💰 The Smartest Deals in Sports Today

In the last week my YouTube audience has tripled!

I released a video two weeks ago on the why athletes are leaving Nike in droves and at the time of writing this article it currently sits at 75,000 views.

For a micro-creator like me it’s very gratifying to see that so a big thank you to everyone who has watched and interacted with my platform in the last ten days - it means a lot.

I made this platform to tell the stories about the amazing things athletes are doing outside of their respective sport.

Today, we dive into four of them, and we start with a recap of what Golden Boy Becks is doing in Florida.

If you’ve been a subscriber here for long enough you will have an idea as to what what David Beckham is onto with Inter Miami as I did a full article on it a few editions ago.

It’s worthy of a recap. Here’s a timeline of the valuation of Inter Miami:

• 2014 — $25m: Beckham exercises the option to start an MLS team for $25m

• 2020 — $100m: Inter Miami plays first game

• 2021 — $150m: Inter MIami valued at $150m as Becks buys partner out

• 2023 — $525m: Inter Miami valued at $525m (via Sportico)

• 2024 — $1.03bn: Inter Miami valued at $1.03bn (via Sportico)

The MLS wanted Beckham so bad they they offered him the ability to buy an MLS team for $25m when he joined LA Galaxy.

To put things into perspective, the newest MLS team is San Diego FC, they will join the league next year. Owner Mohamed Mansour paid $500m for the rights to do so.

That is how much it costs today. That is how much of a steal Beckham got.

Outrageous. And a comfortable 9/10 on the Deal scale.

Smart Deal Meter: 9/10

- Deal #2: Jack Grealish + Puma

Jack Grealish signed the biggest boot deal in English Football history when he signed with Puma last year.

Grealish will make £10m/yr for the next 5 years with his deal there making it the highest grossing per annum boot deal in English football history. Beating out:

• Raheem Sterling @ New Balance

• Harry Kane @ Skechers

• David Beckham @ Adidas

To put this into perspective, Grealish will earn £200k per week on top of the crazy wages he is on at Man City already. It’s a fantastic deal considering the fact that the first full season of this agreement will see Jack play the least amount of minutes in any of his previous 8 seasons!

Puma weren’t to know this when they signed the deal so it’s excellent work by Jack and his team securing such a lucrative sponsorship.

Excellent capitalisation on a brilliant period in Jack’s career.

- Deal #3: Andy Murray + Castore

There’s a perception in the UK that Andy Murray is a miserable fucker.

That may be true! But it’s worth understanding Andy Murray is about his money. This is a table of the all-time tennis earners list.

1. Djokovic: $181.5m

2. Nadal: $134.6m

3. Federer: $130.5m

4. Murray: $64.4m

5. Sampras: $43.2m

Murray is comfortably in #4 behind the Big 3.

What’s more is in 2018 he left UnderArmour and joined fast-growing British retail company Castore in a surprise deal which paid him £1m every year for 8 years and a piece of equity in the business.

Since then, Castore has ballooned in valuation.

Last year, they were valued at £750m when they raised some money. Since then, they have announced that they expect revenues of close to £200m in 2024.

Murray took a bet on a young company, and so far the deal is paying off.

- Deal #4: Roger Federer + On Running

Hopefully it can perform like Federer is experiencing with On Running.

Roger Federer was with Nike for a long time. He left there for an extremely lucrative deal with Uniqlo. That deal gave him three things:

• $30m every years for 10 years

• No retirement clause

• No commitment to wear Uniqlo shoes

The last bullet point there being the most important. That freed the way for Federer to make a sizeable investment in On Running.

Some numbers:

• 2018: Federer invests CHF50,000,000 (EUR54,000,000) in On Running

• 2020: On Running IPO at $7.3bn valuation. Federer’s stake tripled in value

• 2024: On Running Valuation surpasses $12bn. Federer’s stake surpasses EUR250,000,000

To put this into perspective do you remember the All-Time Earnings list from earlier in this article?

Federer will make more from Uniqlo AND On Running than his hall-of-fame tennis career.

All things being well, Murray will surpass his career earnings from Castore too!

For those that want to see the video that ballooned my YouTube audience, watch below:

See you next week.