Today’s Leadoff puts numbers on the board: MLS nets a record-breaking regular season, Chelsea’s owners think the club could be the top-earning soccer team in the world, Vuori continues to expand, and NFL owners face off over the fallout from the Rams’ relocation. Click here to
listen.
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Drake’s sports portfolio is becoming as impressive as his discography.
At Sunday’s El Clásico against Real Madrid, FC Barcelona will sport the OVO owl — Drake’s logo — on its jerseys in place of Spotify’s logo, celebrating Drake’s milestone as the first artist to reach 50 billion collective streams on the platform.
Spotify has a reported $306 million deal with the club, which includes front-of-shirt branding for both the men’s and women’s teams.
- When the deal was announced, the pair revealed that similar logo exchanges are slated throughout the season to help reach new audiences.
- The platform also has naming rights to Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium.
The club’s warmup jersey will also feature No. 50 on the back and Spotify’s logo on the front.
OVOpportunities
Drake is the first artist to appear on FC Barcelona’s jersey, but it’s not the artist’s first foray into sports.
Earlier this year, Main Street Capital — which counts Drake and LeBron James as investors — and the New York Yankees joined RedBird Capital Partners’ reported $1.2 billion purchase of AC Milan.
Last year, sports media company Overtime raised $80 million in a Series C round that included Drake, Jeff Bezos, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian as investors.
The Canadian rapper has also invested in sports technology company StatusPro with LeBron James and Naomi Osaka.
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Skydance Media has completed a $400 million strategic investment round led by private equity firm KKR & Co. to accelerate the growth of its sports and entertainment divisions.
The round, which values Skydance at more than $4 billion, included existing investors RedBird Capital Partners, Tencent, and the company’s majority shareholders, the Ellison family.
- In September 2021, Skydance launched its sports division.
- Skydance Sports produces content, including films and series, both scripted and unscripted.
- Tencent and RedBird will help Skydance drive growth in its sports strategy.
In January, Skydance Sports agreed to a co-production deal with Meadowlark Media — led by former ESPN president John Skipper — to deliver unscripted sports content.
The two companies will collaborate on a docuseries on the U.S. and Mexican men’s national soccer teams, as well as a project featuring hoops legend Diana Taurasi.
Skydance Sports teamed up with Religion of Sports in March to develop, finance, and produce sports content for multiple platforms including television and audio.
Earlier this month, Skydance Sports secured a multiyear first-look deal with international soccer star Kylian Mbappé and his production banner, Zebra Valley. As part of the deal, Zebra Valley will deliver its content through all of Skydance’s divisions.
Red-Hot RedBird
In May, RedBird finalized a deal to purchase AC Milan valuing the Italian soccer club at $1.3 billion, according to Bloomberg.
RedBird, which has $6 billion in assets under management, won its bid over Investcorp — the Middle East’s largest alternative assets manager.
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Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
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Nick Saban remains college football’s highest-paid coach for the third consecutive year.
According to USA Today, pay for college football head coaches experienced its greatest one-year spike in 2022 — an average increase of 15.3% since 2021.
Saban is set to make $10.95 million in 2022, up from $9.75 million in 2021 — when his Alabama Crimson Tide finished as the College Football Playoff runner-up.
- Clemson’s Dabo Swinney is the second-highest-paid coach at $10.54 million.
- Kirby Smart — who led Georgia to a national title in 2021 – will pocket $10.25 million.
- LSU’s Brian Kelly rounds out the top four at $9.81 million after leaving Notre Dame in 2021.
Outside of the top four are Big Ten coaches, led by Mel Tucker at Michigan State who will make $9.56 million this year as the conference’s coaches average $9.5 million for 2022.
On the Rise
The lucrative contracts of college football’s top coaches continue to rise due to the flurry of coaching changes throughout the sport, expensive media deals, and winning-based incentives.
Saban’s salary for 2022 includes $825,000 in bonuses, while Smart will take home $850,000 after bringing the Georgia football program its first national championship since 1980.
In August, the Big Ten finalized a media rights deal worth at least $7 billion, sources confirmed to Front Office Sports — the largest media rights pact in all of college sports. As part of the agreement — which runs from 2023 to 2030 — FOX, CBS, and NBC will share rights.
The Pac-12 is reportedly taking bids for its next media rights deal and is considering Amazon.
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- Apple is all in on sports with major deals for the Super Bowl Halftime Show, MLS and MLB broadcasting rights, and a bid for NFL Sunday Ticket. On the latest episode of The Newsroom, the Front Office Sports team breaks down what Apple is up to, and how sports fit into the tech giant’s overall strategy. Listen and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.
- Carlos Correa will invoke the opt-out clause in his contract — making him a free agent this upcoming offseason — after signing a three-year, $105.3 million contract in March with the Minnesota Twins.
- The NFL has been using a new pre-snap camera angle that was featured in the New York Giants’ 27-22 win over the Green Bay Packers in London last Sunday.
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| (Note: All as of market close on 10/14/22) |
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The Los Angeles Dodgers face the San Diego Padres on Friday night at Petco Park in Game 3 of the NLDS. The series is tied 1-1.
How to Watch: 8:37 p.m. ET on FS1
Betting Odds: Dodgers -1.5 || ML -120 || O/U 7.5
Pick: Expect the Padres to maintain their momentum. Take San Diego to cover.
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