2026-04-30
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Finance & Investments
Private investment firms RedBird and Weatherford Capital will provide an initial $12.5M to fund new money-making projects for the college sports league.
The conference can accept another $12.5M within a year, while individual member schools have the option to borrow up to $30M.
This historic deal marks the first outside investment in a college conference, but the league retains full ownership and control.
Global sportswear maker Adidas earned $825M in quarterly operating profit, easily beating analyst estimates.
Demand for soccer gear surged ahead of the upcoming World Cup, prompting the brand to ship products early avoiding supply chain delays.
Running shoe sales also grew 10%, helping push total quarterly revenue to $7.7B and boosting the company's stock by nearly 9%.
A group led by chairman Lawrence Stroll, who owns nearly 33% of the carmaker, is providing $68M in new financing.
Stroll also owns the Aston Martin Formula One team, deepening his personal and financial ties to the brand.
Stroll has now injected roughly $810M into Aston Martin since taking control in 2020, highlighting its ongoing reliance on him.
Thrive, the venture firm run by Joshua Kushner, is investing in the baseball team through a new sports-focused vehicle called Thrive Eternal.
The deal includes both new and existing shares, while current institutional owners Arctos and Sixth Street are keeping their stakes.
The move adds a third financial investor to the Giants and has stirred fan unease over politics and ROI-driven ownership priorities.
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Media, Broadcasting & Sponsorships
TV coverage averaged 6.6M viewers over three days, a 12% drop from last year but still the third-most-watched draft ever.
The opening round drew 13.2M viewers across channels tied to media giant Disney, which recently bought the NFL Network.
Despite lower TV ratings, a record-breaking 805K fans attended the live event in Pittsburgh, shattering previous league attendance records.
Retired 2016 F1 champion Nico Rosberg will host "Circuits in Focus," a pre-race simulator show debuting before the Miami Grand Prix.
Apple TV, which paid roughly $150M per year for US F1 rights, is averaging nearly 300K sign-ups per race weekend.
Rosberg also runs Rosberg Ventures, a venture capital firm with over $200M in assets backing startups like ElevenLabs and ClickHouse.
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Teams & Leagues
Yasir Al-Rumayyan is leaving as LIV Golf chairman after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund decided to stop financing the league beyond 2026.
The Saudi fund reportedly lost $5B on the golf league since 2022, prompting this financial exit and halting PGA Tour merger talks.
To survive without its primary financial backer, LIV Golf plans to sell ownership stakes in its 13 teams to attract new outside investors.
Global soccer governing body FIFA will distribute the funds equally among all 48 countries participating in the upcoming expanded tournament.
Teams will receive $2.5M for preparation and $10M for qualifying to help offset rising travel, operational, and tax expenses.
The 15% funding increase is driven by the event's commercial success and addresses national concerns over high costs in North America.
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Miscellaneous
The basketball star used global auction house Sotheby's to sell over 70 pairs of shoes to fund his youth foundation.
After leaving his sponsor Under Armour, Curry wore different iconic shoe brands during the season to honor basketball history.
The charity sale attracted over 400 bidders, with a top pair of Christmas Day sneakers selling for nearly $122K.
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