Hi there and welcome to a different version of Free Agent! Deliver your individual smelling salts to as we speak’s e-newsletter, the crew won’t be supplying them for you.
We’ll speak concerning the Olympics this week, and the way America can maintain profitable. Then we’ll hit on Congress dipping its toes into one thing which may blow up the professional sports activities enterprise mannequin. Lastly, we’ll focus on why everyone seems to be anxious about Las Vegas.
Thanks for the numerous responses to our survey on the way you’d repair the NFL, school soccer, and MLB. The survey continues to be open in case you have extra concepts.
Do not miss sports activities protection from Jason Russell and Cause.
Everybody likes to see American Olympians standing on the highest step of a podium with a gold medal round their neck, tearing up because the nationwide anthem performs. Most individuals evidently assume their taxpayer {dollars} have helped fund the price of coaching these athletes, though there is no direct authorities spending on that. Some assume it is time for that to vary, however authorities funding for Olympic athletes is an terrible concept—and it won’t truly assist win extra gold medals.
The brand new concern about Olympic success is definitely about school soccer. Faculties can now give their athletes revenue-sharing funds, so athletic departments are shoveling as a lot income and sources into soccer as a result of it generates essentially the most income (for most faculties, anyway). The fear is that the sports activities that develop Olympic athletes (swimming, gymnastics, monitor and area, and so on.) however do not get a lot consideration outdoors of the Olympics will get reduce by athletic departments, hindering the event of would-be gold medalists.
So the federal authorities ought to fill in a newfound hole in funding Olympic athletes, the argument goes (with out a lot acknowledgement federal debt held by the general public is $29.6 trillion). In addition to, each different nation is doing it!
However each different nation can also be shedding to america.
That will not change even when schools reduce Olympic sports activities as a result of America is an enormous and wealthy nation. Our fruited plains (or our populous cities and financial system) are excellent for the event of freaks of nature like Simone Biles, Noah Lyles, and Michael Phelps. We beat most international locations at most sports activities for these two causes alone.
Biles and Lyles by no means went to varsity, by the best way, and Phelps was already a double Olympian with six gold medals earlier than he went to the College of Michigan (lately they’d in all probability make a ton of identify, picture, and likeness cash). Whereas it is nonetheless early, the brand new adjustments to varsity sports activities haven’t led to a slippery slope of large cuts to Olympic sports activities (spare a thought for the golf crew at Cleveland State College).
The worst-case state of affairs is that authorities funding of Olympic sports activities results in political meddling in Olympic sports activities. Do we actually want coaches hauled in entrance of Congress to elucidate why Caitlin Clark did not make the crew? Government department inquiries into tactical choices and coaching regimens? Political favor-trading so that somebody’s favourite breakdancer or donor’s niece could make the roster?
Perhaps it isn’t simply our inhabitants and wealth that make America so nice on the Olympics—perhaps it is as a result of we do not let politicians get in the best way whereas each different nation has a ministry of sport that micromanages sporting sources. Perhaps gold medals aren’t as costly as we predict.
For extra on this matter, subscriber George M.J. Perry has an incredible piece in The American Spectator on “the separation between sport and state.”
I hoped complaints about the price of streaming sports activities had been simply whines from just a few cranky individuals on the web, however the complaints have made their method to the halls of energy in Washington, D.C.
The Home Judiciary Committee introduced on Monday it had contacted the commissioners of the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL about their antitrust exemptions created underneath the Sports activities Broadcasting Act of 1961. (See its letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell right here.) Ending the exemption would imply groups promote their broadcast rights individually, which “would make it tough, and maybe legally not possible, for the groups to share broadcast income,” as the good Mike Florio writes at Professional Soccer Discuss. That may upend just about every thing about how the skilled leagues function as a enterprise. I doubt members of Congress actually wish to go that far, particularly with all of the billionaires in play, however taking part in rooster continues to be dumb.
The complaints concerning the streaming prices typically fall alongside these traces.
It should price you just about $700 to stream the nationally televised NFL video games this fall throughout six totally different streaming platforms. Add almost $500 extra if you’d like Sunday Ticket. Sports activities followers are getting gouged. Cable was a significantly better deal: https://t.co/HU2LUdaOJh
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) August 6, 2025
As I’ve mentioned earlier than, although, nearly nobody is watching each single NFL recreation. Even Goodell would not do this. Most individuals watch their favourite groups, and never even each single recreation they play. And nobody is entitled to see each recreation—it isn’t a human proper, it isn’t within the Structure.
I get that all of us want every thing had been cheaper, however it could possibly’t be pressured by authorities motion.
The NFL should not have wanted an antitrust exemption to promote its collective TV rights as a result of the legislation should not have stopped them from doing it within the first place. The NFL is not a monopoly. It competes towards all different types of leisure for our consideration. It competes towards different sports activities leagues. It even competes towards different soccer leagues (school soccer and the United Soccer League, amongst others). Each minute and greenback we spend on sports activities is a luxurious, not a necessity.
My unpopular opinion about antitrust exemptions is that everyone ought to get them.
Las Vegas is not having an incredible 12 months, and that is tangentially associated to sports activities, so let’s get into it. Resort occupancy is down, income is down, and total customer numbers are down. Some individuals blame President Trump, others say it is an early recession indicator, and others simply blame poor service and excessive costs. Perhaps some large occasions this fall will assist the numbers recuperate, however overreliance on large occasions is a part of the issue.
I’ve solely been to Vegas as soon as, for an extended weekend boys journey just a few years in the past. I used to be a Vegas skeptic, however had a greater time than anticipated and would return—for the precise mixture of causes. The primary draw for me wasn’t a sportsbook—by that point, I may already wager on my telephone in Virginia, anytime and anyplace I wished, with a number of apps. If I went again, I might be most focused on low cost playing on Fremont Road and one costly dinner and evening out on the Strip.
Vegas is what occurs when a metropolis authorities will get too engrossed with the subsequent large occasion or challenge and loses concentrate on common individuals. They’re too anxious concerning the subsequent headline-making mega deal as a substitute of how under-the-radar small companies and entrepreneurs are doing (observe small enterprise house owners complaining concerning the Method 1 grand prix). When you’re simply making an attempt to get the Tremendous Bowl to return to city, you are not pondering sufficient about what’s occurring the opposite 51 weeks of the 12 months.
“Quite than barely shifting its worth proposition towards what the on a regular basis shopper wished, Sin Metropolis dedicated to a future constructed on company expense playing cards and more and more widespread sporting occasions,” Joe Pompliano writes on Substack. “Low cost bachelor events for individuals of their 20s and 30s have been changed with dozens of recent conferences on the 2.5 million sq. foot conference heart.” Which may work at getting extra visits from the rich few on their enterprise journeys, but it surely’s not going to carry again the plenty, and Vegas is not Vegas with out the plenty.
Would you quite win a $10,000 jackpot one time, or win $1 one million occasions?
Kickers simply maintain getting higher and higher. (That wasn’t the one kicking magic this weekend.)
Jaguars kicker Cam Little simply DRILLED a 70-yard area aim pic.twitter.com/7cpyFXgg3s
— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) August 10, 2025
That is all for this week. Take pleasure in watching the true occasion of the weekend, the Greeley Kennel Membership Canine Present on Saturday.
