🍻 How Travis Kelce Exploited an NFL Loophole and Made $70M

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People were calling it back in August, but this might be the best sports weekend of the year.

Here’s your friendly reminder to touch grass at least once before Monday.

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: How the Ryder Cup Became the Most Profitable Golf Tournament in the World

📉 Biggest Loser: What’s That Thing Around NFL Players’ Necks?

🏆 Winner’s Circle: How Travis Kelce Exploited an NFL Loophole and Made $70M

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🗞 The Big Story

The Ryder Cup is one of the most profitable events in all of sports, but not for the reason you might think.

2025 Ryder Cup: Even though New York hasn’t hosted a Ryder Cup in 30 years, this year’s event is already being billed as “one of the biggest sporting events” in the city’s history.

Part of the reason for this is the sheer physical footprint the tournament is set to occupy at Long Island’s iconic Bethpage Black Course, which will include a massive, 3,500-person grandstand wrapped around the first tee and the PGA’s largest-ever merchandise tent, measuring 60,000 square feet.

However, the biggest headlines coming out of this weekend will undoubtedly be the cost to attend the tournament, which will range from a $10,000 per day pass that includes:

• Premium seating

• Food and beverage

• Round-trip black car service

• Exclusive merchandise

To the cheapest, general admission ticket options, which were initially priced at $750 per person and sold out in just 48 hours. And that’s not even including all of the add-ons fans can buy, including a $1,250 helicopter ride that takes them directly to the course.

Expected Revenue: If you just assume that roughly the same number of people who attended the last Ryder Cup (271,000 in 2023) will also attend this one, then even at $750 per ticket, that’s over $200 million the tournament will be bringing in from gate receipts alone, and that’s not even accounting for the seven global sponsors Bethpage Black will be featuring, which sources have said paid upwards of $10 million each.

Hidden Advantage: Still, the biggest benefit the Ryder Cup has over any other PGA event is the fact that the winners don’t have to get paid.

So while all PGA Tour signature events have to set aside $20 million purses, the Ryder Cup doesn’t even pay the European side, and only recently started setting aside $300,000 in donations to charity for the American side, as well as a new $200,000 stipend for every Team USA golfer, according to Golf.com.

To read more about how this year’s Ryder Cup is gearing up to be one of the biggest sporting events of the year, check out Josh Carpenter’s piece in the Sports Business Journal.

📉 Biggest Loser

What are these things around NFL players’ necks?

Background: It’s actually a medical-grade device that claims to “protect an athlete’s brain in a way that no other product can.”

But do they actually work?

To answer that, we have to go back to 2010, when an inventor and retired doctor named David Smith discovered what he believed was the best example of reducing brain damage: a woodpecker.

As Dr. Smith argues, the reason woodpeckers are able to bang their head against trees all day without going brain dead is because of a special neck muscle that contracts to trap blood in their brains while they peck at trees. And since there’s more blood in the woodpecker’s head, there’s less room for their brain to slosh around, therefore reducing the potential for brain injuries.

Which led Dr. Smith to wonder: Why can’t he do the same thing for humans?

So, after a decade of testing on small animals and then high schoolers, Dr. Smith finally got his Q-Collar approved for sale as a medical device by the FDA in 2021.

There’s just one problem: No one knows if this thing actually works.

Faulty Premise: Because even though the company claims that its device might limit damage to brain tissue by trapping blood in a player’s head, most of these claims come from company-funded studies.

In fact, if you go all the way back to Dr. Smith’s original claim about woodpeckers, you might be shocked to find out that most scientists don’t even agree with his theory about trapping blood in the bird’s head.

Instead, the general consensus is that woodpeckers benefit much more from their strong beaks and spongy skulls. Not to mention, when the brains of dead woodpeckers have been studied, they actually do show signs of damage.

Still, that hasn’t stopped Q-Collar from taking over across the NFL and dozens of other sports with the promise of helping improve player safety.

And even though the product’s founders argue that players have nothing to lose by trying the Q-Collar, some scientists are now saying that by promising players protection that might not exist, the Q-Collar could actually be putting players at a greater risk of injury.

🏆 Winner’s Circle

Traivs Kelce is about to make an extra $70 million this year by exploiting a loophole in one of the NFL’s dumbest rules. Let’s break it down.

NFL and Alcohol Promotion: Although it seems like every other commercial during an NFL game promotes some sort of alcohol, it didn’t always used to be this way.

In fact, up until 2017, hard liquor brands weren’t even allowed to advertise during NFL games, and it wasn’t until 2019 that the league let alcohol companies use players’ likenesses in their commercials.

However, once the NFL realized it was leaving way too much money on the table, it started to relax its rules and rake in millions. But even with all these changes, there’s still one rule that it has refused to budge on.

Hypocrisy: I want you to think about all of the alcohol commercials on TV today. What’s the one thing they all have in common?

If you said they feature no current players, you’d be correct, but that’s not by accident.

Instead, it’s a result of a league-wide rule that strictly prohibits any active player from “endorsing companies that promote alcoholic beverages.” Now, this rule is B.S. for a number of reasons, least of which is the fact that the NFL is fine with accepting money from alcohol brands but won’t let its own players do the same.

Still, some guys have found a way to cash in on the $2.4 trillion market, and there’s no better example of this than Travis Kelce.

Garage Beer: In 2024, it was announced that Travis and his brother, Jason, had begun working with Garage Beer, a new light beer company founded in their home state of Ohio. Now, for a recently retired Jason, appearing in ads for a beer company would no longer be an issue; however, Travis would have to get a little more creative if he wanted to be involved.

That’s why, instead of just signing a promotional deal in which Travis wouldn’t even be allowed to hold the beer on camera, the brothers decided to become the largest individual investors in the company.

And even though fans have never actually seen Travis even hold a Garage Beer on camera, the Wall Street Journal just reported that the company is on track to make between $60 and $70 million this year, with a valuation of roughly $200 million.

And while Travis admits that he’s just a “part owner” in the brand, he’s still managed to find a way to earn millions selling beer while following all of the NFL’s hypocritical rules.

⏱️ In Other News

• Are the Cubs illegally using facial recognition technology?

• ABS is finally here, but what do players think?

• How injured is your favorite NFL team already?

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👋🏻 Happy Friday!

If you’ve read this far, that means you really like sports business. Perhaps I can interest you in some more?

Frank Michael Smith called this one of his “favorite interviews of all time.”

P.S. features like this come out every Wednesday!