To put it bluntly, the NFL is a cash cow. Every single NFL team towers in revenue over some of the biggest sports leagues in the world, such as the English Premiere League (EPL). The lighter spending on players compared to other leagues, media deals with ESPN, Fox, CBS and more, and international recognition has made the NFL an attractive investment. In fact, the NFL has outperformed the S&P 500 for 20 consecutive years between 2002 and 2022. For most of its history, however, the teams have been family-owned. Many other sports leagues allow private equity firms - businesses that pool money from investors into funds that go towards investments - to own a portion of their teams. In 2020 , the NBA permitted Dyal HomeCourt, a private equity fund, to buy partner stakes in team franchises. From hereon out, other private equity funds would & could be approved with limited ownership rights. In the NHL , minority stakes in franchises can be acquired by a singular private equity fund u...

Let's be real - the Dallas Mavericks have not  had a good season. Missing the playoffs after the highly  controversial trade that shall not be named, the team needed a miracle to get back on their feet for the next season. And a miracle did happen! With only a 1.8% percent chance, the Mavericks snagged the #1 pick for the 2025 NBA Draft. Beating out teams such as the Utah Jazz and Washington Wizards, both of which had a 14% chance to take the #1 pick, the incident has been met with a resounding sentiment from fans: "the draft is rigged." A lottery system for a sports draft isn't common. Two leagues sharing a similar foundation are the WWE and the NHL, and even they go about it in a completely different way. Why does the NBA conduct their lottery like this? What do other leagues do so different? And is the NBA Draft really rigged, or did Lady Luck strike once again? The NBA Draft and Tanking  The NBA Draft includes all of the teams. However, the top 14 picks are spe...

Have you ever found yourself needing to sign up for multiple streaming services just to find the shows you want to watch? These costs add up extremely quickly, and with rampantly rising costs of streaming, suddenly the price of eggs isn't your biggest worry. It is this concern that providers want to capitalize on. DirecTV, Xfinity, Spectrum and more offer streaming bundles intended to fix this problem. They offer their specific platform with thousands of channels along with access to other subscription services. You can pay one price for all the content you want - no exceptions. Except there are  exceptions. Streaming services are protective of their intellectual properties, or IPs. When they provide access to their services as part of these bundles, they are effectively lending over their property through licensing agreements. When these licensing agreements fall apart, we have what's known as a carriage dispute - where neither party agrees on who has the right to "carr...

In my last article, I mentioned that E-Sports leagues are largely at the mercy of their intellectual property (IP) holders - usually, the creator of the game. For some games, such as the platform fighter series Rivals of Aether , battle royale game Fortnite , and more, their developers actively encourage a competitive scene to play and stream their game to their heart's content. Other developers aren't so generous. Title 17 of the U.S. Code covers what is considered a copyrightable work and the protections afforded to their owners.  17 U.S.C § 102(a) defines copyright protection as "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression." Video games are amalgamations of various IPs, from the musical score accompanying a playthrough, to the specific character models designed for the game, to the written code behind everything. From a business perspective, it's easy to see why developers want to protect their games so heavily. Sometimes, however,...