A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Sport newsletter with Alex Sherman, which brings you the biggest news and exclusive interviews from the worlds of sports business and media. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.

Last week, the National Women’s Soccer League awarded a new expansion franchise — in Columbus, Ohio — to an ownership group led by Haslam Sports Group for a fee of $205 million.

This represents a $40 million jump from the $165 million that billionaire Arthur Blank reportedly paid for the league’s Atlanta franchise in November. And that $165 million itself was a jump of $55 million from the reported $110 million fee Denver paid in January of last year.

Rewind to 2022, and the expansion fee for a new NWSL club was just $2 million. 

On the surface, this appears to be a story about the NWSL’s growth. Postseason attendance rose 11% this past season, according to the league. Nearly 1.2 million people watched the NWSL finals, up 22% from a year ago, including a whopping 70% jump in the 18-to-34 demographic, the NWSL said.

It makes sense that investors would want to get in now given the league’s growth trajectory.

But, according to investors and bankers, something else is going on that’s affecting the NWSL’s valuations that has absolutely nothing to do with soccer. It has to do with a trickle-down investment thesis driven by the outsized businesses of the NFL and NBA.

Wealthy investors have long been interested in sports ownership, trophy assets that have also produced outsized returns on investment. The introduction of private equity investment, first adopted in the NFL in 2024, has added to the pool of possible buyers. 

This dynamic is welcome news for the entire professional sports industry, which is also benefiting from another strategic investment play — the anti-artificial intelligence trade. Betting on live events is a counter-strategy for those who want less exposure to the tech in a market driven by AI investments.

That’s helped supercharge valuations of the most valuable sports teams in the U.S. According to CNBC Sport, the average NFL team is now valued at $7.65 billion. In 2010, NFL teams were worth, on average, about $1 billion. 

The average value of an NBA team is now $5.52 billion, 18% higher than a year ago. Fifteen years ago, the average NBA team was worth $369 million. That’s an increase of 1,396%. The S&P 500 is up about 422% over the…

The NFL and Paramount Skydance‘s renewal talks on a deal to keep the league’s Sunday games on CBS are beginning to take shape, CNBC has learned.

NFL and CBS executives are negotiating a price increase, with a bid-ask spread midpoint around 50% or 60%, according to two people familiar with the negotiations, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. CBS currently pays around $2.1 billion a year, on average, for its Sunday afternoon games, CNBC has previously reported. A 50% increase would mean CBS would pay more than $3 billion in its next deal.

In return for the increased revenue, the NFL would eliminate the opt-out clause after the 2029-30 season that it put in its original deal with Paramount, part of an 11-year agreement that runs through the end of the 2033-34 season. That clause would have given the league the chance to walk away early.

CBS would begin paying the new fee as soon as next season for the next eight years for the same package of games.

Paramount’s adjusted projection for its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for 2026 is $3.6 billion. If Paramount’s merger with Warner Bros. Discovery is approved by regulators, the combined company would have an adjusted EBITDA projection of $18 billion, Paramount Chief Financial Officer Dennis Cinelli told investors this month.

“We have a phenomenal relationship with the NFL, and we anticipate that continuing for the foreseeable future,” Paramount CEO David Ellison told CNBC earlier this month. “They are one of our most important partners, and we plan for them to stay one of our most important partners, having just delivered a historic season in partnership with them. And, you know, ongoing negotiations, we’re not really in a position where we can comment. I promise we’ll share something as soon as we have something to say.”

Comcast‘s NBCUniversal, Amazon Prime Video and Fox are also subject to the 2029-30 opt-out clause in their deals. Disney‘s ESPN and ABC have until 2031.

The league has chosen to begin negotiating with Paramount’s CBS before any of its other media partners because a change-of-control provision — stemming from Skydance Media’s acquisition of Paramount Global — allows the NFL to break its deal by 2027.

The NFL might negotiate with Fox next after CBS because the terms of the deal should be similar — both companies own Sunday afternoon packages, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

Fox currently pays slightly more than CBS for its package of games — about $2.2 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. Fox will “certainly look to [be] continuing that mutually beneficial relationship going forward” with…

The Super Bowl is ended last week, but plans for the 2026 NFL season are already in place.

In the days leading up to the game on Feb. 8, the NFL announced that Paris, Melbourne and Rio de Janeiro will host regular-season games for the first time as part of a record nine overseas games next season — two more than in 2025.

“Over the last three or four years, as we’ve started to expand the number of games that we’ve had the opportunity to play outside the U.S., the last three years we’ve really zeroed in, and 2025 was the year we marked,” said Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s executive vice president for international and league events.

The NFL’s International Series began in its current form in 2007 with the first London game at Wembley Stadium. For the next five years, only one game per season was played in London, with many owners skeptical about sacrificing revenue from home games in a market dominated by the Premier League.

Now, nearly 20 years later, there is talk of the league extending the season to allow for even more overseas games.

“The possibility of an 18-game schedule requires more work — it requires alignment and negotiation with the players union — but that opportunity to bring more regular-season football, and in turn the opportunity to play beyond this current number of international games, is something that we’re certainly considering,” O’Reilly said.

Every one of the NFL’s 32 teams has played a regular-season game outside the United States and is signed up to the league’s Global Markets Program.

Launched in January 2022, the program awards clubs international marketing rights to help them build brand awareness and explore partnerships and commercial opportunities.

Teams with geographical, cultural or historical ties to a country are often granted rights in those territories. For instance, the Arizona Cardinals have rights in neighboring Mexico; the Miami Dolphins, supported by a large Hispanic and Latino community, have rights in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Spain; and the Pittsburgh Steelers, whose owners have ancestral ties to Ireland, were awarded rights there in 2023.

Robinhood is stepping up the capabilities of its fastest growing product — prediction markets — by giving users the ability to place what are essential parlay bets on multiple NFL games, putting it into direct competition with traditional sports books.

Starting Tuesday, users are able to trade preset combinations of the outcome, totals and spreads of individual NFL games, and starting in early 2026, users will have the ability to create custom combos of up to 10 outcomes across NFL games. Those will have “a structural look or feel as a parlay,” JB Mackenzie, vice president and general manager of futures and international at Robinhood, told CNBC.

Even more, the company is allowing users to wager on the performances of individual NFL players in real time. For example, they can place prop bets on a certain player scoring a touchdown at any point during a game as well as the passing, receiving and rushing yards for a player.

“This was a great opportunity for us to really be able to become the leader in the space, and that’s what we’re working to do,” Mackenzie said. “The enhancements here are another example of it, where we’re trying to build new customer experiences that make it easier and, in some cases, provide them more advanced order types and trading capabilities to meet the needs that they’re asking us for.”

The new features were unveiled at the company’s “Robinhood Presents: YES/NO” keynote event at the Summit Skywalker Ranch in Nicasio, Calif., right outside San Francisco.

The parlay capability may even extend beyond the NFL in the future, according to Robinhood. The broker is also looking at opportunities to allow combos across different event categories, including those outside of sports like economic data.

“Over time, the question is going to be, ‘Is there interest to pair assets from different classes together?'” Mackenzie said, noting “something that’s associated with climate and an election” as an example. “All sporting events are definitely on the radar. I also think that domestic and international economic data is going to be on there as well, as well as domestic and international policy.”

Robinhood’s involvement with prediction markets began just before the 2024 presidential election, where it gave users the ability to trade a contract of former Vice President Kamala Harris or President Donald Trump.

In a little more than a year since it partnered with ForecastEx for election trading, the company has only expanded its presence in the prediction markets ecosystem. It has partnered with prediction market operator Kalshi this year. More recently, it announced a joint venture with Susquehanna International Group in November.

Robinhood has been seeing the fruits of its labor….

Lululemon is partnering with the NFL to launch an apparel collection for all 32 NFL teams. It will mark the first time the retailer has offered officially licensed products for the NFL or any of its franchises.

The collection, set to launch Tuesday, will include both men’s and women’s apparel and accessories with NFL team marks, including some of Lululemon’s most notable products such as its Steady State men’s franchise and women’s styles from Define, Scuba and Align.

Shares of Lululemon rose 5% in premarket trading Monday.

Lululemon, long known for its roots in yoga wear, has made a notable push into sports and performance in recent years. The retailer struck a partnership with the NHL last year to release team-branded items and has grown its roster of sports-linked ambassadors to include PGA golfers Min Woo Lee and Max Homa, ATP tennis pro Frances Tiafoe, NFL player DK Metcalf and NHL player Connor Bedard. Earlier this year, the retailer made perhaps its biggest splash to date, naming F1 champion Lewis Hamilton as an ambassador.

Celeste Burgoyne, president of Lululemon’s Americas division and global guest innovation, said the retailer sees an opportunity within sports where it can provide “the best product for these fans in the premium space to be able to celebrate their teams.”

“It really is about enabling our existing guests to be able to now wear Lululemon in arenas and stadiums, but it’s also about a new guest and expanding and really connecting our worlds in order to grow our guest base,” she said.

Lululemon has struggled in recent quarters as the company has been hit hard by the impacts of tariffs and other shifting consumer trends. But CEO Calvin McDonald, speaking on CNBC last month, said he sees an opportunity to innovate within the company’s key categories and items.

For the NFL, partnering with Lululemon on a new collection is another opportunity to broaden its reach for team gear, according to NFL CRO Renie Anderson.

“We want to make sure we’re creating a variety, an assortment for all fans, from casual to the more classic styles,” Anderson said. “It’s all a part of that ecosystem of passion and love for the sport and your club, and the ability to express yourself that way, whether it’s fun ways with foam fingers or hats, or in a cool, casual, fashionable way.”

The new items will be available on the league’s e-commerce site and at team retail locations as well as via Fanatics, which has a longstanding partnership with the NFL and holds the league’s consumer product licensing rights around fan gear.

Andrew Low Ah Kee, CEO of Fanatics Commerce, said historically, the sports industry has often overserved fans in certain casual product categories like T-shirts and hoodies, but there is now “a real demand and appetite for truly premium.”

“The jersey is truly the uniform of sport,” Low Ah Kee said. “So when we think about a consumer’s…

As screentime soars and technology races ahead, a low-tech pastime is back in a big way: collecting trading cards.

The cardstock depicting everything from NFL standouts to Pokémon and even Taylor Swift is one of the hottest toy categories in stores this year. Big-box retailers are stocking up ahead of the holidays, anticipating that demand will extend beyond traditional toy buyers like children and collectors.

“We see trading cards being a hot gifting category for all ages that we will fuel with newness and with exclusive drops,” Rick Gomez, Target’s executive vice president and chief commercial officer, told CNBC. “We’re going to have new releases nearly every week during the holidays that’s going to drive demand. And these make for great gifts and great stocking stuffers.”

Strategic trading card sales — which exclude sports — are up 103% year-to-date through August, while non-strategic card sales, which tend to be collectible pop culture or sports cards, are up 48%, according to market research firm Circana.

Target’s trading card sales are up nearly 70% year-to-date, with annual revenue from the category expected to top $1 billion.

Sales on some online platforms are rising even faster. Walmart Marketplace reported a 200% jump in trading card sales from February 2024 to June 2025, with Pokémon sales up more than tenfold year-over-year during the same period, the company first told Axios. The retailer has even launched a new weekly influencer livestream series focused on sports collectibles.

Since 2021, strategic card sales have grown by $891 million, or 139%, to total $1.5 billion, according to Circana. Sales of non-strategic cards and collectible stickers climbed by $565 million, or 156%, to $925 million in the same period, Circana said.

Millennials and Gen Z customers have been crucial for growth, said Juli Lennett, vice president and industry advisor for Circana’s U.S. toys practice.

“Lots of adults are buying these because it brings them back to a time when they had no cares in the world,” Lennett said. “It’s an affordable luxury with the economy right now. Some couldn’t afford cards as kids and now they have their own money and no one’s there to say ‘no’.”

Some buyers also treat cards like alternative investments. Through August, the value of Pokémon cards has delivered a cumulative return of 3,821% since 2004, according to an index by analytics firm Card Ladder, the Wall Street Journal reported. To combat online resellers, many stores now limit purchases to two packs per customer.

While the trading card category has boomed this year, not everyone is convinced the segment will boost sales during the peak holiday shopping season. Within the past six months, 19% of adults said they purchased Pokémon cards for themselves, signaling they may not be buying them for others in the weeks ahead,…

The NFL could begin renegotiating its media rights deals as soon as 2026, four years ahead of the current agreement’s opt-out clause, Commissioner Roger Goodell told CNBC in an exclusive interview.

A new media rights deal could potentially add billions of dollars to the league’s coffers. The league needs agreement from its current media partners — Disney, Comcast’s NBCUniversal, Paramount, Amazon and Fox — to start discussions on any new deal.

The NFL signed an 11-year, $111 billion media rights deal in 2021 that contains a league opt-out clause after the 2029-30 season for all of its media partners except Disney, which has one extra year of rights.

Both sides may be incentivized to strike new rights agreements if it means the league can increase annual revenue and media partners can extend control of NFL rights for years to come.

“I think our partners would want to sit down and talk to us at any time, and we continue to dialogue with them. I like that opportunity,” Goodell said. “Obviously it’s not going to happen this year. But it could happen as early as next year. That could happen.”

NFL programming is the most watched content on traditional television. Last year, 72 of the top 100 programs were NFL games, according to data collected by Nielsen. The year before, 93 of the top 100 were NFL games.

“The reason why we felt so strongly about the option is the landscape is changing. It could be a long-term deal with the benefit of having that stability and security of it. But I think the reality of it is it changes so quickly that you want to have the ability to move. I think those options are going to give us a lot of flexibility to potentially go earlier,” said Goodell.

Other major professional leagues, such as the NBA and NHL, have dramatically increased their TV revenue in the last year by striking new deals with media partners. Goodell admitted to watching other recent sports’ media deals and said, in comparison, the NFL is leaving money on the table.

Representatives for Amazon, Disney’s ESPN, Fox, NBCUniversal and Paramount-owned CBS declined to comment.

Accelerating media talks may be tricky in the early part of 2026 from a regulatory perspective, as ESPN has a pending deal with the NFL that would see the league acquire a 10% stake in the network. Renegotiating a media rights deal while that acquisition is still pending may present a conflict of interest both sides would like to avoid.

If that deal goes through, ESPN may be more open to play ball with the NFL on a future media deal…

NFL MVP Josh Allen has left Nike to sign an endorsement deal with New Balance.

The Buffalo Bills quarterback announced the news on Friday in a letter to his hometown of Firebaugh, California. The deal is a major win for Massachusetts-based New Balance.

Allen has been a Nike athlete since he joined the league in 2018. The swoosh has faced headwinds in recent years as innovation slowed and sales declined.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but New Balance has committed to funding the Firebaugh community youth sports program as part of the agreement.

“I’m proud to share I’m joining the New Balance family, a brand that, like Firebaugh, is built on family, community and authenticity,” Allen said in the letter.

Firebaugh is not only where Allen grew up, but also where he first trained and developed his passion for football, he said.

“Firebaugh didn’t have quarterback camps or private trainers. We had heart. We had community. And I wouldn’t trade that for anything,” Allen said in the letter.

Allen is one of the league’s biggest stars and has led the Bills to the playoffs for six straight years. He was also featured in HBO’s “Hard Knocks: Training Camp With the Buffalo Bills,” which aired its finale on Tuesday.

New Balance, which has rapidly expanded its athlete roster, also represents other big-name stars such as tennis player Coco Gauff, MLB’s Shohei Ohtani and the WNBA’s Cameron Brink.

“As New Balance continues to grow its football family, we’re honored to welcome Josh Allen on the field and in the community, helping lead the next chapter,” the company said in a statement.

Earlier this week, Allen also announced he was joining Therabody as the fitness recovery brand’s first-ever Performance Advisor.

The NFL is cracking down on the resale of Super Bowl tickets by players, coaches and club employees.

The league plans to fine more than 100 players and roughly two dozen club employees who were found to be in violation of the NFL’s Ticket Resale policy in connection with Super Bowl 59 tickets, according to an internal memo from the league’s chief compliance officer, Sabrina Perel, that was viewed by CNBC.

An investigation found that those players and personnel were selling these tickets to resale “bundlers” at a profit, according to the memo.

Players will be fined 1.5-times the face value of the tickets they sold, and employees will be fined twice the face value, according to a person familiar with the matter who declined to be named speaking about nonpublic details.

Non-player personnel found in violation of the policy will also lose the ability to purchase future NFL tickets, according to the memo.

The league prohibits employees and players from selling NFL game tickets acquired from their employer for more than the ticket’s face value or more than the employee originally paid — whichever is less.

The league is also taking steps to enhance compliance training ahead of Super Bowl 60 and said it will increase penalties for future offenses.

“No one should profit personally from their NFL affiliation at the expense of our fans,” Perel wrote in the memo.