NBA Vegas Bids, Horse Racing, and the Week in Sports Business

The NBA has not yet awarded a Las Vegas expansion franchise. It has not set a formal timeline, a final fee, or even confirmed that a second team will join the market alongside what is expected to be a relocated franchise. And yet, the bidding war has already arrived—complete with competing ownership consortia, announced capital commitments, and the particular kind of credentialing exercise that happens when wealthy people want something badly enough to start announcing what they're worth.

The latest entry comes from a group calling itself the Las Vegas Jacks, led by Basketball Hall of Famer Jerry Colangelo and former Turner executive David Levy. As SBJ's Abe Madkour reported on the July 9 Buzzcast, the group has already secured $8 billion in financial commitments. The arena question, however, remains open: the group has announced plans to build a new venue without specifying a site or confirming land acquisition. In a market where MGM Resorts' T-Mobile Arena and the Sphere already anchor the entertainment district, adding a third major venue is not a trivial proposition. The real estate subplot here could end up being as consequential as the ownership contest itself.

The other names in the mix are not decorative. Bill Foley, who built the Vegas Golden Knights from an expansion fee into one of the NHL's more valuable franchises, has expressed interest. Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner have put their names in. Marc Lasry, the hedge fund executive and former Milwaukee Bucks co-owner whose interest in major league sports investments has been widely reported—including his pursuit of MLB in the Raleigh market, per WRAL—has also signaled interest. Magic Johnson rounds out a field that, as Madkour put it, "is shaping up to be a very intriguing battle of big names, big investors."

The financial logic here is fairly clean. Expansion fees are set partly by precedent and partly by the competitive dynamics among suitors. The more credible bidders in the room, the less negotiating leverage any single group holds, and the higher the final number trends. The current range being cited runs from $7 billion to $10 billion, with Madkour suggesting the bidding pressure will push it toward the upper end. Adam Silver, watching this unfold, has every incentive to let the auction atmosphere build. A franchising process that looks like a prize fight is, for a commissioner, an extremely comfortable position.

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The Horse Racing Wager

The capital looking for a home in established leagues has a well-documented problem: there are not enough seats at the table. Madkour frames it directly: "There's just not enough good opportunities for them to put money against. Many of them want to start their own league."

Greg Maffei, the former Liberty Media president who helped engineer Formula 1's transformation from a European motorsport niche into a global entertainment property, is now betting that horse racing can undergo a similar renovation. His new team-based horse racing league—targeting a February launch—is seeking to raise $30 million in initial capital. The structure mirrors F1's franchise model: 10 teams, each comprising eight horses, trainers, and jockeys, each led by a wealthy team principal.

The revenue blueprint is standard for a new property: sponsorship, hospitality, media rights, merchandise. The audience thesis is more interesting. The Kentucky Derby still commands enormous television viewership; the Triple Crown circuit remains one of the few non-major-league properties that genuinely cuts through. Sports betting has changed the calculus for what a "casual sports fan" will watch on a Saturday afternoon. Maffei is betting—and that word is apt—that a condensed, team-structured schedule can convert those occasional viewers into something more habitual.

The F1 analogy cuts both ways. Liberty's success with Formula 1 was built on years of investment, a documentary that changed the sport's cultural profile in North America, and an existing global fanbase that just needed a production upgrade. Horse racing's structural challenges—doping scandals, animal welfare concerns, a fragmented ownership model across dozens of independent tracks—are different in kind, not just degree. Whether Maffei's $30 million seed round is the beginning of something or the optimistic overture to a longer, harder road is a question the February launch date will only begin to answer.

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Wimbledon Holds All the Cards

The story out of the All England Club this fortnight cuts to something that gets obscured in sports labor coverage: institutional leverage is not always visible until someone tests it.

According to SI's Jon Wertheim, as reported on the Buzzcast, players had been organizing a media protest over prize money heading into this year's Wimbledon. The response from the All England Club was direct: when players' families and guests went to collect their complimentary tickets on the Sunday before the tournament began, the tickets were not there. Wimbledon had pulled them. Prize money, according to Radio NewsHub, had already risen 20 percent year-over-year. The message was delivered without a press conference or a negotiating session. Players stood down and described the subsequent discussions as productive.

What makes this episode worth examining beyond the immediate drama is what it reveals about the structure of player leverage at the Grand Slams. Unlike the major North American leagues, tennis has no union in the formal collective bargaining sense. The ATP and WTA operate as hybrid bodies—part tour organizer, part player representative—with limited ability to confront the Grand Slams, which operate independently and carry centuries of accumulated brand equity. Wimbledon does not need the players in the way that the players need Wimbledon. The comp ticket gambit was a demonstration of that asymmetry, and it worked.

Madkour's read is appropriately unsentimental: "Interesting to see who has leverage. Don't mess with Wimbledon. They have history. They have tradition."

The other Grand Slams were watching.

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The Bills Build Around the Build

In Orchard Park, the Buffalo Bills are reportedly exploring mixed-use development on the land surrounding the new Highmark Stadium, set on the footprint where the demolished old facility stood. Hotels, dining, retail, event space—the "Bills village" concept that has become something of a template in NFL stadium planning, following examples in Atlanta, Kansas City, and elsewhere.

The business case is not complicated. NFL teams play eight home regular-season games per year. A stadium that sits idle the other 357 days is an underperforming asset. Mixed-use development converts that real estate into a year-round revenue generator, improves the case for landing major events like the NFL Draft, and gives the franchise a hospitality infrastructure that can compete with markets that have a longer history of convention and tourism business. For a franchise in western New York—a market that does not have the natural event pipeline of a Dallas or a Los Angeles—the surrounding development is not supplemental. It is strategic.

The tailgating culture in Orchard Park is genuine and deep, and any development plan will have to negotiate with it rather than around it. That is a real tension, not a sentimental one. The famed Bills Mafia game-day experience is also a marketing asset, and any ownership group rational enough to pursue mixed-use development is rational enough to know you do not bulldoze a brand differentiator.

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The NIL Clearinghouse, in Context

The College Sports Commission's NIL clearinghouse, according to reporting from On3, has cleared more than $350 million in NIL agreements since its launch, while rejecting roughly $90 million in deals that did not meet its standards. The three stated grounds for rejection—no valid business purpose, compensation outside market-rate bounds, and no actual activation of the athlete's name, image, or likeness—represent the commission's attempt to police the line between genuine commercial arrangements and what amounts to disguised pay-for-play.

The framework's logic is defensible. If NIL is to mean what the term says, then a deal that compensates a player handsomely but never actually uses their image in any commercial context is not an NIL arrangement. It is something else, labeled for compliance purposes. The clearinghouse exists to enforce that distinction.

What the aggregate figures cannot tell us is how much of what gets approved is genuinely at market value versus what the market has simply defined upward as more money has entered the space. NIL compensation has inflated significantly since the clearinghouse launched, and market-rate comparisons become circular when the market itself is being set by the same schools and collectives that are submitting the deals. That is not an argument against the commission's work. It is a question the commission will eventually have to answer more explicitly than any single approval or rejection can address.

Madkour's assessment is measured and probably right: "The system appears to be working." What it is working toward—equilibrium, escalation, or something Congress eventually interrupts—remains the open question in college sports economics.

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By Marcus Tate, Sports Desk Editor