Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic’s weekly sports business cheat sheet. (Want to get MoneyCall delivered to your email inbox every Wednesday morning? Subscribe here.)
Name-dropped today: A’ja Wilson, Malia Obama, Caitlin Clark, Ahmed Fareed, Bill Belichick, Jordon Hudson, David Beckham, John Oliver and more. Let’s go:
Driving the Conversation
The best sports TV ad of the year
Nike has had some great TV ads over the years, especially around basketball. (I’m partial to the classic “Li’l Penny” campaign, which was *checks notes* 30 years ago.)
The one that debuted last weekend for A’ja Wilson’s first signature shoe (released yesterday, to sold-out status) is an instant classic. Directed by Malia Obama, the ad is a play on the old “Miss Mary Mack” nursery rhyme hand-clap game and features some exceptional editing work. Watch:
Some sample lyrics:
A’ja Wilson’s on top, top, top…
Can’t take her spot, spot, spot…
She’s a real one through, through, through…
Always does what she’ll do, do, do
She won M-V-P, P, P
One, two and three, three, three
Her game is tea, tea, tea
She made history, -ee, -ee
And if you talk smack, smack, smack
She’s gonna clap back, back, back
Her drip’s elite, leet, leet
It can’t be beat, beat, beat
A close watch is rewarded: joyous visuals that pay homage to Black girlhood, look-up-from-your-phone catchy audio, a cameo from Dawn Staley and even a quick (and funny) scene set in Sunday church.
During this surging era of women’s basketball, do not discount the virtuous cycle between great players, great marketing and audience enthusiasm. History shows a great ad can help turn a star into a household name.
Beyond Wilson’s Nike ad, here is a snapshot of the standout marketing surrounding women’s basketball just in the past 72 hours:
Sunday: ESPN aired Caitlin Clark’s return to Iowa for an Indiana Fever preseason game against the relatively anonymous Brazilian national team, and the TV ratings were jaw-dropping.
(And don’t forget: Clark will be on national TV 41 times in the WNBA’s 44-game regular season.)
Monday: WNBA stars including Jonquel Jones, Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and Angel Reese were featured at the Met Gala.
Tuesday: The Athletic’s latest “No Offseason” podcast episode dropped, focused on the launch of the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries.
Every element — talent, marketing, fan engagement — becomes a part of the self-reinforcing flywheel.
As the Wilson ad reminds us: This is way more than just Clark, and reducing it to the “Clark effect” ignores all these other signals and trends over the past 12-36 months, from historically strong TV ratings for the women’s NCAA Tournament to startup basketball leagues like Unrivaled creating a new template for player benefits and fan access.
The WNBA’s regular season doesn’t start until a week from Friday, but the league and its wider ecosystem’s innovative grasp on the attention economy is already locked in.
Get Caught Up
D.C. will host the 2027 NFL Draft. (Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)
Soaring Derby viewership, plus NFL Draft heading to D.C.
Everyone watched the Kentucky Derby: Saturday’s broadcast brought in 17.7 million viewers, the largest audience for a Derby since 1989 and NBC’s most-watched Derby ever. (Peacock streams, nearly a million, were up nearly 35 percent from last year.)
That’s a testament to the cultural hold the Derby has on the casual sports fan, but also a solid data point backing up an idea MoneyCall editor Jason Kirk brought up that we need more SHORT sporting events, in which you can leave the TV on for hours beforehand or tune in for just a quick burst of excitement. (Marquee events at the Olympics in the pool and gym floor come to mind.)
(The broadcast’s standouts? Per my colleague Richard Deitsch, it included Ahmed Fareed, who filled in as host at the last minute for an ill Mike Tirico.)
F1 in Miami: Great analysis of the state of F1 in the U.S. from The Pulse weekend crew of Alex Kirshner and Sam Settleman, bookended by the news that F1 and the Miami GP extended the race partnership through 2041. (Plus: Don’t miss the last section of this newsletter!)
NFL Draft coming to D.C. in 2027: Ovi 895, RFK Stadium 2.0, James Wood. D.C. continues to enjoy a sports hot streak over the past month, including the news Monday that the NFL will hold the 2027 draft in the nation’s capital.
If my prediction last week was that the 2026 NFL Draft in Pittsburgh will set new draft attendance records, I’ll say now that D.C. in 2027 will be even higher.
Business of Bill Belichick, cont’d: My colleague David Ubben read through BB’s new book (the one that triggered the hoopla a week ago) and thought it was … OK?
Let’s be real: After last week’s frenzy, the biggest story around Belichick Inc. this week is this weekend’s Miss Maine USA pageant, featuring Belichick’s girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, as a contestant. (And presumptive favorite? Still waiting on a sportsbook to offer odds!)
Other current obsessions: David Beckham joins me in the 50-something club (welcome!) … Related: Gen X enthusiasm for the return of NBC’s 1990s NBA anthem “Roundball Rock” … 76ers guard Jared McCain’s new nail polish line … Skechers taken private at a ~$9.4B valuation … Youth-sports platform Unrivaled Sports gets $120M in investment, led by Dick’s Sporting Goods … John Oliver’s offer to re-brand a minor league baseball team …
What I’m Wondering
Questions stemming from Texas’ 
roster spend
Great reporting last week from my colleague Sam Khan Jr. about University of Texas boosters possibly spending up to $40M in NIL on the football roster for this upcoming season.
For comparison, MLB’s Miami Marlins have a payroll reported to be $67.9M, and the minimum team salary floor across the entire NHL is $65M.
The most notable comp: Ohio State’s 2024 roster made a reported $20 million on the way to winning the CFP championship. Even if that’s off by a few million, what Texas is reportedly doing is a seismic jump. I had a few questions for Khan about all this:
With UT as atypical, obviously, what would be your educated guess of what an average Power 4 team will spend on football for the 2025 season?
I think most Power 4 teams will spend somewhere between $13 million and $20 million. The elite, well-funded teams may live above that, perhaps in the $25 million to $30 million range. Even if the reported $35 million to $40 million estimate is accurate — I’m not certain that it is — it could just be a one-time thing, before the cap kicks in and third-party NIL deals fall under more scrutiny once the clearinghouse is established.
If/when the House settlement kicks in and every P4 team *starts* with a spending floor of up to $20M, what do you think the new budget norm looks like, combining school payments with booster NIL?
I don’t believe a $40 million roster spend will become typical. It’s important to remember that, with this revenue-sharing cap, some schools are funding additional scholarships for other sports with it (for example, Georgia is allocating $2.5 million for that purpose). Most, but not all, of the revenue will be going toward football (Georgia is allocating 75 percent, which feels like a good baseline for most schools). So the “floor” likely starts around $13 million for Power 4 programs that are fully funding the rev-share cap.
How many years will it take to have a college football team with a $100M annual roster payroll?
Maybe I’ll sound naive, but I doubt we’ll ever get there. Even if a team had a few star players with eight-figure contracts, it would take a lot to get the payroll to nine figures. Could we get to a $50 million payroll if someone wanted to build a super team? Maybe. But as long as these players can move freely from year to year and are signing one- or two-year deals, I think that will keep player salaries from getting too far above $10 million, if anyone even reaches that threshold.
Grab Bag
Time for a lightning round…
Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms
And especially my own mom, who was a Day 1 MoneyCall subscriber, and MoneyCall editor Torrey Hart.
Name to Know: Midge Purce
The Gotham FC and U.S. women’s national team player, 29, made her Broadway debut last Thursday in a cameo during “Chicago.” More athlete-Broadway crossovers, please.
This week in innovation
NBC is planning to use AI to recreate the voice of longtime “NBA on NBC” voiceover narrator Jim Fagan, who died in 2017. Almost all of the reaction I have seen is “That’s pretty creepy,” so we’ll see if this makes it to October.
(Torrey reminded me that back when NBC did this for the 2024 Olympics with Al Michaels’ voice, 95.2 percent of fans polled by The Pulse hated the AI announcer idea — and Michaels is alive! The Pulse has a new poll today about the Fagan plan: Vote here.)
Beat Dan in Connections: Sports Edition
Puzzle #226
Time: 00:54
Great week for you to beat my time!
Try the game here.
Worth Your Time
Lego created working F1 cars for the Miami GP. (Bryn Lennon – Formula 1 / Formula 1 via Getty Images)
Lego built full-size F1 cars for the Miami GP last weekend, and my colleague Luke Smith had behind-the-scenes access to see how they pulled it off.
Two more reads worth your time:
The Business of The Athletic: Want to understand the strategy behind our newsletters, which just hit 5 million total subscribers? Read this interview our boss Chris Sprow did with The Drum.
Is European soccer ready to embrace the championship ring?
Back next Wednesday! This week’s challenge: Hit that “forward” button and send this to any mom or mom figure in your life with your rec to sign up to receive it (totally free, as are all The Athletic’s other newsletters, too).
(Top photo: Louis Grasse / Getty Images)