🏈 Y! Sports Biz: Sea-ing Green

👋 Welcome back! It takes some big news to distract from a sports weekend as killer as this one, but a $9.6 billion team sale just about did it. 

In today’s edition: Khosla captures the Seahawks, Sinner climbs the money list, UFC breaks records while McGregor breaks down, soccer streams along, the biggest trade in sports history, and more. Don’t let your friends and colleagues miss all of this. Tell them to subscribe!

Time to show you the money…

🏈 SEAHAWKS SOLD

(Yahoo Sports)

Saturday night, as England and Norway battled for a spot in the World Cup semifinal, America’s more familiar football once again demonstrated its unparalleled financial might. A group led by Vinod Khosla reached a $9.612 billion agreement to purchase the Seattle Seahawks, establishing a new record sale for an NFL control transaction.

The timeline: The agreement brings a near-conclusion to a process that formally began on February 18, though the road to the record price was winding.

• Rumors of a potential sale, initially disputed by the Allen Estate, first began in the build-up to the Super Bowl, with the Seahawks placed in the shop window during America’s greatest spectacle. At the time, projections suggested a sale price of $9-11 billion was attainable.
• In early May, Sportico reported that two groups had joined the bidding, one led by Aditya Mittal and Wyc Grousbeck, the other led by Khosla.
• Despite the Super Bowl victory and the emergence of qualified bidders, ESPN reported days later that the market for the Seahawks was “soft,” with the team expected to sell for $9 billion.
• The field narrowed to the two aforementioned groups last week, with Khosla ultimately emerging victorious on Saturday at the $9.6 billion price, which fell short of the loftiest double-digit aspirations, but landed squarely in line with initial expectations.

The outgoing owners: Late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen bought the Seahawks in 1997 for $194 million. With the record sale, the franchise has appreciated by over 14% per annum. Upon Allen’s 2018 passing, the team was placed in his estate and chaired by his sister, Jody. Allen specified that the sports teams should be sold, with proceeds donated to charity. 

• NFL rules mandate that an individual — not an estate or trust — serve as the controlling owner of a team. While the Seahawks were permitted to operate in noncompliance with that rule to unwind a very complex estate, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that it became a source of league pressure.
• The Estate also had to wait out a provision attached to public funding for Lumen Field that would see the state of Washington receive 10% of any sale if the franchise was sold before that clause expired in 2024.

The incoming owners: Vinod Khosla, who led the winning group, founded Sun Microsystems and Khosla Ventures, which counts OpenAI and DoorDash among its successful investments. Last year, Khosla purchased a reported 3.1% stake in the 49ers at an $8.5 billion valuation, a position he must now divest. Neeru Khosla, Vinod Khosla’s wife, will reportedly serve as the controlling owner of the Seahawks.

That escalated quickly: The prior record for an NFL team sale was set in 2023, when the Commanders were sold to a group led by Josh Harris for $6.05 billion. The Seahawks’ price represents a 59% increase, achieved in just three years.

• It took nine years for the most expensive NFL team sale to double from $1.1 billion (Dolphins) to $2.3 billion (Panthers). It took four years for it to double again to $4.65 billion (Broncos). Now, just four years after that, it has doubled once more.
• The massive leap in valuation is not a shocking overnight phenomenon. Rather, it’s a reflection of the relative infrequency of control sales. With only 32 teams, sales are rare, as few owners are itching to fully exit a business producing the valuation surges seen above.
• Minority stake sales in NFL franchises have become vastly more prevalent as individuals and institutions alike seek access to the asset class and majority owners seek liquidity. These transactions leave a trail of breadcrumbs, indicating approximations of control-sale valuations. In just the last year, the Raiders, Giants, Bears, and Patriots have sold stakes at reported valuations between $8 billion and $11 billion.

Looking ahead: Circumstances will inevitably thrust another NFL team into the marketplace at some juncture, but the availability of minority investment will only reduce the need for most to pursue that option. Meanwhile, Seattle awaits its next major sports ownership event, as an NBA expansion franchise remains up for bidding, albeit with quieter interest than its Las Vegas counterpart.

^*The Dolphins sold a 1% stake at a $12.5 billion valuation, but that sale included other portfolio assets: the Miami Open, the F1 Miami Grand Prix, and Hard Rock Stadium. The Browns also recently sold a minority stake, but financial details were not clear.

📸 BANK SHOTS

(Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)

(Ian Maule/Getty Images)

(Justin Edmonds/NWSL via Getty Images)

⚽️ WATCHALONG

(Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

The World Cup’s unprecedented viewership has been well documented. But here’s a stat you might not have heard before: Last Tuesday, more than 650,000 people on YouTube were concurrently watching someone watch the miraculous Argentina comeback against Egypt.

What happened: At the beginning of the tournament, YouTuber IShowSpeed (who boasts 57.6 million subscribers on the platform) announced a partnership with FOX, FIFA, and YouTube, allowing the streamer to go live from inside stadiums alongside live match footage from select games.

• The streams appear on the Fox One streaming service and the Fox One Prime YouTube channel, where the game footage is featured.
• Americans can watch along on Speed’s personal YouTube channel as well, though the game footage is not included there.

Who’s tuning in: Last Monday, Speed — who notoriously idolizes Cristiano Ronaldo — streamed live from the Spain-Portugal match. Within 24 hours, more than 18 million people had tuned in on YouTube to witness his devastation at the Portuguese icon’s exit. The same intrigue led them to the Argentina-Egypt stream, where the audience savored his disbelief of Messi (his de facto rival) and Argentina’s comeback.

• The Argentina-Egypt stream has over 21 million views. While YouTube view totals differ dramatically from Nielsen-measured average audiences (YouTube is vastly more accommodative), it’s hard to dismiss the scale of the accomplishment.
• Speed’s 21 “IRL streams” at World Cup games (not all of them with Fox) have averaged over 7.5 million views. Since he began his first World Cup stream at the United States opener against Paraguay, he has added 2.7 million subscribers. Not Vozinha-level growth, but impressive from an already very high floor.

Why it matters: The viewer interest demonstrates how younger generations consume content and live sports. In many cases, the action itself is not the anchor, but rather the personalities reacting to it. Building and nurturing new generations of fans requires meeting them where they consume content. In other words, future partnerships are highly likely, particularly as traditional media companies infiltrate growing discovery platforms.

Trickle to a stream: The World Cup efforts are only the most recent wave of a growing swell driving the sport into popular livestreams worldwide. YouTube has become a credible destination for live soccer.

• Last summer, the Bundesliga granted live U.K. broadcasting rights to 20 Friday night matches to YouTube channels The Overlap and That’s Football as part of a strategy to lure younger viewers.
• In August 2025, French streamer Zack Nani acquired the rights to broadcast three matches per week from the Saudi Pro League.
• CaséTV, a Brazilian YouTube channel with 39 million subscribers, has the rights to distribute all 104 World Cup matches to the country for free.

American import? The major American leagues aren’t short of national media dollars, but growth is not guaranteed, and younger audiences will only grow in importance. Creativity in broadcasting partnerships is likely to become a focus for both established and emerging properties. Look no further than the gridiron, where IShowSpeed streamed last season’s YouTube-exclusive NFL game in Brazil.

Up next: Speed is set to stream with Fox from both of this week’s semifinals, as well as Sunday’s final.

⚡ ICYMI

(Joshua Gateley/Getty Images)

🏀 Wemby takes hometown discount: Victor Wembanyama signed a five-year, $252 million extension with the Spurs on Friday. While the deal pays the 25% maximum of the salary cap, it does not include escalators to 30% that would become active if he were named Defensive Player of the Year, MVP, or All-NBA next season. Wembanyama’s concession has raised criticism of the CBA and its restrictive second apron.

⚽ FIFA eyeing 64-team World Cup: In a recent interview, FIFA President Gianni Infantino made the case for World Cup expansion, after this year’s successful 48-team debut. South America’s CONMEBOL, set to host three games in 2030, had previously advocated for expansion, which could see those countries land more games. While a larger tournament would generate more revenue, it could dilute the overall product and devalue the qualification process across federations.

🎮 EA succumbs to gamer outcry: Bending to the severe backlash from the College Football 27 and broader gaming communities, EA has announced that it will remove paid progression options (microtransactions) from the game’s Dynasty and Road to Glory modes. The episode demonstrates that fans who feel their wallets have been excessively squeezed do retain the power to affect change.

🇫🇷 PSG & Nike extend relationship: According to L’Équipe, Paris Saint-Germain and Nike are close to a five-year contract extension that would keep the repeat Champions League winners in Swooshes and Jumpmen until 2037. The report notes that PSG’s annual compensation will rise from €60 million ($69 million) to €100 million ($114 million). The club generated $420 million in commercial revenue in the 2024-25 season, among the highest results in Europe despite playing in a weaker Ligue 1.

See what else is trending on the Yahoo Sports Business Hub.

📆 TEAM TRADE

Robert Irsay (right) confers with NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle. (Bill Haber/AP Photo)

If one sports owner had been willing to pay capital gains taxes, the course of sports history could have been forever altered. Peyton Manning might have won a Super Bowl in blue and gold. The Ravens might not have existed. The Colts “2014 AFC Finalist” banner may never have hung from the rafters of Lucas Oil Stadium, which, in turn, may never have been built.

But that owner did not want to pay capital gains taxes.

On this day in 1972: Robert Irsay and Carroll Rosenbloom executed the biggest trade in sports history, with Irsay acquiring and swapping the Los Angeles Rams to Rosenbloom for the Baltimore Colts. Irsay paid $19 million for the Rams, the highest price in sports history at the time. The deal was structured as a cashless trade so that Rosenbloom, who wanted the Rams, wouldn’t have to sell the Colts and incur an estimated $4.4 million in capital gains taxes in the process.

On the move: When Irsay acquired the Colts, he promised they would remain in Baltimore and that they would work with the city on a new stadium. The team left Baltimore in the dead of night 12 years later. The Rams left for St. Louis in 1995, before returning to Los Angeles in 2016.

Fleeced!: It seems absurd that an LA-based franchise would be valued the same as one in Baltimore to allow for a no-cash, straight swap* of franchises. That would make Irsay the deal’s presumptive loser, but in reality, there were no losers in this deal:

• After Rosenbloom’s passing, his wife, Georgia Frontiere, sold 30% of the franchise to Stan Kroenke in step with the move to St. Louis. When she passed, her heirs sold their remaining 60% stake to Kroenke for $450 million, or a $750 million valuation. That’s a strong outcome, considering Rosenbloom paid only $1.2 million for his Colts stake, but…
• The Colts remain in the Irsay family, in the third generation of ownership, and they’re valued by Sportico at $5.7 billion. The Rams, back in Los Angeles and playing at state-of-the-art SoFi Field, are worth $10.4 billion.

Bottom line: Luka Doncic, Mookie Betts, even Babe Ruth… all big trades. But none were as big as a swap of what would become two of the most valuable franchises in all of sports. It also demonstrates that simply joining the exclusive NFL club, no matter the location and no matter the record price, was an unfailingly shrewd business decision. We suspect that lesson might resonate kindly with the Khosla family today.

^*Irsay did receive $1.8 million in indemnity fees still due to the Colts after the NFL moved them to the AFC.

🎙️ DODGER GREEN

(Sports Business Radio)

Sports Business Radio, part of the Yahoo Sports Business Hub, is the longest-running podcast in sports business, with an A-list guest roster that spans team owners, commissioners, executives, athletes, and more.

This week, Sports Business Radio’s Brian Berger hosted Dodgers President and CEO Stan Kasten to discuss all things Dodgers and MLB business, from Shohei Ohtani’s starpower, to local media rights and competitive balance. The entire conversation was a fascinating view into one of the hottest businesses in sports, but these highlights were particularly striking.

On the Dodgers’ merchandising might: The Dodgers boast unparalleled star power, and while those stars can drive jersey sales, the tried and true Dodger hat continues to generate jaw-dropping sales*.

“Everyone in Los Angeles has a Dodger hat, right? I mean, everyone. If you go to the game, you have a Dodger hat. You bring it with you, right? And yet, we still sell Dodgers hats every night. How many? 4,000 Dodger hats every night. That’s the average over the course of a season. That’s impossible.”

On the surprising impact of Shohei Ohtani: Kasten shares insight on the myth of star players driving incremental revenue… and how Ohtani transforms that myth into reality.

“I tell people that whenever we talked about signing a top-level free agent, the marketing people will say, ‘Oh, this guy will be great. He’ll add $5 or $10 million to our business.’ That’s crap. It’s never true. They’re always overestimating that. That’s not how that works, because baseball isn’t a sport where one guy moves the needle, with very, very few exceptions. And Shohei is that exception. They wildly underestimated his impact, and so did I.

On MLB’s competitive balance: Speaking about the league’s financial structure, which goes hand in hand with ongoing labor negotiations, Kasten explained that whether the league has a competitive balance problem or not, there is a problem with the perception of competitiveness (or lack thereof).

“We have said that we think the game could use more competitiveness. We think there are 10 or 15 teams whose fans tell us at the start of the year that their team has no chance. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I do know our fans’ and customers’ perceptions are that, and that’s our problem. We need to fix that. I think we can, and I think we can do better in a way that produces more revenue, which again will be good for players, and I hope we achieve that kind of outcome.”

*Quick math: 4,000 hats! The Dodgers play 81 home games a year, so that’s a grand total of 324,000 hats per regular season. New Era Dodgers hats tend to sell for between $35 and $55. Even if you were to take the conservative end of that range and assume the average sale price is $40, you’re talking about nearly $13 million in revenue. For hats! That seems to be evidence of the strength of Dodger Stadium’s tourist pull, particularly with Ohtani in the fold

🎾 LET’S PLAY

(Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)

After Jannik Sinner’s Wimbledon triumph, only three players sit ahead of him on the career ATP prize money list.

Question: We suspect you know the three gentlemen ahead of Sinner, but can you rank them in order based on their earnings?

Answer at the bottom…

🎵 WORLD CUP BUMP

(Lev Akabas/Sportico)

Rank ‘Em Answer: 1. Novak Djokovic ($193.5 million), 2. Rafael Nadal ($134.9 million), 3. Roger Federer ($130.6 million).

Imagine if only one of them — instead of three — dominated their era?!

Thanks for reading! Wanna talk shop? Follow me on X and Linkedin, or drop me a line: dylan.dittrich@yahooinc.com.