🧬 NFL Owners' Infinite Money Glitch

I never went to journalism school, but apparently, they teach you “it’s better to be right than first,” a lesson you might see applied today.

I did, however, go to marketing school and they taught me how much people love free stuff. More on that at the end!

But first:

🗞 The Big Story: How the Jaguars (Literally) Got Robbed of $22M

📉 Biggest Loser: Minnesota’s $30K QB Bounty

🏆 Winner’s Circle: NFL Owners’ Infinite Money Glitch

🗞 The Big Story

We just learned why a Jacksonville Jaguars employee stole over $22M from the team and how he was able to cover it up for over two years.

Disclaimer: This story broke a month ago, but I wanted to wait for all the facts to come out before talking about it.

And man are some of these recent revelations juicy.

Entry-Level Crook: In 2018, Amit Patel was hired by the Jaguars as a coordinator for financial planning and analysis, later becoming the manager of that same department.

In this position, Patel had access to the organization’s virtual credit cards, which basically meant he didn’t need a physical card to make online purchases.

And once he realized this in September of 2019, he started using that virtual card to buy himself everything from a $265,000 condo, to a $95,000 watch.

Other purchases included:

• Tesla Model 3

• Nissan pick-up truck

• Cryptocurrency

• NFTs

• Sporting event tickets

• Private jet travel

• Luxury hotels

• Country club membership

• Furniture

• Sports gambling

• And even the retainer fee for a criminal defense law firm (foreshadowing?)

In total, Patel racked up a bill worth at least $22,221,554.40 between September 2019 and February 2023 when he was fired, but there’s still one obvious question that remains largely unanswered:

How did he get away with it for so long?

Grand Plan: Patel was smart enough to identify large, recurring transactions on the team’s virtual credit card.

So when he submitted financial reports to the accounting department he would just inflate some of those larger expenses like catering, airfare, and hotel charges to hide the purchases he was making.

According to court filings, it appears the Jaguars didn’t find out about this until the NFL started investigating Patel for his gambling, and once they started digging they realized that Patel had actually been gambling with the Jaguar’s money.

Rationale: Patel’s lawyers are claiming that the reason he stole all of this money was to fund his gambling addiction, stating that “99% of the funds” he stole were to cover gambling losses.

Patel also apparently intended to pay the full $22M back once he won it back, but as he kept losing he kept taking more money from the team.

Punishment: Patel pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud and illegal monetary transactions and entered rehab.

His sentencing date is set for March 12, and he faces a maximum of 30 years in prison as well as being required to pay back the full $22 million to the team.

📉 Biggest Loser

This might be the craziest college football story I’ve heard all year.

QB-less: On December 26th, the Minnesota Gophers beat Bowling Green in the Quick Lane Bowl but a month before the game the team didn’t have a quarterback.

Their starter and third-stringer had both entered the transfer portal, which left red-shirt senior Cole Kramer as the team’s only option.

There was just one problem:

Kramer had already decided to move to Arizona with his fiancee and start a sales job.

But since he was the only QB left who hadn’t transferred, the Gophers had to find a way to get him to stick around for one last game.

And this is where the story gets wild.

Message Board Madness: Immediately following the announcement that Kramer would be staying to play one final game, an anonymous user posted on a Gopher’s message board that he had “heard from an A+ source that Cole Kramer was given $30,000 to play in the bowl game” from the team’s NIL fund.

Now, on the surface, this just seems like speculation, but then the poster doubled down by saying that he is a Class of ‘92 Minnesota graduate and has been at “very intimate gatherings” with PJ Fleck.

But then this rumor got taken a step further because a reliable Gopher’s beat writer for 247Sports confirmed that Minnesota paid Cole Kramer to stay for one final game out of their NIL fund.

And this beat writer would know because his cousin is literally the guy who co-founded and currently runs the Gopher’s NIL collective.

Wedding Fund: But the story doesn’t end here, because while this beat writer agreed with the anonymous poster that Kramer was getting paid he said that his numbers were “different” from the $30,000 figure thrown out.

And given the fact that Minnesota’s NIL fund probably isn’t very big, it seems unlikely that PJ Fleck would blow a large chunk of it to beat Bowling Green in the Quick Lane Bowl.

Now, for what it’s worth, Cole Kramer denies getting paid for playing in the game at all - saying that just getting to make his first start for his hometown team was enough.

But man, I hope he at least got a little money to pay for his upcoming wedding…

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🏆 Winner’s Circle

I fucked up.

Last week, I made a video claiming that the Carolina Panthers lost over $1.5M after it seemed like only 5,000 people attended their game versus the Falcons.

But as soon as I posted the video, you all reminded me of one very important point:

That’s not how the NFL works, at all.

Sure, it’s true that less than 10,000 people were at this game, but that doesn’t mean the Panther’s actually lost any money.

Real Losers: That’s because almost all the teams in the NFL make season ticket holders purchase what’s called a PSL or Permanent Seat License.

It’s a one-time fee that can range in cost from $1,000 to over $100,000 per seat and all it does is give you the right to buy season tickets every year.

But let’s say you wanted to stop paying for season tickets for a bad team, like the Panthers. Well, then the team can just take your PSL and resell it to another fan for the same amount, and you’re out all that money.

Attendance Loophole: This way, owners can ensure that their stadiums are always “sold out” because fans won’t want to forfeit their season tickets and lose tens of thousands of dollars from their PSL.

And it’s why the reported attendance based on tickets sold at the Panther’s game a few weeks ago was over 70,000.

Because over 70,000 season ticket holders have already pre-purchased tickets for the game and just didn’t show up.

Tickets Too: What’s more is that even if fans wanted to sell their tickets (which most clearly couldn’t given how cheap tickets were going for and how empty the stadium was) most NFL teams have an exclusive deal with TicketMaster that gives them a reported 20% cut of each ticket sale.

So basically NFL owners have found a way to still make money on a game where only 5,000 people show up by:

• Charging fans upwards of six figures for the right to buy season tickets

• Then thousands more for the actual tickets

• Then if fans sell those tickets, the team gets 20% of that money too

Talk about a scam…

⏱ In Other News

• That’s Mr. Sports Business TikTok to you!

• Women’s college basketball is now worth $65M!

• Mr. Rodgers is causing trouble in the House of Mouse.

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