A big bet on basketball

Good morning from Gotham, where New Yorkers are definitely sleeping in after the craziest week of the year, between the gridlocking mayhem of the UN General Assembly and the indictment of our mayor. It was into this chaos that Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian launched the inaugural Athlos women’s-only athletics meeting, the first of a deluge of new track meets attracting big money in a shake-up for the sport, whose plans we wrote about last month.

But after talking the talk, could Athlos . . . run the race? Thursday’s meet was absolutely unlike any other track meet, at least in the US. With a red carpet for athlete walk-ins and celebrity attendees like Flavor Flav, VIP lounges directly on the track, and DJ D-Nice spinning tracks between events, the capacity crowd at Icahn Stadium was certainly treated to an event.

Competitors raved about the experience and 100-metre winner Marie-Josée Ta Lou-Smith, 35, told Scoreboard that she contemplated retirement before Athlos popped up with a $60,000 check for first place. The meet was not without its wobbles — new Olympic champion Masai Russell filed a protest in the 100 metre hurdles after she said officials didn’t register a false start — but Ohanian ultimately delivered on a promise to build something different. The question now is whether audiences and sponsors keep it growing. 

For now, we have dispatches on private equity’s newest sports target and a look at the dour financial picture for English rugby. Do read on — Sara Germano, US sports business correspondent

Private equity battles over European basketball

Private equity is circling sports, that much we know. But why is Europe’s pre-eminent basketball competition attracting so much interest from investors? 

As revealed by the FT this week, London-based BC Partners has entered exclusive talks to buy a minority stake in EuroLeague’s commercial business at a €1bn valuation. To get to that stage, BC saw off competition from rival firm General Atlantic and SURJ Sports Investment, a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.

While basketball has a huge global following, the popularity of EuroLeague pales in comparison to North America’s National Basketball Association. So what’s the appeal?

Europe has certainly emerged as a hotbed for basketball talent. Just look at French centre Victor Wembanyama, now starring for the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA. And he’s not a one-off. Nikola Jokic, the Serbian three-time NBA most valuable player, and two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo both began their professional careers playing for European teams.

EuroLeague itself has been gaining traction too. The competition’s television audience increased 27 per cent year on year in the 2023-24 season, bolstered by interest in Turkey, Serbia, Greece, Spain, Lithuania and Italy. User numbers for its online streaming platform rose 46 per cent to 85,000. BC Partners would bring deep experience of media rights, via its ownership of broadcaster United Group.

There is scope to grow in other ways too. Attracting more clubs from northern Europe, such as the UK, and expanding in the Middle East could help to increase commercial revenues and reduce reliance on southern Europe.

The league is already home to some well-known sporting names. Real Madrid (yes, that one) has been the dominant team, but faces competition from other big clubs, including Bayern Munich, Barcelona and Olympiacos. Such heavyweights provide the foundation for a wider fan base.

But does a deal make sense for the sport? After all, the firm’s bid comes at a time when private equity’s involvement in sport is under increased scrutiny. 

If a deal does go ahead, EuroLeague would do well to take heed of how the Spanish football league approached its investment from CVC Capital Partners. In short, La Liga’s deal was structured to encourage clubs to put money into stadium infrastructure instead of blowing it all on players.

Private investment and European basketball don’t always mix well. British Basketball League, which operated the professional game in the UK, had its licence terminated earlier this year due to financial difficulties stemming from an investment by Miami-based 777 Partners in 2021. Last night saw the debut of Super League Basketball, its replacement.

Professional basketball outside the US is still small enough that taking the wrong path once can lead to existential questions. Investors clearly see something in European basketball. For the sport itself, there’s a lot on the line.

English rugby union’s financial woes laid bare

In a telling sign of how bad things have got in rugby union, the first annual assessment of its finances was unveiled this week by a firm of insolvency experts.

Leonard Curtis, which specialises in corporate restructuring, released its inaugural Rugby Finance Report, a publication modelled loosely on Deloitte’s Football Money League. It made for sober reading.

Among the key findings was that seven of the 10 clubs in the Premiership — the top tier of English rugby union — are now “balance sheet insolvent”, meaning they are reliant on rich owners putting in money to keep them going. None of the teams made a profit in 2022/23, while combined debts reached £311.5mn. Losses across the 10 clubs hit £30.5mn, and TV revenue fell. The report did not point to any positive catalysts for improvement on the horizon.

The gloomy picture shows that the £200mn investment by CVC Capital Partners in 2019 has so far failed to alter the trajectory of English rugby union’s top clubs. That money effectively became a bailout due to the financial hit of the pandemic. And even so, three top tier clubs have since collapsed.

The authors of the report offered one simple short-term fix to keep the game afloat: slash wage bills. If clubs can stop haemorrhaging cash, they argued, it would provide a bit of breathing space to carry out more drastic reforms. Fears that dropping pay would cause an exodus of talent to other countries were overblown, they argued.

Potential longer-term solutions for rugby require increasing revenue. The game needs a larger, younger audience both to fill seats and to drive the value of broadcast rights. To do that rugby may need to consider some major surgery both on and off the pitch to make it quicker, easier to understand and more entertaining.

James Haskell, the former England international who wrote the foreword to the report, warned that the time for taking action was running out. Efforts to fix the game’s problems so far were like “rearranging the deckchairs” on a sinking ship.

“The next 18 months are going to be the most important for rugby”, he said. “We’ve got to change or we’re going to be stuffed.”

Highlights

• US billionaire Dan Friedkin has agreed a deal to buy Premier League club Everton, two months after an earlier attempt to buy the team collapsed.

• Italian football club AC Milan is in talks with the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo over a multimillion euro sponsorship deal to promote the war-torn country as a tourist destination.

• The German football league will re-auction a package of live games for its next rights cycle due to start in the 2025/26 season after a court partially upheld a lawsuit from broadcaster DAZN, who challenged the result of the previous auction.

• Flutter, which owns bookmakers Fan Duel and Paddy Power, predicts its profit will double by 2027 due to the booming US sports betting market.

Business of football: the big data arms race

A technological revolution is under way in football, as team owners turn to the latest data analytics and AI to gain a competitive edge in the battle for talent. As more professional investors buy into the sport and rules on spending get tighter, future champions will increasingly be created away from the pitch by teams of software engineers. Watch the latest instalment of our Scoreboard video series.

Final Whistle

Less than two years after suffering a devastating cardiac arrest on the field, Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills notched a career-first interception in Monday night’s victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars. While Hamlin, 26, returned to the gridiron for the 2023 season in a reserve position, he regained his starter status this month and punctuated his full recovery by picking off a pass from Jaguars’ quarterback Trevor Lawrence. Bills Mafia could not be more thrilled.