Jordan here.
Football is in a constant battle with keeping its soul or allowing the highest bidders to pump money into it and dictate terms to maximise revenue.
The latest battle pitted FIFA through its proposed FIFA Forward Enterprises (FFE) and football confederations led by UEFA against each other. Ultimately, FIFA pulled the plug on its proposal just a few weeks after it was introduced.
Elsewhere, Amanda Staveley’s proposed minority stake purchase of West Ham United has thrown West Ham into a boardroom battle for control over its future.
And across the pond, FOX Sports will delay negotiations with the NFL for a new media rights deal while UFC revenue has grown by 29% year-over-year in the second quarter.
Today’s TLP:tldr is ready. Here is what you should expect in brief.
A health update from me
Fox Says No to Early NFL Media Rights Talks.
Amanda Staveley Wants a Piece of West Ham
LIV Golf Gets A New Investor After Saudi Money Exit.
UFC Revenue Grows by 29% Even After Losing $30 Million on One Event.
Three weeks ago in this newsletter (link to the newsletter three weeks ago), I mentioned that I recently suffered a brain injury. It’s pretty unfortunate there’s nothing I could have done to prevent it, and it was completely random, but I was at home and I suffered a small brain haemorrhage, causing a bleed on my brain.I have been in hospital in London recovering ever since, and a few eagle-eyed readers have been asking for an update.
I have been in hospital for 28 days now, going through a series of rehabilitation programmes. Thank you to everyone who was emailed and DMed their messages of support. I appreciate you all
Please enjoy life. You have no idea what’s around the corner. That is my message this morning to everyone reading this right now. Enjoy every minute. Take the leap, do the thing that you’ve been putting off. Send the message that you haven’t wanted to send, you never know what’s round the corner.
Private equity has set its sights on football for a long time. This is not the first time they have had eyes on lucrative tournaments. Remember the European Super League, and the fan backlash it faced?
The football establishment is worried at the sight of private equity investors. The investors who earn a stake will have an economic interest.
This is problematic, as the 2026 World Cup has shown with high ticket prices, a 30-minute Super Bowl-like half-time show and games effectively divided into four quarters, which gave advertisers a chance to squeeze in more ad slots.
The worry is that football will start to fully look like American sports leagues where commercialisation takes precedence over anything else.
Who knows, experts even predicted that private equity firms could push for a World Cup every two years to maximise revenue.
And there is a political dimension too.
The backlash has put additional pressure on Gianni Infantino’s leadership. UEFA has questioned FIFA’s governance. The result is an increasingly visible power struggle between FIFA and the organisations that actually run football across their respective regions.
The deal may be dead, but the idea behind it probably isn’t. FIFA’s failed experiment shows that the hardest part may not be finding investors. It may be convincing the people who control the sport to let them in.
The NFL owns the most lucrative sports broadcasting rights. In 2023, Fox Sports agreed to an 11-year deal with the NFL, paying up to $2.25 billion a year. The NFL was interested in starting renegotiations early, a cheeky ask but the NFL has all the leverage
Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said the network will not engage in negotiations with the NFL before 2028, pushing back against the league’s efforts to reopen its current media deals several years before they expire.
Fox’s current agreement runs through the end of the decade, with an opt-out opportunity around 2029–30.
That puts Fox at odds with the NFL’s strategy. The league has been exploring whether its existing media partners, including Fox, CBS, NBC and Disney, would be willing to pay more now in exchange for extending their deals further into the 2030s.
For Fox, the calculation is different. The company believes its current NFL rights are already expensive, and any early renewal would likely mean paying significantly more for something it already has locked in.
The NFL, meanwhile, has another option: take the rights to the open market and see what Amazon, YouTube, Netflix or other streaming platforms are willing to pay.
There’s only one winner here. The NFL is king. Have you seen the hilarious graphic below that shows the 100 most watch TV broadcasts of 2024, 72 of them were NFL games
I’ll link it for you here.
That kind of viewership dominance is not something you let go, Fox will try their hardest to hold on, but there’s no chance this doesn’t get amicably squashed very soon.
Amanda Staveley is back in English football, and this time, she’s targeting West Ham United.
The former Newcastle co-owner has agreed a provisional deal through her PCP Capital Partners consortium to buy the Gold family’s 25.1% stake in West Ham, in a transaction reportedly worth around £150 million and valuing the club at roughly £600 million.
But the deal has quickly turned into a boardroom battle. Daniel Křetínský, West Ham’s existing co-owner, has moved to challenge Staveley’s bid by exercising his pre-emption rights, potentially blocking the consortium from completing the purchase.
For West Ham, its immediate consequence is uncertainty. A battle might potentially brew over who controls the club’s future.
But also, this deal puts something in perspective for football ownership. Investors don’t necessarily need to buy an entire club to gain significant influence. A 25% stake can provide boardroom power and, potentially, a path to greater control.
Finally, Premier League clubs remain attractive to investors despite their huge valuations: the combination of global audiences, media rights, sponsorship and real estate can create multiple ways to generate returns.
LIV Golf may have survived its biggest test yet.
The breakaway golf league announced this week that it has reached a term-sheet agreement with a lead investor, with the Financial Times identifying the investor as BC Partners’ credit arm.
The deal could provide the financial foundation for a restructured “LIV 2.0” and keep the league operating through 2030.
That matters because LIV’s original financial engine is running out of fuel. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which has poured more than $5 billion into the league since its launch in 2022, is preparing to end its direct funding.
Much of the LIV Golf funding from the PIF was spent on guaranteed player contracts and building the tour, but it has struggled to generate comparable commercial revenues.
The proposed new model could look very different. Players are expected to become majority equity holders in the league, while outside investors provide fresh capital. LIV is also considering a smaller schedule, reportedly around 10 events, as it attempts to build a more sustainable business.
To have a chance of survival, LIV Golf needs its biggest stars to stay, but restructuring the huge guaranteed contracts will be its biggest challenge. Giving the players equity might be able to sway them.
Also, this is a test of whether a league built entirely on sovereign wealth with unlimited money can become an attractive investment for conventional capital and eventually, a sustainable business.
The UFC has surely come a long way. In Q2, it delivered another reminder that it has become much more than a fight promotion.
Its revenue jumped 29% year-on-year to $535.7 million in the second quarter, driven largely by a $64.7 million increase in media-rights revenue. The biggest catalyst is its new seven-year, $7.7 billion deal with Paramount,
The Paramount deal, which began in January, moved UFC away from its traditional pay-per-view model.
The UFC, however, lost around $30 million staging its June “Freedom 250” event at the White House. The event cost more than $60 million to stage and generated little traditional ticket revenue because attendance was invitation-only.
But TKO, UFC’s parent company, isn’t treating the loss as a disaster.
The event generated enormous exposure, with TKO saying it produced roughly $1 billion in earned media value and helped attract 25 new multi-year marketing partners.
Everyone wins here except the UFC fighters. I’ve recently covered this in a video of mine.
The UFC is a true representation of what a modern sports asset looks like to an investor. Its value comes from media rights, sponsorships, live events, licensing and global audiences. Also, the Paramount deal shows how valuable that content has become.
Last week, Sky agreed to acquire ITV’s Media & Entertainment business in a deal worth up to £1.6 billion.
I’ve written about this at length in last week’s newsletter. See here for what this means for sport in the United Kingdom full piece.
Hospital or not, the show does not stop. This newsletter is a different format. It’s a bulletin format with more punchy news bites.
There are three things that I wanted to do this year at the beginning of the year:
Launch Off the Pitch, the podcast. That’s the podcast where I speak to very visible operators in the world of sport, asking how they built their business empires and how much money they make.
Launch the TLP Show, a show that will come out very soon where I speak to people in the world of sport about a particular topic where an expert can give inside information.
Turn this new letter into more of a bulletin format. This is the first edition of that.
Episode 2 of Off the Pitch is recorded and will be released soon, before the end of August. Be on the look out for that.
I will send an email on the day it comes out.I’m also in the emails of a very, very prominent CEO in the world of sport and the UK about recording an episode 2. When I secure that, I will let you know who it is and give you an idea as to when the episode will be out.
The TLP show is coming. It will be both audio and video. Episode 1 is recorded, and I have a few more episodes lined up to record soon as well. Stay tuned for that.
Also, let me know your feedback on this style of newsletter. It’s different to normal. It’s punchier, faster, quicker. Do you prefer this or not?
Simply reply to this email with your verdict. If you reply to this email, it comes to me, and I see it, but if you like it, we can adopt this format in future editions.
My goal is that you have all the news that you need in a bite-sized, easy-to-read format. Including my takes, my opinions, and my perspective too.
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