💸 Y! Sports Biz: Stakes in the game
👋 Happy Friday! Programming note: We’ll be off Monday for the holiday. See you back here on Wednesday.
In this edition: The overwhelming stakes in the game, the NFL wants prediction markets clarity, collectors gas up Shaq Diesel, the biggest TV draws in CFB, a concession crisis in America’s pastime, and more.
Time to show you the money…
💸 FAN FINANCES
STAKE IN THE GAME, FROM BETS TO INVESTMENTS
Braves and Rangers fans will soon be able to do everything from betting on their games, to trading ETFs tracking their on-field/ice performance, to owning shares of the team itself. (Jonathan Castro/Yahoo Sports)
Commiserating fans used to joke about wanting to short their teams’ performance, profiting financially from their on-field struggles. Now, that banter is a reality that takes countless forms.
Full toolbox: If a fan has a view on their team’s performance, short- or long-term, pessimistic or optimistic, there have never been more ways to express it financially. The spectrum ranges from outright bet to investment.
- Bet for or against a team in an individual game, place a futures bet on it, or wager on its win total.
- Trade a prediction market contract on the outcome of a team’s game or season.
- Buy or sell a futures contract based on an index that tracks the team’s season-long performance.
- Buy or sell an ETF that seeks to provide performance corresponding to the results of the futures contracts in No. 3.
- Buy or sell shares of the team as a business (if publicly traded, as with the Braves, Knicks, and Rangers).
Wait, ETFs? This summer, we wrote about how FutureSports uses league statistics to create indices that track NHL teams’ on-ice performance, something they’ve also done with MLB teams. And what often follows indices? ETFs.
- Multiple ETF providers have filed to create ETFs based on the futures contracts linked to those FutureSports indices.
- An ETF is a familiar vehicle for investors, reducing the barriers to investing in, say, a Red Wings or Bruins index. In true 2026 fashion, ETF providers have also filed to create leveraged ETF products, seeking to produce 2X the index’s return on a given day.
Blurred lines: The lines between betting and investing are getting fuzzy. Prediction markets brought sports contracts onto brokerage platforms. Now, ETFs tracking team performance will sit in brokerage accounts looking much like your S&P 500 index fund of choice. Those blurred lines could be problematic, particularly for younger investors.
- According to Betterment, 26% of Gen-Z retail investors treat sports betting as a deliberate part of their long-term financial strategy.
- In the last year, 52% of Gen-Z investors have redirected money intended for investing toward sports betting.
Know the difference: Speculation has become entertainment sometimes confused with investment. The risk profiles of speculative instruments vary, though, from a binary outcome on one game to less-binary movements in index value. But whether bets or ETFs, financial allocations to vehicles that reflect on-field performance don’t participate in economic growth as an investment in a team (as a business) might.
Don’t bet the house: Options to financially express a thesis on a team’s performance are rapidly proliferating, and many increasingly resemble traditional investment products. Fans and investors should recognize the differences and allocate accordingly.
⚡ ICYMI
LIGHTNING ROUND
(Michael Regan/Getty Images)
🏈 NFL nudges Supreme Court on prediction markets: The NFL filed an amicus brief on Thursday urging the Supreme Court to review whether prediction markets should be regulated at the state or federal level. The league believes recent rulings subjecting prediction markets to state regulation “got it right.”
⚾️ MLB proposes cutting season length: MLB has proposed returning to a 154-game regular season beginning in 2029, while also making the Division Series best-of-seven. Under the proposal, beginning in 2027, higher seeds in the Wild Card and Division Series would pick their opponents. However, the changes are unlikely without the introduction of a salary cap.
🎓 Adidas poaches Ole Miss: Just weeks after Nike signed Miami away from Adidas, Adidas struck back, inking Ole Miss to a seven-year agreement beginning in 2027. As with Miami, the deal is reportedly worth more than $20 million per year.
⚽️ Friedkin puts Everton up for sale: The Friedkin Group is exploring a sale of its controlling interest in Everton just two years after buying the club. The group also owns AS Roma, and the Friedkin family is currently working with the NHL toward a Texas-based expansion franchise.
See what else is trending on the Yahoo Sports Business Hub.
📍 MORE THE MERRIER?
EXPANSION IS EXPANDING, FOR BETTER OR WORSE
(Ethan Palowitz/Yahoo Sports)
Expansion is rampant across American sports leagues. The NBA is running processes for Las Vegas and Seattle, MLB is reportedly eyeing two additions once labor dust settles, the NHL appears Texas-bound, the WNBA has three teams on the way, and commissioner Jessica Berman said Thursday that the NWSL is targeting expansion to at least 20.
Worth the squeeze? The pros and cons of expansion vary based on a league’s maturity, geographic footprint, and economics. Is a new market and a handsome expansion fee worth cutting an additional piece of the revenue pie and diluting the scarcity of a league’s existing teams?
Shlomo Sprung, Yahoo Sports:
More likely than not, we’re going to see nearly a dozen new franchises across the NBA, NHL, MLB, WNBA and NWSL because leagues and their owners believe the pros outweigh the cons.
"Leagues aren’t just selling franchises," Jon Schwartz, a former NFL, Big Ten and NASCAR executive who’s now partner and head of sports at Prosek Partners, told Yahoo Sports, "they’re planting flags in new markets, creating year-round content and unlocking new fans, sponsors and capital allocators. At a time when major sports franchises remain scarce and demand for these assets continues to grow, expansion can create significant new value."
The money is enormous. The appetite is enormous. And for owners, the logic is increasingly difficult to resist. But every new franchise also makes the
Source: sports.yahoo.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.