Issue 9

Opening Take

The Senate just passed the Protect College Sports Act, 77-22, sending it to the House. It goes after problems the industry has argued about for the past few years. It sets transfer limits, addresses conference sizes, and creates an agent registry with capped fees. It also replaces a patchwork of state laws and court rulings with one national standard.

That last piece matters most for mid-major and low-D1 programs. Power conference schools can absorb legal uncertainty. A department in the Big South or the Coastal Athletic Association can't. Predictable rules are what let them budget, hire and plan beyond one season, and this bill is the first real attempt to provide them.

Where I struggle is the athlete compensation cap. I have a hard time with capping anyone's income when they have no say in it and no ability to negotiate it. The athletes it limits weren't at the table when the number was set. Meanwhile, the 15 highest-paid football coaches each earn at least $10 million a year with no cap at all.

So I'm watching whether a structure like this can hold up if the people it limits never helped shape it. Stability imposed on one side tends to get tested in court.

What I'm Watching

• NHL team performance is now tradable. CME Group began trading futures on all 32 NHL teams Sunday night, just ahead of the season opener, after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) approved them Friday. Each team's index starts at 7,500 points and moves with goals, saves, takeaways, and penalties. Unlike prediction market contracts, they can be traded on margin. Last week it was MLB licensing its data to FutureSports. This is what the model looks like live. The question now is whether the proposed NHL ETFs follow and which league is next. Read more​
• Garmin buys the sensor it already relied on. Garmin confirmed the acquisition of Moxy Monitor, maker of the muscle oxygen sensors used by coaches and endurance athletes. There was no price and no word on what happens to current owners. Garmin devices already read Moxy's data, and the deal lines up with Muscle Battery, a feature Garmin trademarked in February around muscle oxygen readings. A watch can't read oxygen in a working muscle, so the sensor has to sit on the muscle itself. The bigger question for anyone building athlete data is whether the big platforms will keep buying the specialized sensors that feed them, and what that leaves for independents. Read more​
• Leagues quietly loosen the rules on private equity. MLB raised its private equity ownership limit to 20% this summer and never announced it. A firm still can't own more than the controlling owner, who must hold at least 15%. The NBA has also changed its policy so a firm and its executives can invest in the same team, which clears the way for Josh Kushner and Bob Iger to buy the Lakers at a record $12.5 billion valuation, pending league approval. The pattern to watch is that as valuations climb, the ownership rules are being rewritten to keep up. Read more​

Insight of the Week

3%. The WNBA drew a record 3.79 million fans this season, up 20.5%. Excluding the two expansion teams, Toronto and Portland, growth was about 3%.

The league still set a record per-game average of 11,474, up 5%, so the demand is real. But the gap between 20.5% and 3% shows how much of a headline number can be new supply. Arena capacity shapes attendance too. Atlanta grew 55% after moving six games to a bigger arena. Washington fell 16% after moving fewer games out of a 4,200-seat building, even though demand clearly rose.

When a team or league reports record attendance, it's worth asking how much of it is demand and how much is room. Read more

Looking Ahead

• ​Sportico Invest London, London (Oct 6)
• ​Carnegie Mellon Sports Analytics Conference (CMSAC), Pittsburgh (Oct 23-24)
• ​SBJ Intercollegiate Athletics Forum, Las Vegas (Dec 8-9)

If you're attending any of these, reply and let me know. I'd love to connect.

Odell