Weekly Roundup: Business of Athletes, Sports, & NIL (August 21-27)

<p></p><p><strong>Audio Timeline:</strong></p><p>1:30 - <strong>Feel good stories</strong></p><p>* An update on John Daly’s heartwarming donation and Kobe Bryant’s wife</p><p>3:15 - Business of Athletes</p><p>* Enhanced water company, <strong>Lemon Perfect</strong>, has brought on tennis star <strong>Sloane Stephens</strong> as an investor and ambassador. </p><p>* Former NFL quarterback <strong>Michael Vick</strong> is launching his co-founded NFT platform <strong>FanField</strong> this fall.</p><p>* <strong>The Player’s Impact</strong>, a venture capital firm for athletes, has launched its own internal communication system for the 190 members.</p><p>* <strong>Tiger Woods</strong> and <strong>Rory McIlroy</strong> teamed up to create <strong>TMRW Sports,</strong> which is in partnership with the PGA tour for their new league, The TGL. </p><p>* <strong>Bill Ackman’s</strong> Prysym Capital invested $26M in <strong>Winners Alliance</strong>, a for-profit affiliate of the Professional Tennis Players Association designed to help professional tennis players pursue business opportunities</p><p>10:00 - <strong>Name, Image, and Likeness</strong></p><p>* The first team-wide high school NIL deal</p><p>* Hooters makes a unique move in football</p><p>* A look at some interesting deals from this past week</p><p>15:05 - Future of Sports</p><p>* Smart training application, <strong>Perform</strong>, has raised $1.2M for its application which marries human coaching elements with intelligent features.</p><p>* The <strong>Dallas Cowboys</strong> are the first NFL team to generate over $1B in annual revenue and the first team to be assessed at an $8 billion valuation. </p><p>* <strong>Sport Buff</strong>, a live-streaming tool designed to create social games around video content, has raised $2.5M in seed funding.</p><p>* <strong>EA Sports and Learfield</strong> are teaming up for the LevelNext collegiate esports league, that holds a $150,000 cash prize for the Madden champion.</p><p>* Esports franchise <strong>Valhallan</strong>, announced its acquisition of the United Federation of Esports Athletes (UFEA) league</p><p>Interesting Stat</p><p>The mean number of injuries suffered per game in the NFL is approximately 4.9 times higher than the sum of other professional leagues. </p><p>Teams don't want to pay for that kind of risk any more than they have to.</p><p>Higher risk = lower guaranteed contracts. </p><p>Short Passage of The Week</p><p>* We can't change our past, but we can change our perspective.</p><p>* We can't change our past, but we can choose to learn from it.</p><p>* We can't change our past, but we can change our future.</p><p>"When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for us." </p><p><em>Passage by Clint Hurdle</em></p><p>Tweet</p><p>Interesting thread right here:</p><p>It still blows my mind that Blockbuster had the chance to buy Netflix for only $50M and turned it down. </p><p>Recommended Read</p><p>I talked about the rise of esports in the podcast — here is a supplemental read that I found pretty interesting:</p><p><strong>What makes an esports athlete an athlete? We asked the pros</strong></p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.thestar.com/sports/2022/08/25/this-is-a-sport-what-makes-an-esports-athlete-an-athlete-we-asked-the-pros.html">https://www.thestar.com/sports/2022/08/25/this-is-a-sport-what-makes-an-esports-athlete-an-athlete-we-asked-the-pros.html</a></p><p>Financial Jargon</p><p>East Asia is a breeding ground for innovation right now.</p><p>A Harvard <a target="_blank" href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/newsplus/harvard-growth-lab-projects-fastest-growing-economies-to-2030/#:~:text=China%2C%20Vietnam%2C%20Uganda%2C%20Indonesia,the%20Atlas%20of%20Economic%20Complexity.">study</a> has concluded that China, Vietnam, Uganda, Indonesia, and India are projected to be among the fastest-growing economies from now