🏈 How a Former NFL QB Designed the Perfect Football

I think the Green Bay Packers officially won the Aaron Rodgers Trade.

Not only did we get two second-round picks, but now we got their head coach. And all we had to give up was a guy who didn’t want to be in Green Bay anyway.

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: How a Former NFL QB Designed the Perfect Football

📉 Biggest Loser: Debunking How Much Money Carrie Underwood Makes from SNF

🏆 Winner’s Circle: Why Green Bay is Turning Down $1.5B From the Packers

🗞 The Big Story

This is the most high-tech football ever created, but not in the way you might think.

Background: Every football used in college or the NFL goes through a 3—to 4-hour “mudding” process to give it the perfect grip and texture.

However, this process is expensive and difficult to perform, and it’s also easily ruined by elements.

That’s why almost all of the footballs you can buy at the store feel really cheap and don’t actually simulate the grip or feel of a “real” college or NFL football.

But what if there was a way you could get both the exact feel and performance of an official ball without worrying that you’re going to ruin it after paying $150-$200?

Well, that’s what former NFL QB Kurt Benkert set out to create with Dime Lab.

In the Lab: For the last year, Kurt has worked through dozens of different prototype:

• Materials

• Lace structures

• Stitching

To come up with the perfect backyard football and the way it works is actually pretty cool.

For starters, this ball is made of synthetic leather with extra texture for better grip and weatherproofing. This means that right out of the box, it’s meant to feel just like a football that’s been worked on for hours by an NFL equipment staff.

Kurt also added raised, textured laces that feel like the footballs NFL quarterbacks throw and requested extra stitching around the stripes where your pointer finger goes for an even better grip.

Kurt told me that these balls are weatherproof and water resistant, so you don’t have to worry about getting wet or scuffing them on the concrete.

Revenue: However, maybe the most impressive part is that in their first launch, Dime Labs sold out of their initial order of 500 balls in just 45 days.

At $60 a pop, that’s $30,000 in revenue Kurt made on his first launch, which now includes footballs in junior sizes and even one that gets grippier the more you throw it in the water.

📉 Biggest Loser

How do we all keep falling for this stuff?

Background: Recently, a Twitter account with over 280,000 followers reported that Carrie Underwood makes $1 million per week for singing the Sunday Night Football theme song.

This would mean that since 2013, she would have made almost $200 million off one song.

There’s just one problem: None of that is true.

In fact, it’s much easier to prove it wrong than to find out where this information even came from.

Fake News: Most of the articles that “reported” this information credit a 2023 article from SportsKeeda; however, that article cites a website called AllSportsFaq.com, which is currently suspended.

But apparently, that was enough for an aggregator account to call it “breaking news.”

Even though the original post currently has over 3 million views, it was quickly community-noted with a link to a recent interview Carrie did with Howard Stern, in which she called the gig “pretty pro bono.”

Still Cashing In: However, that doesn’t mean she isn’t getting paid, and even if she’s only making $500K per year for the song, she’s still earning millions of dollars in exposure across the 18-week season.

For example, in 2017, Lady Gaga saw her album sales increase by 1000% after performing once during the Super Bowl, and Rihanna earned $88.3 million in estimated media value after her 2023 Super Bowl Halftime performance.

So even though Carrie Underwood isn’t making $18M this year, that doesn’t mean she’s not cashing in.

🏆 Winner’s Circle

The Green Bay Packers want to spend $1.5 billion of their own money to renovate Lambeau Field, but the city won’t let them.

Background: The Packers currently rent Lambeau Field from the city for around $1.1M per year. However, according to their existing lease, which expires in 2032 with the option to extend it another 10 years, that rent payment is set to increase by 2.75% every year.

This means that by 2042, the team will be paying around $2 million per year to lease its stadium, which is about average in NFL terms.

However, the team just proposed an idea for reducing that amount, and the city isn’t happy about it.

Proposal: Instead of raising their rent every year, the Packers submitted three different proposals requesting that the city freeze their rent at $1 million per year for the next 18 years.

In return, the team would commit to paying for $1.5 billion in upgrades to Lambeau Field without asking for taxpayer dollars.

If the city accepts the deal, this would include an $80 million upgrade to concession stands and the concourse area as soon as this year.

The Issue: However, instead of signing on the dotted line or even submitting a counter-proposal, the mayor of Green Bay simply decided to ignore the Packer's proposals until the team wrote a public letter last week.

Only then did the city release a statement of its own, saying that it wouldn’t negotiate with the team if it asked for a rent freeze because it would cost the city and its taxpayers “$30 million over the next 18 years.”

Which is only half true.

That’s because under the current lease agreement, with rent increasing every year, the city would net $30.3 million from the team by 2042.

But if the Packers' rent were frozen at $1 million per year, the city would still be earning a total of around $20 million—which makes their loss closer to $10 million, not $30 million.

But still, it’s a little annoying for a team that made $654 million last year to be haggling over a few million bucks at the expense of their fans.

⏱ In Other News

• The NFL player who bikes to work

• The three types of sports owners

• WNBA Finals RIGGED?!

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👋 Happy Friday!

I don’t talk politics in this newsletter, but if you’re curious about who will win the election this year, keep an eye on Commanders-Bears.

If you know, you know.