)
