Sports Business
Utah got an NHL franchise. Is an MLB team next? Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic’s weekly sports business cheat sheet.
Name-dropped today: Ryan Smith, Claudia Sheinbaum, the Indiana Bears, Bruce Meyer, Alysa Liu, Bodo/Glimt, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg, Craig Tiley and more. Let’s go:
Inside Utah’s sports push
With the 2026 Winter Olympics behind us, maybe you’re peeking ahead to 2030 in France or 2034 in Salt Lake City.
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The latter locale is home to: The NBA’s Jazz. The NHL’s Mammoth. MLS and NWSL franchises. A successful Triple-A baseball team. Pro softball and volleyball franchises. Plus the Big 12’s BYU and Utah, flush with cash to spend on winning college teams. UFC. X Games. NBA All-Star. Massive youth sports complexes. One of the most ambitious, innovative young owners, Ryan Smith, who owns the Jazz and Mammoth. State politicians squaring up on the prediction markets. Obviously, the Housewives are everywhere.
An MLB expansion team could be next, and well before 2034.
While many have been provincially focused on stodgy East Coast cities, the Bay Area’s 2025 victory lap, Las Vegas’ thirsty past decade or Chicago’s NFL standoff, Salt Lake City has been busy becoming the modern-day model of U.S. sports-city development.
My colleague Stephen Nesbitt has the new deep dive you need to read to understand the full breadth of SLC’s ambition — and can-do attitude:
📝 “Readiness has put Utah at an advantage. While other cities announced their entries into MLB expansion consideration with renderings and merch, Salt Lake City arrived with a 100-acre site, a coalition of prominent Utahns, broad bipartisan support, a plan for public funding and a reputable anchor investor.
“City and state officials are not subtle about their aspirations. They want Salt Lake City to be a larger dot on the map. Part of their plan is to continue building a robust sports scene.”
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred’s expansion plans might not be finalized until 2029, but Utah is ready today to enter the 2030s as the next-generation sports metropolis.
Big talkers from the sports business industry:
Will the World Cup exit Guadalajara? Even if the violence quells, can FIFA or Mexico really guarantee “no risks” this summer? Meanwhile, American host cities face government-funding uncertainty.
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WNBA: March 10 labor deal? I appreciate a deadline as much as anyone, but this one from the league feels artificial. The players will never have more leverage than this next two months, so game theory suggests pushing a bit further.
“Indiana Bears”: Any chance of happening? It is unfathomable to Bears fans in greater Chicagoland, but just ask Giants and Jets fans: It’s just eight days a year, right?
MLBPA taps new/interim executive director: Bruce Meyer, welcome to the toughest job in sports in 2026.
Serena’s comeback: When, not if?
Weak ideas: Mayweather vs. Pacquiao ‘26. If the only thing keeping people interested in boxing is nostalgia or gimmicks, the sport is grasping and gasping like two late-fortysomething boxers.
Other current obsessions: ESPN’s “Women’s Sports Sundays” summer programming plan … the Oakland Ballers filling the void … Snoop Dogg’s enthusiasm as co-owner of Swansea City … Eileen Gu discourse, continued (the rare Obsession citation in back-to-back weeks!) … Bodo/Glimt’s Cinderella Champions League run …
Book rec: ‘Everybody Loses’
The rise, acceleration and ubiquity of sports gambling is arguably the defining change in sports dynamics of the past decade.
It has:
• Financially backstopped leagues, teams and media companies;
• come to dominate fan discourse
• and grown into an epidemic among teens.
All that, and we seem to be on the precipice of a new, nationwide surge through self-styled “prediction markets.”
The best thing I have read about how we got here (and in trying to wrap my arms around what comes next) is the new book “Everybody Loses” by longtime enterprise reporter Danny Funt. It covers the recent evolution, the system’s features (and failures … sometimes the same) and is an ideal primer for anyone who wants to understand *waves hands wildly* How We Got Here.
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I caught up with Funt last week to talk about the book, and I tried to distill my many questions into one:
You’re named U.S. Omni-Regulator and can pick a single thing you’d like to change about online sports gambling. What do you pick?
💬 I’d require sportsbooks to disclose their expected edge on each bet, as in, “For this parlay, we expect to profit $25 for every $100 you wager.” Having heard FanDuel’s founding CEO tell me, “They’re selling that you can win, but you can’t,” and another ex-FanDuel higher-up say “maybe 5 percent” of bettors realize the house has a steeper edge on certain bets, I think reducing that confusion would go a long way.
One of the best books I’ve read in the past year. Highly recommended. Link to buy.
Ratings Point: 18.6 million
That’s how many people in the U.S. got up early and watched the men’s gold medal hockey game Sunday morning, the most ever for a U.S. sports event starting before 9 a.m. ET. (Meanwhile: The women’s gold medal game was the most-watched women’s hockey game ever.)
Power Rankings Mania
⛸️ 2026 U.S. Olympic legends
1) Alysa Liu
2) Jack Hughes/Megan Keller
3) Snoop Dogg
Bonus: Our team’s top memories!
📻 NBA x hip-hop crossovers
1) Ice Cube “It Was a Good Day”*
2) Jay-Z “Encore”
3) Fu-Schnickens feat. Shaq “What’s Up Doc?”
Full list!
* – Just published this a.m.: Ice Cube messed around and talked with The Athletic’s Jason Jones about the basketball-inspired lyrics in this 1993 hit.
🏎️ 2026 F1 liveries
1) Haas
2) Mercedes
3) Alpine
Full list!
Data Point: 75,673
The number of fans who went to the L.A. Coliseum to see Messi’s Inter Miami play Son’s LAFC, a record for MLS opening weekend.
(What do the top executives think of where MLS is right now? Check out our annual MLS anonymous exec survey.)
Hired: Craig Tiley
Remember how great the Australian Open was? The U.S. Tennis Association wants *that,* so it hired Tennis Australia’s honcho as its new CEO.
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Collectible of the Year: Tupac bobblehead
Ever since the Baltimore Orioles announced they would be giving away a Tupac Shakur bobblehead, celebrating a cultural force the city would like to claim (the late rapper spent several adolescent years there), I have had the May 8 O’s-A’s game circled as a big deal. My colleague David Betancourt got the inside story.
Peak of the Week
Ain’t this the truth: Most of us are bad at predicting what makes us happy.
Beat Dan in Connections: Sports Edition
Puzzle No. 520
Dan’s time: 00:40
Try the game here!
Great business-adjacent reads for your downtime or commute:
Professional tennis is (still) broken. Here’s how to fix it (again).
Two more:
• The growing link between gambling and racist abuse of Premier League players.
• As a lifelong, die-hard Washington Wizards fan, this is a defense of sensible tanking I can get behind.
Back next Wednesday! And, as always, give a try to all The Athletic’s other newsletters. (Always free.)
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Dan Shanoff is a Managing Editor for The Athletic, focused on Sports Business. Before joining The Athletic, he held editorial and content-development roles at a range of companies including ESPN, USA Today Sports, Monumental and Quickish, a sports-news start-up he founded. He is a graduate of Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, has an MBA from Harvard Business School and was an award-winning adjunct instructor in Georgetown’s Sports Industry Management program. Follow Dan on Twitter @danshanoff
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