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Sports

The companies that define the sports industry, each read on the same nine-check website rubric — a 0–100 score with the exact fixes — alongside the concepts, the developments and the questions that shape the field.

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The companies

23 companies in the sports industry, each graded on the nine things that decide whether a buyer or an AI assistant can find and trust them online. Open any name for the full write-up and the specific fixes.

70+ solid   45–69 gaps   under 45 costing customers

Sites we couldn’t reach

18 businesses whose website blocked our scanner — common when a site filters datacenter traffic, and not a sign the site is broken. A blocked site is never scored zero.

Who defines the sports market

The firms, funds and institutions that set the terms in sports — context, not local listings; never scored.

Sports guides

Concepts

Season ticket base

The count of seats committed for a full season before a single game is played. It is the fixed floor under a team's revenue and the number every other ticketing metric is measured against.

Renewal rate

The share of season ticket accounts that renew for the following year. A few points of renewal is worth more than any acquisition campaign, because a renewed account costs almost nothing to sell.

STH (season ticket holder)

Industry shorthand for a season ticket holder — increasingly called a season ticket member, because the relationship is sold as membership with benefits rather than as a bundle of seats.

Full season equivalents (FSE)

A normalization that converts partial plans into whole-season units so a 10-game plan and a full plan can be compared. Reporting FSEs rather than raw account counts prevents a plan-mix change from looking like growth.

Group sales

Blocks sold to companies, schools, youth leagues and affinity groups, usually at a discount with a themed experience attached. It fills the seats plans do not, and it is the cheapest way to introduce first-time buyers to the building.

Single-game inventory

Seats not committed to plans or groups, released for individual sale. What remains here after plan renewals determines how much pricing freedom a team actually has.

Variable and dynamic pricing

Variable pricing sets prices before the season by game tier -- opponent, day of week, promotion, holiday -- so plan holders can see the logic up front. Dynamic pricing moves prices during the on-sale window in response to demand, weather, standings and resale activity. Dynamic captures upside on hot games but antagonizes plan holders whenever a single-game seat drops below what a member paid.

All-in pricing disclosure

The requirement to show the total price a buyer will pay — fees included — up front rather than revealing them at checkout. The Federal Trade Commission's rule on unfair or deceptive fees, effective in May 2025, applies this to live-event tickets and short-term lodging.

Secondary market

Resale of already-sold tickets through exchanges and brokers. It is simultaneously a competitor to primary inventory, a liquidity feature that makes plans easier to sell, and the clearest real-time read on true market price.

No-show rate

The gap between tickets distributed and tickets scanned. Empty paid seats still hurt: no-shows buy no food, no merchandise and no parking, and they make the building look worse on broadcast.

Per-cap spend

Average ancillary revenue per attendee — food, beverage, merchandise, parking — divided by turnstile count. The metric that decides whether a discounted ticket was worth selling.

Premium seating

Suites, club seats, loge boxes and field-level clubs sold with hospitality, dedicated entry and inclusive F&B. Small share of seats, outsized share of revenue, and usually contracted for multiple years.

Suite and club seat contracts

Multi-year agreements with annual escalators, food-and-beverage minimums, playoff and non-game-event rights, and assignment clauses. Because they are corporate expense-line items, they track the local economy more than they track the team's record.

PSL (personal seat license)

A one-time fee for the right to buy a specific seat's tickets, separate from the tickets themselves. Common in NFL stadium financing, and it creates a transferable asset the holder can resell.

Naming rights and their valuation

The sale of a venue's name to a corporate partner, usually the largest single sponsorship a property owns; Q2 Stadium and Dell Diamond are Austin-area examples. The fee is justified by earned media and broadcast mentions, signage impressions, category exclusivity, hospitality inventory, and the length and escalation of the term. Comparable deals set the range; the buyer's strategic need sets the price.

Jersey and kit sponsorship

Front-of-shirt, sleeve and training-kit inventory. Standard in soccer for decades and now present across major North American leagues in patch or jersey-patch form.

Category exclusivity

The partner's guarantee that no competitor in its category may buy inventory from the property. It is the single largest price multiplier in a sponsorship deal and the hardest term to unwind later.

Activation rights

What a sponsor may actually do with the relationship — on-site presence, marks usage, athlete appearances, promotions, hospitality tickets. Rights fees buy permission; activation budget is the separate money that makes the permission worth anything.

LED and signage inventory

Fixed and digital display units sold in rotations by game or by season. Digital boards let one physical position be sold many times, which multiplies inventory but dilutes each unit's value if oversold.

Media rights: national versus local packages

The right to broadcast or stream games, sold in packages by territory, window and platform, and for most leagues the largest revenue line. National rights are sold by the league and shared among clubs; local rights are sold by the club in its home territory. That split determines how far a big-market club can out-earn a small-market one.

RSN collapse and the direct-to-consumer shift

The unwinding of the regional sports network model, in which cable carriage fees paid teams whether or not anyone watched. Cord-cutting broke the economics, Diamond Sports Group entered Chapter 11 in 2023 and emerged restructured, and leagues and clubs have moved local games to their own apps or league-run production. That restores the fan relationship and the first-party data but replaces guaranteed distributor payments with subscriptions a team must re-earn every month.

Revenue sharing

Pooling defined league revenues — usually national media and licensing — and distributing them among clubs to keep small markets viable. What is shared and what is kept locally is the most consequential line in any league's constitution.

Salary cap and luxury tax

A league-imposed ceiling on player compensation, hard in some leagues and soft in others. Soft-cap leagues use a luxury tax instead of an absolute ceiling: clubs over a payroll threshold pay a penalty, typically redistributed to clubs under it, which makes the tax a revenue-sharing mechanism as much as a restraint on spending.

Allocation money and the Designated Player rule (MLS)

Two MLS-specific mechanisms. Allocation money is budget credit a club can apply to reduce a player's charge against the salary budget, awarded and traded under league rules. The Designated Player rule lets a limited number of players per club be signed outside the budget with only a fixed charge counting against it. Together they are why an MLS roster's real spending cannot be read off the cap number.

Roster rules

League-specific limits on roster size, senior versus supplemental slots, international spots and loan players. A signing that makes sporting sense can still be impossible under the roster mechanics.

Academy and homegrown players

A club-run youth development pipeline, typically free to the player, that trains prospects from early teens toward the first team. A player signed out of it is a homegrown, usually carrying roster or budget advantages -- the cheapest route to a first-team contributor and the payoff on academy investment, as well as a community and commercial asset in its own right.

Transfer fees and solidarity payments

The transfer fee is the payment one club makes another to acquire a player still under contract -- standard in global soccer, absent from the North American draft leagues -- which turns a developed player into a balance-sheet asset. FIFA's solidarity payment and training compensation mechanisms route a share of that fee back to the clubs that trained the player as a youth, giving academies a direct financial stake in a graduate's later career.

Affiliation agreements and the Player Development License

The contract binding a minor league or reserve club to a parent organization: who pays players, who controls assignments, who owns the local business. In affiliated baseball this is the Player Development License, which replaced the older Professional Baseball Agreement structure after the 2020 reorganization and sets facility standards, staffing and term. The affiliate owns the gate and the brand; the parent owns the roster.

Stadium public financing

Public participation in venue construction through general obligation or revenue bonds, land contribution, infrastructure spending or dedicated taxes. The perennial argument is whether the public return justifies the public cost.

Tax increment financing and hotel occupancy tax

Two of the standard public funding mechanisms for sports facilities. Tax increment financing dedicates the future increase in property tax revenue inside a defined district to pay for the improvement that created it, which avoids a visible new tax. The hotel occupancy tax is a local levy on hotel stays that Texas cities may direct toward tourism-generating facilities and event promotion -- the usual source behind municipal tournament complexes.

Privately financed venue

A stadium built with ownership capital rather than public bonds, sometimes on publicly owned land under long-term lease. Austin FC's Q2 Stadium was privately funded and sits on city land at McKalla Place under a lease with the City of Austin.

Non-relocation agreement

A binding commitment that a team will play in a given venue for a stated term, usually the public's principal protection when it contributes to construction. Its enforceability and remedies matter more than its headline length.

Franchise valuation multiple

The ratio of a club's estimated value to its revenue, used to compare franchises across leagues. Published valuations are estimates from outside analysts, not audited figures, and should always be attributed and dated.

Expansion fee

What a new ownership group pays a league for the right to field a team, distributed among existing owners. Rising expansion fees are the clearest public signal of how incumbents value their own franchises.

Pay-to-play

The model in which access to organized youth sport depends on a family's ability to pay dues, travel and equipment costs. Project Play's research consistently finds participation stratified by household income as a result.

Club dues

The recurring fee a club charges per season or year, covering coaching, field time, uniforms and league registration — usually before travel, tournaments and private training are added on top.

Travel team costs

The full cost of competing away from home: tournament entry, hotels, flights, meals, coach travel reimbursement and missed work. Frequently exceeds the club dues themselves and is the most common reason families exit.

Tournament and showcase economics

How events make money — team entry fees, gate and parking, vendor and photography rights, hotel room-block rebates — and why a showcase aimed at recruiting exposure commands a premium entry fee.

Facility rental and field time

The per-hour or per-court rate an organization pays for space, and the utilization rate the facility needs to cover its capital cost. Field time is the binding constraint on how large a club can grow.

Coach certification and SafeSport

The licensing and training a sanctioning body requires before an adult may coach: sport-specific coursework, first aid and concussion training, increasingly a condition of insurance as much as of sanctioning. SafeSport is the abuse-prevention framework covering the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic movement and its national governing bodies, with mandatory training, reporting duties and a centralized disciplinary database; many non-Olympic youth organizations have adopted equivalent policies.

Background screening

Criminal history checks on coaches, officials and volunteers, typically re-run on a fixed cycle and required by sanctioning bodies and insurers. Screening lapses are a leading source of organizational liability.

Concussion protocol and return-to-play law

The required removal-from-play, evaluation and graduated return sequence after a suspected head injury, and the statute behind it. Every U.S. state has a youth concussion law barring return to play without written clearance from a qualified provider; Texas additionally requires school districts to operate concussion oversight teams. The law sets the floor beneath every league's own rules.

Sanctioning body

The organization that authorizes competition, sets rules and provides insurance — a national governing body, a state association, or a private tournament circuit. Unsanctioned events usually mean uninsured events.

Sports tourism and room-night impact

Travel generated by participating in or attending sporting events, treated by cities as an economic development category with its own bid process, staff and public funding. Room nights -- the count of hotel stays an event generates -- are the standard currency, because they map directly to hotel occupancy tax revenue. Impact study methods vary widely, so compare methodology before comparing numbers.

Sports betting in Texas

Sports wagering is not legal in Texas. Legalization would require amending the state constitution — a two-thirds vote in both legislative chambers followed by approval at a statewide election — and repeated attempts have failed to clear the Senate. Content for Texas audiences must not imply a legal in-state sportsbook market exists.

Sportsbook partnerships

In states where wagering is legal, sportsbook operators buy team and league sponsorships, data rights, and in some markets in-venue placement. These deals are governed by state law, so a national playbook does not travel to Texas.

Responsible gaming and advertising restrictions

Rules limiting how wagering may be promoted — audience targeting, inducement language, mandatory helpline messaging and restrictions on collegiate content. Several leagues and broadcasters impose stricter standards than the law requires.

What’s happening

• The regional sports network model has come apart. Diamond Sports Group, which operated the Bally Sports networks carrying dozens of NBA, NHL and MLB clubs, filed for Chapter 11 in March 2023, rebranded its networks under a FanDuel Sports Network naming deal in October 2024, had its plan confirmed in November 2024, and emerged from bankruptcy on January 2, 2025 as Main Street Sports Group with debt cut from roughly $9 billion to $200 million. It has continued to shrink since, as clubs migrate to league-run media. The old guarantee -- cable carriage fees paid whether or not anyone watched -- is gone, and local media revenue is now something clubs must earn. 2026-08 source ↗
• Direct-to-consumer streaming has replaced the missing carriage revenue only partly, and it changes the business rather than restoring it. Clubs moving off RSNs to league-run or club-run streaming face local media declines reaching eight-figure annual sums, trading guaranteed multi-year rights fees for an eat-what-you-kill mix of subscriptions, advertising and residual carriage -- in a category that is more than a fifth of baseball revenue. What they gain is the customer relationship and the viewership data the RSN used to hold. Reach and revenue now have to be managed as separate problems. 2026-08 source ↗
• Private equity is now permitted in major-league ownership. On August 27, 2024 NFL owners voted to allow approved private equity funds to hold passive stakes -- up to 10% of a club per fund with a 3% minimum, a single fund permitted in up to six clubs, and no voting power attached -- making the NFL the last of the big four to open. Institutional capital solves a real problem, since franchise prices have outrun the number of individuals who can write the check, but it introduces owners with fund-life horizons and exit expectations. 2026-08 source ↗
• Franchise valuations have kept climbing across every major league, and expansion fees have climbed with them -- Forbes' 2025 NFL list put the average franchise at $7.1 billion, up roughly a quarter year over year, with no club below $5 billion. Read those numbers for what they are: Forbes labels them estimates and derives revenue and operating income rather than auditing them. The direction is unambiguous even where the level is not, and it reframes a franchise as an appreciating asset whose operating profit matters less than its terminal value. 2026-08 source ↗
• All-in ticket pricing is now the rule, not a courtesy. The Federal Trade Commission's Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 16 CFR Part 464, published January 10, 2025 and effective May 12, 2025, requires sellers of live-event tickets and short-term lodging to display the total price a buyer will pay, mandatory fees included, up front -- it bans burying the total and misrepresenting what a fee is for, though it does not cap fees. Executive Order 14254, Combating Unfair Practices in the Live Entertainment Market, signed March 31, 2025, also directed federal enforcement attention at the resale market. Advertised prices, ad copy and landing pages all have to change together. 2026-08 source ↗
• Major League Soccer's media strategy remains the most-watched experiment in the industry, and the experiment has already been revised. Its global partnership with Apple, launched in 2023 with MLS Season Pass, abandoned territory-by-territory local rights for a single worldwide streaming package with no blackouts and one price everywhere. On November 13, 2025 the two sides announced that the standalone MLS Season Pass subscription would conclude after the 2025 season and that from 2026 all MLS matches stream to Apple TV subscribers at no additional cost -- not a repackaging but a discontinuation of the separate product, and an admission that the standalone-subscription assumption needed adjusting. 2026-08 source ↗
• MLS itself has kept growing, expanding from ten clubs at its low point to thirty as of the 2026 season, adding purpose-built soccer-specific stadiums in nearly every market and a reserve-team league, MLS NEXT Pro, beneath it. Austin FC's arrival in 2021 was part of that wave, and San Diego FC became the thirtieth club in 2025. The expansion fees paid by each new ownership group have risen substantially over the run. 2026-08 source ↗
• Youth sports has commercialized into a multi-billion-dollar private industry, and the Aspen Institute's Project Play research documents the cost precisely. In 2012, 35.5% of children aged 6-17 in households under $25,000 regularly played sports against 49.1% from households over $100,000 -- a 13.6-point gap that had widened to 20.2 points by 2024. Federal survey data show children from the lowest-income homes played sports in 2023 at half the rate of the highest-income group, and Aspen's own parent survey finds kids from $100,000-plus homes twice as likely to play travel sports as those from homes under $50,000. The cost of youth sports rose 46% from 2019. The industry's growth and its access problem are the same phenomenon viewed from two sides. 2026-08 source ↗
• Cities now treat sports tourism as an economic development strategy with its own budget line, staff and bid process. Round Rock is the Central Texas case: the city runs a Sports Management and Tourism department whose tourism division works on maintaining its Sports Capital of Texas legacy by bidding annually to host regional and national championship events, and it operates both the 118,750-square-foot Round Rock Sports Center and a multipurpose complex with ten fields. Hotel-motel tax revenue is part of the funding history -- voters approved using it for $8.25 million of Dell Diamond's construction in 1998. 2026-08 source ↗
• Investment in women's professional sports has accelerated sharply, and the broadcast numbers are the cleanest evidence. The 2025 WNBA regular season averaged 1.3 million viewers on ESPN networks, up 6% and the most-watched ever on those networks, with the postseason averaging 1.2 million and the Finals 1.5 million; the league also set a single-season attendance record. NWSL expansion economics have moved in the same direction, with Denver awarded the league's sixteenth franchise in January 2025 at a reported record fee -- though NWSL average attendance actually slipped about 5% in 2025 from its 2024 record, so the attendance story belongs to the WNBA rather than to both leagues. What was treated for decades as a philanthropic line item is now underwritten as a commercial opportunity. 2026-08 source ↗
• Sports betting remains illegal in Texas, and the legislative history is more specific than the shorthand suggests. A constitutional amendment authorizing wagering, HJR 102, passed the Texas House in May 2023 and died in the Senate without action. Its successor in the 2025 session, HJR 134, was referred to House State Affairs in March 2025 and never left committee -- so in 2025 it did not reach a floor vote in either chamber, and sports betting was not on the governor's special-session agenda. Because authorization requires a constitutional amendment -- two-thirds of both houses plus statewide voter approval -- the political threshold is far higher than in most states, and Texas votes amendments in odd years, so nothing is on a 2026 ballot. As of August 2026 there is no legal sportsbook in Texas, the next opportunity is the 2027 regular session, and marketing content aimed at Texas audiences must say so. 2026-08 source ↗
• Public financing of stadiums is under sustained scrutiny even as deal sizes grow. Economists consistently find that stadium subsidies do not generate the regional economic returns their proponents project, yet public participation continues through land contributions, infrastructure spending, tax increment districts and dedicated tourism taxes. Austin FC's Q2 Stadium is the local counterexample, and its structure is worth stating precisely: the club privately funded construction of the stadium, site preparation, open space, parking and transit improvements on a city-owned site at 10414 McKalla Place, with the City acting as lessor rather than creditor or financial backstop. The City owns the land and the stadium, on a 20-year initial lease with three 10-year renewal options at the club's election, and retains the stadium at expiry. 2026-08 source ↗
• The money that entered college athletics through name, image and likeness has spilled downward into youth and club sports, with high school athletes signing endorsement deals in many states and club programs marketing exposure as a product. Texas remains restrictive, with one narrow 2025 carve-out worth getting right: University Interscholastic League rules bar a Texas high school athlete from being compensated for name, image and likeness while UIL-eligible, and bar any NIL agreement with a non-college entity until UIL eligibility is exhausted; athletes 16 or younger may not sign any NIL agreement at all and family members may not sign for them. Since 2025, prospects aged 17 or older may sign a deferred NIL agreement with a postsecondary institution. That still makes the Texas youth market meaningfully different from neighboring states. 2026-08 source ↗
• Austin has become a genuine professional sports market in roughly five years. Austin FC began play in 2021 as the city's first major-league franchise, in a privately financed soccer-specific stadium on city-owned land; Moody Center opened on the University of Texas campus just north of downtown in 2022, anchored by Texas men's and women's basketball and running a full concert and event calendar; the Austin Gamblers compete in the PBR Team Series and host Gambler Days at Moody Center; and the region already had Circuit of the Americas, the AHL's Texas Stars at H-E-B Center in Cedar Park and the Round Rock Express at Dell Diamond. The practical consequence is a local sponsorship, ticketing and hospitality market with real competition for corporate dollars that simply did not exist before. 2026-08 source ↗

Questions people ask

What is a season ticket holder base and why do teams talk about renewal rate?

explain the base as the guaranteed revenue floor and renewal rate as the leading indicator of everything else -- pricing power, sponsorship inventory value and secondary market health

What is a full season equivalent?

describe FSE as the way partial plans are normalized into full-season units so ticket revenue is comparable year to year; note that a rising FSE count with a falling STH count means the base is fragmenting

What is dynamic pricing and how is it different from variable pricing?

variable pricing sets tiers by opponent and date before the season; dynamic pricing moves with demand after tickets go on sale -- and note season ticket holders notice when single-game prices drop below their per-game rate

What is all-in ticket pricing and why did it become mandatory?

explain that federal rules now require live-event ticket sellers to show the total price including mandatory fees up front rather than at checkout, and that advertised prices, ad copy and landing pages all have to match

What is a PSL and is it an investment?

describe a personal seat license as the right to buy a specific seat, transferable in most programs, and be candid that resale values vary enormously by team and cycle -- do not present it as an appreciating asset

What is category exclusivity in a sponsorship deal?

explain that the sponsor buys the right to be the only brand in a defined category, and that the whole negotiation is in how the category is defined -- narrow definitions are worth less and are what properties push for

What is the difference between sponsorship rights and activation?

rights are what you buy from the property -- marks, signage, hospitality, access; activation is what you spend to make those rights do something; note that activation typically requires budget beyond the rights fee

What is a regional sports network and why did the model collapse?

describe the old economics -- carriage fees paid by every cable subscriber whether or not they watched -- and say cord cutting removed the subsidy, which is why local media revenue is now something clubs have to earn

What is per-cap spend and what drives it?

per-capita spend on food, beverage and merchandise per attendee; drivers are gate composition, dwell time, points of sale, mobile ordering and price architecture -- not just menu prices

What is the difference between a franchise valuation and what a team actually sells for?

say published valuations are outside estimates, not audited figures, and transactions clear at prices that reflect control premium, real estate, media stakes and scarcity -- so treat the published list as directional only

What is hotel occupancy tax and how does it fund sports facilities?

describe HOT as a tax on lodging that many Texas cities dedicate to tourism-generating facilities and events, and say permissible uses are set by state statute and local ordinance -- point the reader to the statute rather than generalize

What is sports tourism measured in room nights?

explain room nights as the unit cities use to justify tournament bids and facility spending, and note that room-night projections in bid documents are estimates that are rarely audited afterward

What is a naming rights deal actually worth?

give the valuation inputs -- media exposure modeled by impression value, event count and category, term length, signage and integration, and the buyer's own strategic value -- and refuse a dollar figure, since comparable deals are rarely disclosed accurately

How do I value a sponsorship before I sign it?

describe a defensible method -- price each asset against a comparable media or hospitality cost, discount for clutter, add measurable outcome value only where you can track it -- and say the property's own valuation deck should be treated as a starting position, not a valuation

How do I measure sponsorship ROI honestly?

separate exposure metrics from outcome metrics -- brand lift studies, promo code and QR redemption, hospitality-attributed pipeline, retail lift in the market -- and be clear that impressions are a cost proxy, not a return

Should I sponsor a professional team or a youth and amateur program?

contrast reach and prestige against community credibility and cost per relationship, and say the answer depends on whether the objective is awareness or local trust -- which the sponsor knows and the property does not

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