🏔️ BYU’s Multi-Million Dollar Secret to Winning March Madness

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If you’re here expecting me to address my March Madness predictions, I regret to inform you that I made all editorial decisions for this publication, and you can’t make me do anything!

That being said… 3 out of 4 still being alive in the Sweet 16 ain’t bad.

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: BYU’s Multi-Million Dollar Secret to Winning March Madness

📉 Biggest Loser: The A’s Are Selling Tickets to a Stadium That Might Never Exist

🏆 Winner’s Circle: The Newest $100M League You’ve Never Heard Of

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🗞 The Big Story

BYU has a secret advantage that no one is talking about, but it could be the reason they win March Madness.

Background: It’s no secret that recruiting top-level athletes to BYU has always been a challenge. This is thanks, in large part, to the school’s strict honor code, which is based on Mormon teachings and includes rules like:

• No swearing

• No tea or coffee

• No drinking

And these rules apply to everyone, even if you’re not Mormon.

In fact, in 2015, running back Jamaal Williams was forced to sit out for a full year after being caught with a girl in his room.

But if it’s so hard to convince top athletes to come to BYU, how is it possible that next year, they will have the 11th-ranked basketball recruiting class in the nation, ahead of schools like Auburn, Alabama, and Marquette?

You might say it’s because of money, but the real answer isn’t that simple.

The Royal Blue: Before the start of the season, over 100 college basketball coaches were asked which programs they thought had the best NIL situations, and ranked at number 3 ahead of schools like Kentucky, Duke, and UConn was BYU:

Via CBSSports.com

When I first saw this, I was shocked, but the more I researched the school’s Royal Blue NIL collective, the more everything started to make sense.

Small But Mighty: For starters, BYU’s collective is comprised of less than 900 total donors, only 32 of which regularly give “major gifts.”

For context, the number of donors is much larger at traditional Blue Blood programs, but BYU is still able to poach top recruits and pay them millions of dollars, and it’s all because of an area called Silicon Slopes.

Silicon Slopes: This term was coined in the 1990s after tech companies started flocking to Provo and Park City, Utah, to set up their headquarters.

Today, those two cities alone are home to over 1,000 tech companies, including industry giants like Adobe, Microsoft, and eBay, which have created a ton of wealth in the area.

As the head of BYU’s NIL collective put it, “There are 5 billionaires that live within 20 minutes” of the campus and they’re all BYU fans.

So, if BYU doesn’t get it done this year, expect them to be contenders for years to come.

📉 Biggest Loser

The Las Vegas A’s are already selling tickets to a stadium that they might not even be allowed to build. Let’s break it down.

Background: The other week, the A’s announced that they’d begin taking deposits from fans of $19.01 to be placed on a priority list for tickets to their new ballpark three years before it’s set to be completed.

The $19.01 price tag is a nod to the A’s 1901 founding in Philadelphia; however, with the team ironically moving to its fifth city, it’s unclear if fans will actually be getting what they’re paying for with this ticket deposit.

That’s because even though the building site for this new $1.75 billion stadium was recently cleared and the city of Las Vegas has officially approved $380 million in public money for the project, the renderings that the team has been marketing to fans to sell these tickets aren’t actually what this stadium is going to look like.

Remember, this isn’t the first time that John Fischer and the A’s have done this. As a reminder, in 2023, when the team first attempted to secure public funding to build this new stadium, they released renderings to the public, which they later threw out, saying several of the features weren’t possible.

Now, it seems like they’re in the middle of pulling that same trick again.

Missing Key Features: As Front Office Sports points out, the team’s most recent stadium renderings don’t include several critical elements that are required in every MLB facility, including: 

• A batter’s eye in center field

• Bullpens

• Air conditioning

• Luxury suites

• Stadium lighting

But that’s not even their biggest issue.

Because even if you assume they can add those things, there’s still no guarantee that construction on this stadium will be allowed to move forward since Clark County requires the team to provide 7,500 parking spaces or one space for every four seats.

Currently, the A’s plan includes fewer than a third of those required spaces, with just 2,500 built into their plan.

At the end of the day, all of these added elements increase the cost for a stadium that is already over budget, and at this point, it’s unclear if John Fischer has the funding required to make these necessary changes and open the stadium by 2028.

🏆 Winner’s Circle

A former gold medalist just created one of the most successful new leagues you’ve never heard of. Here’s what you need to know…

Background: Sailing is one of the oldest sports in the world, dating back to the 17th century, but even though it's been an Olympic event since 1900, there has never been a successful league built around it… until now.

In 2019, Russell Coutts, a 1984 Olympic gold medalist and two-time world sailor of the year, partnered with American billionaire Larry Ellison to start SailGP. The league is now a 13-race sailing league with teams representing 12 different countries.

Now, reaching profitability for any niche sports league is difficult, but SailGP is having more success than most.

The league, which is expected to pull in $100-$150 million in revenue this year, is now on the verge of profitability in just its fifth season thanks to three key categories:

Partnerships: First, SailGP has secured extremely lucrative partnerships with brands like Rolex, hoping to reach what one sponsor called “a niche in the upper end… of the luxury space.”

Host City Fees: The league has also driven revenue by commanding six-figure host fees in cities where it hosts its events. In fact, Auckland reportedly committed more than $1 million for this year’s grand prix in New Zealand.

Team Ownership: Thirdly, SailGP is utilizing a model for team ownership in which the league first owns all of the teams and then slowly sells them off one by one, often to celebrities like Kylian Mbappé, who took a minority stake in the French squad earlier this year.

For context, top-performing teams are closing in on $10 million in annual revenue, and SailGP now considers $50 million to be a baseline value. SailGP says that it hopes to expand its season from 13 to more than 20 races in the coming years and more than double its revenue in that same time frame.

⏱️ In Other News

• The Orioles are living in the future

• Make 👏 logos 👏 unique 👏 again 👏

• 2025 college sports, a visualization

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👋🏻 Happy Friday!

This might be a hot take, but spring has some of the best sporting events of the entire year. Although, I’m always curious where they stack up for people: