所有生意都可以AI重塑一遍，唯独体育不行AI Can Remake Every Business — Except Sports
Translated from the Chinese original, first published on WeChat「世像」on August 30, 2025.本文 2025.08.30 首发于微信公众号「世像」。
导读：人生就要新瓶装旧酒
Meta为了追赶OpenAI和Google，最近疯狂砸钱挖人，使用钞能力开出科技行业前所未有的薪酬方案：单人签约奖金最高达到1亿美元，这个数字通常只会出现在职业体育顶级明星合同里。
"快狠贵"的挖人策略确实在短期内见效了：Meta迅速组建起了号称人才密度和算力密度双高的超级智能实验室，直接对标OpenAI和Google DeepMind。
然而，好景不长。
天价新人的快速晋位触发了严重的内部公平感争议，资源分配博弈日益激烈，导致不少资深老员工感到被边缘化，士气明显下滑。
在人才矛盾愈演愈烈的时候，Meta又进行了一次大规模的组织调整。整个AI工作被分拆为四个部门：前沿研究团队（TBD Lab）、AI产品、基础设施和长期探索（FAIR延续），全部归属于新成立的Meta超级智能实验室。
两名员工在Meta工作不到一个月已重回OpenAI。甚至新任首席科学家赵晟佳也被曝光曾试图重返OpenAI，更是一度签署了聘用协议。
从PyTorch核心开发者到生成式AI产品总监，从前沿研究员到基础设施工程师，各个关键岗位至少流失了8位人才。有网友开玩笑说，新的前沿实验室被命名为"TBD"（待定）是有原因的，原来是人员待定啊。
Meta 疯狂砸钱挖角OpenAI，这种事不是现在有，而是原来有，一直有。为了防止员工被挖走，OpenAI赶紧给员工放假和发了150万奖金。
大概7年前，原来Meta挖Google员工的时候，Google也给员工发奖金了，OpenAI一人给了150万，Google是一人给了1000块（没有万）但当时1000块钱，员工感觉也不少了。
现在的硅谷是越来越夸张，感觉是AI泡沫在临近技术奇点之前最后的疯狂，因为人工智能革命将是有史以来对人类文明影响最大的事件。
现在的美国，感觉正滑向一种叫做科技封建主义的社会形态，它的社会结构是这样的：
（图：原文此处有配图——科技封建主义社会金字塔）
- 顶层：贵族阶层：政客和资本家
- 第二层：祭祀阶层：那些控制了AI的人，比如拿着上亿薪水的一些科学家。
- 第三层：是永远无法取代的那些人，像运动员，明星这种。
- 第四层：平民，是暂时还没被AI取代的人，像体力劳动者，比如水管工、护工这种。
- 第五层，就是那些已经被取代而完全失去了社会价值的人。
这种社会它是一个很陡峭的金字塔，就它的上三层加起来也不会超过总人口的0.1%，绝大部分群众都是四五层，金融从业者和码农主要是在第四层，但随着程序员被AI取代，很快就会滑向第五层。
很多人在AI创业，新闻里，朋友圈每天充斥着AI Agent，AI一天人间一年的焦虑无处不在。
试想，没有AI，你未来就不会被代替了吗？被代替不是因为AI，而是你自己本身既不掌握生产资料，而自己本身是生产工具。
大部分人，一辈子做好一件事，就是人生正确的打开方式。
举个例子，在互联网和移动互联网时代很火的一个方向是流媒体传输：用更高效的方式让大家能看到更高清的视频。在AI这波浪潮没有来之前，大家可能觉得这个方向已经死掉了，因为YouTube，Netflix，TikTok（抖音），已经非常成熟了，但AI时代来临，尤其是多模态AI，对视频和语音的传输又提出了新要求，在硅谷至少上百家类似的公司拿到了投资。各种上个时代的流媒体大佬被AI公司挖来挖去。
所以我个人坚信：人生就是新瓶装旧酒。所有的风口，最终都会吹回到那些长期坚持的人身上。找一个东西做到底，反复做，新瓶装就只有一个。
别人去卷AI，我只关心体育。
运动员的天赋、竞争的偶然性、现场的不可预测性，决定了体育产业的核心资产仍然是人的体验和情绪。
以下是我自己针对体育的观察和见解，涉及NFL，NBA，NCAA，NIL商业逻辑以及延伸而来的当下中美体育创业的潜在机会分析，仅为个人言论，欢迎讨论探讨。
01 体育：美国的国民产业
体育是美国社会文化的核心活动：家庭看球、社交话题、超级碗就是"春晚"。
美国是欧美国家里体育产业规模最巨大、链条最完善的；2023年全球体育产业总规模约 2.65 万亿美元，光观赛类就近 4850 亿美元。美国拥有全球最成熟的样板：NFL、NBA、MLB、NHL 四大联盟，媒体、赞助、票务、衍生品、博彩全链条运作。
美国的体育产业，也是全球领先的运作模式，以赛事为核心，是所有体育资产的抓手和延伸，包括职业体育和大学体育联盟、球队以及运动员。这些资产向媒体、赞助商、体育特许商品公司等出售媒体权益、代言权及特许商品权益等。
核心商业活动则是组织及参与赛事，借此取得来自赛事的收入和利润。体育产业的价值链和核心逻辑：内容生产（赛事）→分发（媒体/流媒体）→ 变现（转播权、广告、门票、衍生品），其实和 AI 的逻辑，本质上异曲同工。
（图：原文此处有配图——Cash Flows Within The Sports Industry）
根据Umbrex分析，体育产业的价值链从内容创作到分发再到变现。传统体育如NFL、NBA等联赛是内容核心，媒体权利价值在2023年达560亿美元，2024年超600亿美元。分发渠道包括传统TV、电缆体育频道和数字流媒体如YouTube、Twitch、ESPN+。变现方式多样：媒体权、赞助（680-700亿美元）、门票（体育赛事市场2660亿美元）和商品（340亿美元）。体育营销及经纪公司如IMG、CAA代表运动员谈判代言和赞助，是关键玩家。
过去的2024年是体育IP创造纪录的一年。根据TWO CIRCLE的体育IP经济报告显示，2024年全球500强的体育IP，总营收达到1700亿美元，比前一年增长了110亿美元，同比增长率达到7%。这一营收数字使体育成为仅次于电子游戏和电视的第三大娱乐产业，其收入是音乐产业的两倍多。2024年，全球体育迷的体育消费时间超过一万亿小时，相当于地球上平均每人每天消费大约半小时，同样创下新纪录且还将继续增长。
体育IP也是强者恒强：体育IP的前20强在去年的总营收为760亿美元，占总量的44%，这是一个非常极端的数字。前20强的营收平均年增长率为42%，在过去十年则为13%。但除此之外，500强体育IP中剩下的480个，其年平均增长率仅有1%。
不仅如此，顶级体育IP就连培养下一代粉丝都占据了更大的优势，它们比其他体育项目高出31%的"14岁前培养"的粉丝。这些粉丝的参与度也更高，每天观看体育节目的可能性高出92%。同时在经济方面有着更突出的价值，他们在体育节目上的支出比其他粉丝高出88%。对这些顶级IP在早年的亲近感转化成习惯性的高频互动，这种复合效应使得顶级IP更容易收获高粘性的粉丝。
在未来，体育IP必将继续拥抱娱乐化和数字化。数字化技术将为体育IP所有者提供更精准的粉丝洞察、更丰富的互动体验和更高效的商业变现渠道。通过人工智能，体育IP能够更好地了解粉丝需求、提升营销效果，从而增强粉丝粘性和营收。而在这些案例不断强调体育IP需要拥抱创新的同时，体育产业仍然是一个罕见的传承与创新并存的行业，这是一个不可忽视的规律。
世界体育IP的TOP 100当中，早于20世纪诞生的IP多达29个，经过100年的发展才将自己的影响力拓展到全球。这些体育IP的成功固然有自身优秀产品力的原因，但如何在一次次经济危机、社会动荡，甚至是世界大战中活下来，跨越周期，对于这些体育IP而言才是真正宝贵的经验，也正因为它们深度嵌入了人们的社会文化生活，人们才更加不会在困难时期抛弃它们。
对体育IP来说，在拥抱新事物的同时思考如何让自身的影响力通过社会传承下去，会是比估值和股价更加重要的事情。
02 硅谷与华尔街的交汇点：NFL
橄榄球，一个看似和高科技和金融衍生品都无关的赛场，但在赛场之外，橄榄球实际上已成为硅谷科技巨头与华尔街之间，都必须关注的核心之一，其动态深刻地影响着科技公司的用户增长模型和传统媒体公司的股票估值。
对于硅谷：NFL是"生态系统"的终极诱饵。
硅谷科技巨头正大举进入直播体育市场。Apple、Amazon和Google竞相竞标NFL、MLB等权利，以此来扩大流媒体订阅用户。例如，NFL Sunday Ticket包预计2023年起售价超25亿美元/年，Amazon和Apple是主要竞标者。最后Google拿下。
NFL 与 YouTube（Google）达成一项为期七年的独家协议，从 2023 年起将NFL Sunday Ticket 的住宅端转播权授予YouTube TV与YouTube Primetime Channels 。Google 每年为这一转播权支付约20 -25亿美元。
对于Apple、Amazon和Google这些科技巨头而言，斥巨资购买NFL版权，其战略意图远超体育内容本身。
NFL对硅谷来说，是一个无与伦比的工具，用来解决硅谷最核心的增长焦虑：
a. 用户获取与留存的"攻城锤"：在流媒体市场日益饱和的今天，获取新用户的成本急剧上升。NFL拥有任何虚构剧集都无法比拟的忠诚度和必看性。Amazon用《周四橄榄球之夜》驱动Prime会员的注册和续订；Google则将NFL Sunday Ticket作为其YouTube TV订阅服务的王牌，直接从传统有线电视手中抢夺用户。这笔交易不是为了盈利，而是为了更便宜的"买用户"。
b. 生态系统的"黏合剂"：通过NFL赛事，巨头们能将用户更深地锁定在公司的生态系统内。在Amazon上看球的观众，可能会顺手使用Alexa查询球员数据，或是在Prime上购物；在YouTube TV上订阅Sunday Ticket的用户，则会更频繁地使用Google的其他服务。体育直播创造了一个高频、高参与度的场景，完美地契合公司旗下的硬件、软件和服务。
c. 未来客厅入口的"滩头阵地"：美国家庭文化还是比较浓厚，家人，朋友之间经常坐在一起看电视。随着智能电视和互联设备的普及，客厅成为下一个流量入口。谁能掌控体育直播这个最高价值的内容，谁就能在未来的客厅战争中占据有利地形。这关乎数据、广告和下一代交互方式的定义权。
对于硅谷来说，NFL的价值并不在其损益表，而在于其在公司战略地图上的定位。它是一项战略性支出，如同研发或市场营销，旨在巩固其庞大商业帝国的护城河。
硅谷的进入，对传统媒体如Disney的ESPN形成了挑战，但与此同时，联赛受益于科技巨头的财力，推动媒体权价格上涨。对消费者来说，意味着更多选项，但可能增加成本。未来趋势是科技公司进一步巩固体育流媒体权，重塑美国体育媒体景观。
对于华尔街：NFL是媒体股的"价值之锚"
对于华尔街的股票分析师和投资者而言，NFL则扮演着完全不同的角色。它是一个关键的分析工具，用于衡量和判断媒体板块的健康与未来：
a. 传统媒体的"最后防线"：在"退订潮"（cord-cutting）汹涌的背景下，有线电视的观众规模接近腰斩，但NFL的收视率长期稳如泰山。这使得NFL成为迪士尼（ESPN）、康卡斯特（NBC）、派拉蒙（CBS）等传统媒体公司财务报表中，用以支撑其有线网络部门高昂订阅费的最后、也是最坚实的理由。分析师在评估这些公司的股票时，不得不将NFL版权的持有情况视为其核心资产和风险点。
b. 估值模型的"关键变量"：在为媒体公司估值时，分析师需要预测未来的现金流。持有NFL版权的公司，其广告收入和订阅用户流失率的可预测性要高得多。反之，一旦失去NFL版权，其股价和估值将立刻面临巨大的下行压力。因此，每当NFL的媒体合同进入续约谈判期，整个媒体板块都会随之受到影响和波动。
c. 科技巨头"烧钱"的晴雨表：华尔街同样紧盯着科技公司在NFL上的投入。这笔巨额支出，一方面被看作是公司财力雄厚、战略眼光长远的表现；另一方面，也会引发投资者对其利润率和资本配置效率的担忧。分析师们会仔细计算，这笔几十亿甚至上百亿美元的投资，需要转化多少新用户、带来多少生态价值才能"回本"。
面对科技巨头的来势汹汹，ESPN这艘超级大船，也来了一次大幅度的掉头。在今年5月，ESPN官宣了他们筹备多年的DTC流媒体服务：ESPN的数字化之路走了近10年的时间。
从这款服务的确是一次前所未有的变革。与之前的内部代号"Flagship"不同，新的DTC平台"仅"被称为ESPN，没有任何后缀。因为这款DTC服务不是ESPN的任何一个分支，相反，它将是ESPN迄今为止所有服务的一个集合体，并包含全新的内容——正如其Slogan所写：All in ESPN, All in one place（全押ESPN，孤注一掷）。
ESPN DTC平台将为订阅用户提供每年47000场赛事活动直播和各类自制节目，包括北美四大体育联盟、UFC、网球和高尔夫大满贯赛事、40个NCAA锦标赛、欧洲足球联赛等大量的赛事组合。不管是仅在有线电视上播出的NFL赛事，还是在ESPN+播出的西甲、德甲等足球比赛，此后只要订阅ESPN的DTC服务，就能将两个本身互补的部分全部解锁。
定价每月 29.99 美元，假如用户支付 35.99 美元的月费，还可以获得ESPN、Disney+ 和 Hulu 平台的捆绑权益，同时观看三个平台的内容。这个捆绑会员在DTC正式上线的头一年里仅定价为每个月 29.99 美元。同时，原本就订阅了ESPN有线电视的用户，可以直接成为DTC平台的会员，无需再另外付费。不过，仅订阅了ESPN+的用户则无法直接转为DTC平台的用户，只享有原本的权益。
（图：原文此处有配图——ESPN Unlimited Plan 与 Select Plan 对比）
当ESPN发布DTC服务的那一刻起，我们便很难再将它称为一个"传统的有线电视转播商"，它为用户提供的服务变得更加丰富多元，更像是一个由内容主导的体育综合互联网平台，其核心竞争力则是庞大的体育版权组合。
而在此前，也从未有哪个电视转播商将付费电视内容完整地搬到流媒体平台上，电视与流媒体的体育版权在北美可以说是泾渭分明：有线电视用户大多会增加订阅Netflix这样的会员，收看平台自制的体育节目，而不是订阅同样直播赛事的亚马逊Prime Video，而新生代的流媒体用户反之亦然。
这也是为什么自2018年以来，流媒体平台ESPN+推出以来，它2500万的用户数量远远不如ESPN的电视用户，即便后者的用户在近15年大量流失也是如此。因为ESPN+与有线电视更像是一个互补的关系，并且缺失了很多北美的重磅赛事，从流媒体转播平台的层面，ESPN+是缺乏竞争力的。
但两者整合之后，一切变得不同。
ESPN此次发布的DTC平台，形式是新颖的流媒体、多元化互联网服务，内容则原本的ESPN电视网络还要丰富。原来的互联网服务ESPN+则变成了DTC平台里面的一个初级会员选项，定位不清的问题得到了解决。对整个ESPN而言，DTC平台的新增用户则有望直接填补"剪线潮"带来的用户流失——在比有线电视更低的费率面前，不论是有线电视用户还是流媒体用户，在丰富的内容面前，都有可能投入DTC平台的怀抱。
就像皮塔罗说的那样，如今的DTC计划真正关注的是美国超过6000万的观赛家庭，他们中的相当一部分目前还与ESPN没有联系。ESPN希望通过多元的服务打动这批人，用一站式的体验增加用户对ESPN的粘性，而不仅仅只是收看比赛或节目。
当ESPN推出DTC平台后，他们以后的直接竞争对手将不是传统的转播商，而是亚马逊、苹果等持有独家流媒体体育版权的科技巨头。通过DTC成功掉头的ESPN，才算是搭上了流媒体时代的快车。
美国体育产业既是稀缺的"优质媒体内容"，更是能长期沉淀的"高端IP"，这种双重属性使其成为投资热点和文化现象，两者结合使其成为广告商、品牌、投资人眼中的顶级资产类别。
NFL本身并不是上市公司，但它是媒体版权的锚、广告市场的压舱石、流媒体竞争的焦点。作为研究员，如果你在追踪Disney、Comcast、Fox、Amazon、Apple、Google等，NFL是必不可少的存在。
03 NFL：绝对不会亏钱的媒体娱乐生意
在中国做TMT投资，基本上只有第一个T（Technology）。但美国基本上都是高度市场化的，剩下的M（Media）和T（Telecom）也如此，可操作的主题非常多。目前在标普500中，英伟达的权重约为 8.2%，这是标普500指数历史上单一股票的最高权重。纳斯达克100权重约为10.9%。你如果观察但斌的持仓，他的持仓几乎就是英伟达和纳指。
英伟达3年20x，但美国体育产业的价值，一点不输Technology。
很多顶级富豪喜欢买球队的一个原因是自己本身是体育爱好者，另一方面就是体育是一项很好的投资，四大体育联盟（NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL）球队价值超过4500亿美金，拉长时间维度来看，20年翻了10x多，年化回报不仅超越标普，而且超越所有主要美国资产类别。
（图：原文此处有配图——America's Richest Sports Team Owners，Forbes）
NFL的商业本质是一家媒体公司。NFL商业模式的核心是媒体生意与收入共享。在美国体育产业的商业价值：体育节目贡献了近50%的电视广告收入，Top 100节目中，近70%都是体育类节目。
NFL到底有多赚钱？2021 年，NFL 和三大电视台签 11 年合约，总价值1100亿美元，光媒体版权收入就跻身全球前十媒体公司 。2023年联盟总收入200亿美元，50%来自转播，15%来自赞助，15%来自票务，20%来自周边衍生品。32 支球队总估值超1800亿美元，平均单队57亿美元，达拉斯牛仔队超百亿美元 。
以2023年为例，NFL 200亿美元的总收入构成如下：
- 媒体合同（转播权）：约100亿美元（50%）
- 广告赞助：约30亿美元（15%）
- 场馆门票与餐饮：约30亿美元（15%）
- 纪念品及其他：约40亿美元（20%）
而在其商业模式中，"共产主义"的分配制度：均势（Parity）是关键。
NFL成功的关键在于其收入分配制度，该制度将大部分收入作为全国性收入，由32支球队平分，从而保证了小市场球队也能与大市场球队抗衡。NFL各项收入的分配规则细则如下：
A. 媒体收入（~100亿美元）：100%全国共享。这是NFL制度的基石。与NBA、MLB等联赛不同，NFL将所有媒体转播权收入（无论是全国还是地方）都集中起来平分。结果就是避免了像纽约、洛杉矶等大城市球队因拥有庞大的本地媒体市场而产生巨大的收入优势。同时也让NFL在流媒体冲击地方电视台时，财务状况比其他联盟更为稳定。
B. 广告赞助（~30亿美元）：约1/3全国共享，2/3归球队。球队地方性收入的大头来自体育场馆的冠名权，这通常与本地知名企业挂钩（如SoFi Stadium和Allegiant Stadium）。
C. 场馆收入（~30亿美元）：约20%全国共享，80%归球队。常规赛门票归主场球队，但由于赛程分配均匀，实际差异不大。季后赛门票收入归联盟共享。豪华包厢、餐饮、停车等高利润收入归球队所有。这激励了球队投资建设更豪华的场馆以增加地方收入。
D. 其他收入（纪念品等，~40亿美元）：约10%全国共享，90%归球队。联盟层面的IP授权和纪念品收入是共享的，球队自己销售的纪念品归球队所有。特例：达拉斯牛仔队老板Jerry Jones在1995年退出集体商品协议，其纪念品收入完全归自己所有，凭借其强大的品牌效应获得远超其他球队的收入。
在这种制度下，联盟形成良性循环：竞争平衡创造媒体价值，最终服务于比赛本身：一方面保证了竞争平衡：任何球队都有机会通过出色的管理获得成功，而不是仅仅依靠财力。这让比赛充满悬念，更具观赏性。
与此同时还提升了媒体价值：高观赏性的比赛带来了稳定且庞大的观众群体，这使得NFL在与各大媒体平台（传统电视和流媒体）谈判时拥有极高的议价权，转播合同屡创新高，从而进一步增加了联盟的全国性收入，形成了一个完美的商业闭环。
与之带来的结果就是：
A. 高度集中的收入分配：NFL总收入中，63% 是集中分配的，远高于NBA（50%）和MLB（34%）。
B. 球队财务健康，想亏钱都难：
高额联盟分成：2024年，每支球队仅从联盟就能分到4.4亿美元。
薪资帽严格：球队的球员薪酬支出有硬性上限（2024年为2.6亿美元）和下限。这使得球队比拼的是管理和调度能力，而非砸钱能力。
普遍盈利：联盟分成远超球员薪资上限，加上球队自己的地方收入，使得每支球队都能轻松实现盈利（平均EBITDA约1.5亿美元）。
C. 球队估值高且差距小：商业模式稳定、风险小，NFL球队的估值中位数（52亿美元）在所有体育联盟中最高。最高与最低估值球队的差距仅为2.5倍，远小于NBA（3倍）和MLB（7倍），体现了联盟的整体均衡。
NFL"共产主义"模式的利弊需要从联盟和球队两个角度来看。对于联盟本身来说，主要有三点优点：
第一，整体价值变的最大化。通过保证竞争平衡，使得每一场比赛都充满悬念，极大地提升了产品的观赏性，使得整个联盟的媒体版权价值极高。第二，联盟的财务极其稳定。收入和盈利能力不会依赖于少数几个大市场球队，整体下限和抗风险能力极强。第三，强大的品牌向心力。所有球队都围绕在"NFL之盾"这个品牌下，共同进退，便于进行统一的品牌营销和市场扩张。
缺点也比较明显。第一，创新受限。强力的中央集权可能会让个别球队在商业模式上的大胆创新受到限制，因为需要考虑对其他31支球队的影响。第二则是增长高度依赖媒体市场：超过50%的收入来自媒体版权，联盟的增长与媒体版权市场的"泡沫"或繁荣高度绑定。一旦该市场停滞，联盟会受到巨大冲击。
对于球队，第一，财务安全（旱涝保收）：无论球队战绩如何、市场大小如何，每年都能拿到巨额的联盟分成，这笔钱足以覆盖球员薪水等核心成本。确实"想亏钱都难"。第二则是资产价值稳定增长。因为盈利能力有保障，风险低，NFL球队是一种非常优质的资产，估值稳定且持续上涨。最后是竞争的公平性：作为小市场球队（如绿湾包装工队），也有有机会通过优秀的管理、选秀和执教，与大市场球队（如洛杉矶公羊队）在同一起跑线上竞争并夺冠，不依赖砸钱而更考验球队整体的运营管理能力。
缺点同样明显。均势（Parity）显著压制了头部球队的收入上限。对于身处纽约、洛杉矶、达拉斯这样的顶级市场的球队来说，如果没有均势（Parity），它们独立运作本地媒体版权和商品，其收入远超现在的状态。它们实际上是在用自己的市场优势"补贴"小市场球队。均势带来的还有所有权自主性较低：球队老板在很多重大决策上必须服从于联盟的集体利益，自主权相对较小。达拉斯牛仔队老板杰里·琼斯就是因为不断挑战这一体制而闻名。
如果将整个体育联盟看作一个投资组合，NFL的模式与传统的VC基金有显著不同。
NBA/MLB（更像传统VC模式）：VC投资多家初创公司，期望其中1-2家成为"独角兽"（Unicorn），带来100倍甚至1000倍的回报，这笔回报将覆盖掉其他所有失败或表现平平的投资。
最明显的就是：洛杉矶湖人队、金州勇士队或MLB的纽约扬基队就是这样的"独角兽"。他们凭借巨大的市场，强大的曝光和品牌效应，带来了天价的本地媒体合同和商业收入，从而直接拉动了整个联盟的估值上限。但同时，联盟里也有很多常年亏损、估值较低的"失败投资"。
（图：原文此处有配图——湖人队历年总冠军海报）
NFL模式（更像一个风险极低的私募股权基金或共同基金）：基金的策略不是寻找一个能带来超高回报的"独角兽"，而是确保投资组合里的每一家公司都能健康、稳定地增长，从而提升整个基金的总体价值（Net Asset Value）。
NFL联盟=GP（基金管理人），负责募集最大的一笔资金（全国媒体合同），并制定投资规则（薪资帽、分配制度）。32支球队 = 投资组合里的32家公司
全国收入分配 = 基金层面的交叉补贴：基金管理人将融来的钱（媒体收入）平均分配给每家公司，确保它们都有充足的"运营预算"（远超薪资帽）。
薪资帽 = 标准化的预算控制：基金管理人为每家公司设定了严格的人力成本上限，防止它们恶意竞争、烧钱过度而导致亏损。
投资目标：最终目的不是让一两家公司市值冲上云霄，而是让32家公司的估值下限不断提高，实现整个投资组合的低风险、稳定、集体性的增值。从结果看，NFL球队的最低估值远高于其他联盟，证明了这一策略的成功。
NFL还有一个最新趋势：8月5日，NFL 与 ESPN 互换资产，ESPN获得NFL Network、RedZone、Fantasy 等核心资产，NFL则拿到ESPN 10% 股权 。这是联盟首次持有媒体公司股权，可能重塑体育+媒体格局。
（图：原文此处有配图——RedZone Heading to ESPN in Blockbuster Billion-Dollar Deal）
对ESPN而言，NFL的核心资产将进一步助力ESPN的数字化转型，丰富了DTC内容填充。NFL Network的全年性内容、RedZone的赛事集锦（尤其与体育博彩业务的协同）、NFL Fantasy Football 的互动属性等等，填补的都是ESPN的内容缺口。
对NFL而言，则是从版权授权方直接变成了利益相关者，不仅能从ESPN的DTC服务中获得潜在收益，还能借助ESPN的用户数据优化内容策略，在"退订潮"（cord-cutting）下强化和巩固分发渠道。与此同时，NFL联盟本身是非上市公司，ESPN股价上涨，NFL持有的股份增值将直接惠及各球队，反正下跌也成立。
NFL通过其独特的、高度"共产主义"的财政制度，实现了联盟范围内的竞争平衡和商业上的巨大成功。
04 NBA：本土与全球化的商业帝国
作为全球最顶级的赛事品牌、第二个营收破百亿的职业联赛，NBA的商业潜力开发到尽头了吗?
答案可能是远远未到。450，这是NBA联盟及球队2024-2025赛季吸引到的新合作品牌的数量。
根据SponsorUnited新近发布的报告，2024-25赛季，NBA球队赞助总收入达到16.2亿美元，同比增长8%，在过去五个赛季中几乎翻了一倍：8.5亿美元增长至16.2亿美元，涨幅高达91%。下赛季开启的11年760亿美元媒体转播合作，将进一步提高NBA 的营收和赚钱能力，从而带动球队估值连番看涨。
有人认为NBA的球队估值几乎逼近天花板，也有人认为还有很大商业潜力。
2025年6月，洛杉矶湖人队，以100亿美元的估值出售，创下北美球队出售历史新高。新老板是金融巨头古根海姆的CEO马克·沃尔特，他还拥有美国职业棒球大联盟的洛杉矶道奇队。北京时间8月19日，根据NBA官方消息，何猷君成功完成竞标，成为豪门波士顿凯尔特人的小股东（co-owner）。
（图：原文此处有配图——Boston Celtics 2024 World Champions）
有钱人为什么都喜欢买球队?
首先，是稀缺性和抗衰退性。体育在美国乃至全球，已成为一种资产类别，这个现象在10年前是不存在的。而传统上，体育球队具有非常强的抗衰退能力，它们的价值不会大幅下跌。如果拉长时间维度来看，过去50年里，出售价格低于收购价格的球队屈指可数，这些资产的稀缺性可见一斑。NFL球队只有32支，且没有更多球队诞生。每年都会有新的亿万富翁诞生。NBA球队有30支，目前总裁肖华在积极扩军，未来大概率会再增加两支。但扩张的情况相当罕见，尤其是在北美四大体育联盟中。
（图：原文此处有配图——Total Return: Sports Leagues vs. S&P 500，Chronograph）
第二是体育博彩合法化是增长的新引擎。2018年，美国最高法院做出历史性裁决，之后体育博彩迅速成为推动体育产业价值增长的一个关键催化剂。这一转变不仅仅是开辟了一个新收入渠道，更深远地改变了球迷的参与方式、媒体内容的呈现形式，并最终直接提升了球队的资产价值。
首先，体育博彩创造了全新的、直接的收入来源。各大体育联盟迅速将自己的官方实时数据打包成高价值产品，出售给博彩公司。例如，NFL与Genius Sports签订了长达数年、价值上亿美元的独家协议，授权其向全球博彩公司分发官方数据。与此同时，联盟和球队也与博彩巨头建立了深度的合作关系。NFL拥有DraftKings、FanDuel和Caesars作为其官方博彩合作伙伴；而NBA更是先行者，早在2018年就与米高梅（MGM Resorts）签约，此后不断扩大其博彩合作伙伴网络。这些合作带来了数亿美元的赞助和授权费，成为了球队资产负债表上一笔稳定且利润丰厚的现金流。
其次，博彩极大地提升了球迷的参与度和粘性。当球迷对一场比赛有金钱上的投入时，他们观看比赛的动机和专注度会显著提高。在节奏更快的NBA比赛中，球迷甚至可以进行"实时投注"，对下次得分的球员或本节的比分进行投注，这让一场普通的常规赛从头到尾都充满悬念。这种深度的参与感直接转化为更高的收视率和更长的观看时间，因为每一分钟的比赛都可能与球迷的切身利益相关。
更重要的是，这种提升的参与度最终会传导至媒体版权价值上。对于广播公司和流媒体平台而言，一个参与度更高、观看意愿更强的观众群体，其商业价值也更高。NFL在2021年签下的、从2023年开始生效的总价值超1100亿美元的11年媒体版权长约，其惊人的金额背后，博彩合法化带来的收视红利是重要考量因素之一。同样，NBA在2024年达成的、从2025-26赛季开始的总价值约770亿美元的新一轮媒体版权协议，也充分反映了媒体方对博彩驱动下未来收视前景的乐观预期。如今，在比赛转播中公开讨论赔率和盘口已成常态，这在几年前是不可想象的，而这正是为了迎合这个庞大且不断增长的观众群体。
（图：原文此处有配图——Media Rights Deals Between Leagues & Broadcasters）
如果说NFL的模式是"共产主义"，旨在实现联盟的整体繁荣和竞争均势；那么NBA的模式则更偏向"资本主义"，在设定基本共享规则的同时，允许并奖励大市场球队和超级巨星的个体价值最大化。这种模式创造了极高的商业上限，但也带来了更大的贫富差距和对竞争平衡的持续挑战。
以2023-24赛季为例，NBA联盟总收入约为113亿美元。其收入分配规则与NFL有本质区别，核心在于对地方媒体版权的处理。
1. 媒体收入：国家与地方的"双轨制"
- 全国媒体收入：100%共享。这部分收入来自与ESPN/ABC、NBC、Amazon Prime Video等签订的全国性转播合同。从2025-26赛季开始，新的11年760亿美元合同将生效，会极大提升这部分共享收入的基数。这也是顶级球员年薪不断上涨的一个大前提
- 地方媒体收入：NBA的地方转播既是球队重要的营收来源，也是和本地球迷建立联系的重要媒介。NBA各队可以独立出售其在本地市场的比赛转播权。这笔收入的差距是惊人的。
例如，湖人24-25赛季营收预计6亿美元左右，地方转播收入是创NBA记录的1.85 亿美元，占整体营收近30%。在转播收视方面，Sportico的报道显示，每年季后赛首轮6有40%的收视量来自本地转播，波士顿和纽约这样的地区，地方台的收视占比可以达到一半。而孟菲斯灰熊队，新奥尔良鹈鹕队等小市场球队的该项收入仅为湖人队的零头。湖人一周的地方媒体收入就能超过灰熊队一个赛季。虽然联盟通过"收入共享池"要求高收入球队上缴部分收入（包括本地媒体和门票收入等）来补贴低收入球队，但其调节力度远不及NFL将所有媒体收入集中的模式。
2. 广告赞助：国家与地方并行
联盟层面的赞助（如与Nike签的10亿美元/年的球衣合同）会进入共享池。但球队可以独立寻求赞助，包括球衣广告补丁、球馆冠名权等，这同样造成巨大差异。纽约尼克斯队在麦迪逊广场花园的赞助价值，显然不是俄克拉荷马雷霆队能比拟的。
3. 场馆及其他收入：大部分归球队
门票、豪华包厢、餐饮等收入主要归主队所有。大城市、战绩好的球队上座率高、票价贵，这部分收入也远超小市场球队。
NBA集中分配的收入比例约为50%，这部分被称为"篮球相关收入"（Basketball Related Income, BRI），由球队老板和球员大致对半分成。这个比例显著低于NFL的63%。这意味着球队的最终收入水平，在很大程度上取决于其所在城市的市场规模和自身的商业运营能力。
支出控制："软"上限与"硬"惩罚
与NFL严格的硬工资帽不同，NBA实行的是软工资帽和奢侈税制度。
软工资帽：允许球队通过各种例外条款（如"伯德条款"续约自己的球员）来超过工资帽，以保留核心阵容。这为"王朝球队"的出现提供了薪资空间上的可能性。
奢侈税：薪资总额超过奢侈税线的球队，需缴纳罚款。罚款是阶梯式的，花的钱越多，惩罚越重。例如，金州勇士在某些赛季支付的奢侈税甚至超过1.5亿美元。
第二土豪线：近年的新劳资协议增加了更严厉的惩罚线，严重超税的球队在球员交易和签约方面会受到极大限制。
这个制度允许财力雄厚的球队老板为胜利"付费"，通过缴纳高额奢侈税来维持一支超高薪水的"超级球队"。这直接导致球队间的球员支出差异巨大，与NFL各队薪资支出高度统一（硬上限的89%-100%）形成鲜明对比。
NBA模式带来的影响
- 球队估值和贫富差距巨大
一方面是高估值上限：得益于超级巨星的全球影响力和大市场的商业潜力，头部球队估值遥遥领先。根据《福布斯》数据，金州勇士队（$88亿）、纽约尼克斯队（$75亿）和洛杉矶湖人队（$71亿）遥遥领先。2025年，湖人已经以100亿美元的估值易主。与之相对的是显著的贫富差距：最贵的勇士队（$88亿）与最便宜的孟菲斯灰熊队（$30亿）之间的估值差距约为 2.93倍，高于NFL的2.5倍。这直接反映了地方收入差异带来的资产价值差异。
- 对竞争平衡的挑战："王朝"与"摆烂"并存
NBA软工资帽和球星个人意愿的增强，使得超级巨星们更容易向大市场或有实力的球队聚集，形成"三巨头"甚至"四巨头"的超级球队或者王朝。从而使得冠军集中度高。相比来说，NFL冠军分布的更具广泛性。
这一点也会小市场的困境。小市场球队很难留住自己培养的顶级巨星，他们往往在合同到期后选择加盟更具吸引力的大市场球队，这使得小市场球队难以维持长久的竞争力。
与NFL通过制度设计强制实现"均富"和"均势"不同，NBA选择了一条更自由市场化的道路：一个以超级巨星为核心驱动力的"英雄主义"联盟。它通过最大化头部球队和球星的商业价值来拉高整个联盟的品牌天花板。它为强者提供了创造帝国（和巨额财富）的机会，但也让联盟的生态呈现出更加分化的"阶级"格局。
NBA能效仿NFL么？答案是：不太能完全效仿，但可以借鉴部分理念。主要障碍两者的历史路径、联盟结构和文化的根本不同：
首先是比赛数量和性质。NFL只有17场。而NB赛季长（8个月），82场常规赛 + 季后赛，海量的比赛为本地电视台提供了丰富的、可供填满频道的内容，这使得"本地媒体版权"成为一块巨大的、球队不愿放弃的蛋糕。而NFL比赛稀少，更适合作为全国直播的"每周盛宴"。
其次是历史路径依赖。NFL在电视的黄金时代早期就确立了"电视是全国性产品"的认知，将转播权牢牢掌握在联盟手中。而NBA的成长则与地方有线电视的崛起紧密相连，湖人、凯尔特人、尼克斯等豪门依靠强大的本地转播合同建立了各自的"王朝"，这种模式已根深蒂固。
第三是明星文化差异和收入。NBA赛程密集，82场+频繁背靠背，对球员健康挑战大。明星负荷高，会经常出现"负荷管理"。收入模式更"年薪化"，合同大多是固定工资 + 一些奖金。NFL每周一场，身体恢复时间更长，但每场强度极高、受伤风险更大，平均职业寿命比NBA短。
最能体现两大联盟薪酬差异的是平均数和中位数。NBA平均收入约 $1,191万美元，NFL约 $320万美元，NBA平均薪水几乎是NFL的四倍，而中位数的差距则更为悬殊，NBA收入中位数约 $670万美元，NFL约 $86万美元，近八倍。
NBA的高平均值和中位数得益于更小的球队阵容（每队15人）。联盟总收入被更少的球员瓜分，从而显著拉高"地板"水平。即使是角色球员，也能获得数百万美元的年薪。
NFL则球队阵容庞大（每队53人），加上大量的非保障性合同，导致严重的薪酬两极分化。四分卫等核心位置的球员可以拿到天价合同，但大量角色球员、特勤组球员和新秀的薪水相对较低，从而将中位数拉至百万美元以下。
从上下限来看。上限是合同结构的差异。NFL的顶薪合同平均年薪略高于NBA的单赛季最高薪水。例如，牛仔队四分卫达克·普雷斯科特的合同平均年薪达6000万美元。然而。NBA 的顶薪合同通常是全额保障的，且随着工资帽的上涨，球员能签下的合同总额和单赛季薪水屡创新高。未来几年，NBA将有多位球星的单赛季薪水突破6000万甚至7000万美元。
（图：原文此处有配图——League Average EV/Revenue Multiple，Chronograph）
NFL 的合同金额虽大，但保障部分相对较低。球员的收入更容易受到伤病和表现的影响，合同的后几年往往是非保障的，球队可以提前裁掉球员以规避薪金压力。下限则主要是基础保障的差距。NBA的最低薪水标准显著高于NFL，为联盟中的底层球员提供了更好的生活保障。
虽然NFL作为美国第一大体育联盟在整体商业价值上独占鳌头，但在"造富"球员，尤其是保障中层和底层球员收入方面，NBA其实走在前面。
对于NBA乃至各类职业赛事，粉丝经济是其商业化的核心驱动，部分营收来源的变动，或许会在短期内影响收入，但只要球迷还在，就能重建营收模式。无论球星轮替，老板更迭，还是商业规则推陈出新，就现阶段的NBA来说，作为全球化的赛事品牌，目光已经不仅是扎根本土，野心是在世界范围内维持住影响力。
年轻雷霆捧起冠军奖杯，是对球队运营稳扎稳打的赞歌，或许也是当下NBA最需要的故事——俄克拉荷马城是由一个个帐篷搭建而来的美国中南部小城，可小城居民也有机会追随自己的球队站上世界篮球之巅。而与此同时，带领他们的是一个加拿大人。
现在的NBA的国际球星数量，应该是历史上之最：双料MVP的亚历山大，少林寺进修完的文班亚马，塞尔维亚的约基奇，目前的风头甚至盖过了本土球员。所幸NBA不需要过分考虑美国篮协的想法。
NBA近年来一直在全世界各个国家和地区发展篮球文化，包括举办"篮球无疆界"、成立NBA全球学院这些直接选拔培养球员的手段；还包括正在筹建中的欧洲篮球联赛，试图将NBA模式复制到更多市场。NBA的商业价值，还有很大的开发空间。
05 一年2050万美元，NCAA高校要给球员发工资了
要理解美国体育为何能成为一个系统性的庞大产业，并持续为职业联盟输送高价值的资产，还有一个组织不能忽略——全国大学体育协会（NCAA）。NCAA不仅是大学体育的管理机构，更是整个美国体育人才金字塔的基座。
长期以来，NCAA，特别是其顶级的一级联赛（Division I），扮演着为北美职业体育联盟，尤其是NFL和NBA，输送人才的"事实上的发展联盟"角色。与职业联盟需要自掏腰包建立和维护的次级联赛不同，NCAA系统为NFL和NBA节省了数十亿美元的球员培养成本。
顶尖大学利用其庞大的体育预算，为学生运动员提供世界一流的教练、训练设施和高水平的比赛平台。这使得职业球队的球探们可以方便地在大学比赛中考察、评估和挑选未来的明星。
同时，像"疯狂三月"篮球锦标赛和大学橄榄球季后赛这样的全国性赛事，本身就是巨大的媒体IP，它们为年轻运动员提供了宝贵的全国曝光度，在他们进入职业联盟之前就为他们积累大量的粉丝和商业价值。
这个看似稳定的系统在2021年迎来了颠覆性的变革。
2021年，NCAA首次允许大学生运动员通过NIL<姓名（Name）、形象（Image）和肖像权（Likeness）>来进行获利。，这是个载入史册的政策。刚起步时，NIL仅仅象征着一系列发布在推特以及Instagram上小试牛刀。现如今，它已经发展成一个价值数十亿美金的平台，运动员们从中获得丰厚的收入分成，校外团体投入巨额钞票，而品牌方们也相应调整自己的广告策略。
NIL的出现重塑了大学体育的生态。如今，顶尖高中生在选择大学时，不仅要考虑学校的学术和体育水平，更要评估其所在地区和学校能提供的NIL合同规模。由富裕校友和支持者组成的"NIL集体（Collectives）"开始扮演类似职业球队中"薪金帽"的角色，为招募和留住顶尖球员提供资金支持。
（图：原文此处有配图——Year-over-Year Growth in NIL Collective Spending）
仅在6月30日当天，就有近2000万美元通过NIL平台流向运动员，创下历史单日交易纪录。这使得大学之间，也逐渐出现类似联盟间的"军备竞赛"，也让大学体育的转会市场变得如同职业体育的自由球员市场一样活跃。
自从NIL诞生以来，不仅解放了大学运动员的商业价值，更开辟了一片被证明是ROI最高的营销战场。品牌方的投入热情是最好的证明：NIL市场规模正以惊人的速度扩张，预计将从初期的5.67亿美元（2021-22年度）增长至近10亿美元（2025-26年度）。
（图：原文此处有配图——Total Spend on NIL Products and Services）
品牌方之所以愿意重金投入，是因为大学运动员展现出了无与伦比的营销效能。他们的社交媒体互动率是传统网红的近4倍，这意味着他们与粉丝之间的联系更真实、更具号召力。
此外，当品牌方发起由多位运动员共同参与的营销活动时，其互动率比传统的单人广告高出45%，体现了团队影响力的叠加效应。这种高参与度、高回报的特性，让科技、鞋服和零售等行业的领先品牌纷纷将NIL视为核心营销策略。而且，大学生运动员的粉丝群体被品牌方视为拥抱Z世代，提高品牌影响力，的最好手段之一。
（图：原文此处有配图——Top Three Industries by Total NIL Activities）
美国NIL市场还在持续增长，预计将在未来一年中增长22%，总支出达到27.5亿美金。其中，大学生运动员们将预计获得其中的19.5亿美金。这相当于有将近20亿美金流入运动员的口袋，到2029年，NIL的预计总支出将高达31.5亿美金，远高于第一年9.18亿美金的总支出。
"付薪时代"的到来，一方面深刻影响了运动员的收入来源，更重塑了整个大学体育的生态系统。大学体育和职业体育之间的界限，正变的越来越模糊。
NIL 打破了百年"业余主义"，让大学体育成为一条全新的商业赛道。
运动员、品牌、捐赠者、学校，形成了新的商业生态。
06 体育创业的前景和机会分析
如果说NFL、NBA和NCAA代表了美国体育商业化的"巅峰状态"，那么体育产业仍然是一个持续涌现机会的巨大生态。它既是文化与社交的容器，也是一个数据密度极高、用户粘性极强的产业。
个人认为，在AI、多模态分发、博彩合法化、NIL模式全面解禁等多重驱动下，美国体育市场正处于一个新的增长周期；与此同时，中国体育产业也处在结构性爆发的前夜，创业者可以在另一条曲线上实现超额回报。
一、美国市场：成熟生态中的裂缝与新周期
美国是全球体育商业化的模范样板市场。2023年，美国体育产业总体规模接近 5000亿美元，但在看似饱和的产业链中，仍然出现多条新赛道。原因很简单：观赛习惯在变，技术范式在变，货币化模式在变。
从个人的观察来看，美国体育创业机会主要集中在四个方向：
1. AI驱动的体育数据与内容革命
美国体育是一个高频、数据密集的产业：每场NFL比赛会生成超过 300万条事件数据，而NBA球员的平均每回合位移速度、投篮角度、命中概率都已被捕捉到帧级别。
过去，这些数据大多被ESPN、Sportradar、Genius Sports这样的机构垄断。而今天，AI在三个方面打开了新的创业空间：
(1) 实时数据生产与解读：通过计算机视觉和多模态大模型，实时生成球员跑动热区、进攻效率、战术预判。
案例：Second Spectrum，NBA和英超的官方AI战术分析合作伙伴，2021年被Genius Sports以2亿美元收购。
(2) AI自动生成视频内容：平台化的"Highlights-as-a-Service"成为新趋势。
案例：WSC Sports，与NBA、NHL、ESPN合作，自动生产短视频集锦，估值近8亿美元。
(3) 个性化推荐与互动；多模态AI与观众画像结合，将直播中的精彩片段、赔率、球员故事，按用户兴趣精准分发。
案例：Amazon Prime Thursday Night Football，结合AI实现"边看边下注"，Prime Video体育会员月活跃率提升27%。
一些潜在创业机会：建立"AI运动数据云"，为博彩公司、球队、媒体提供实时API；或针对TikTok，Reels等平台，做 AI驱动的体育短视频内容生产。
2. NIL模式解锁大学体育的商业新大陆
NIL的出现直接催生了一个数十亿美元的新市场。原本被动为联盟输送人才的大学生运动员，现在拥有了商业化的主动权。
2021年市场规模5.67亿美元，2025年已经突破了10亿美元，预计2029年会达到31.5亿美元。这其中的变化核心主要有三点：
a. 高中生选大学=选"商业机会"，不仅考虑学校体育水平，还看NIL合约上限；
b. "NIL集体"出现，校友、捐赠人、赞助方直接组建资金池，抢人大战升级；
c. 大学体育转会市场彻底职业化，类似NBA自由球员。
创业机会也是对应的：
a. NIL撮合平台：撮合买家（品牌）与卖家（运动员）。
b. 运动员商业内容管理：提供AI驱动的粉丝画像、合同管理、定制化营销策略。
c. 品牌ROI提升工具：帮助企业根据粉丝互动率做精细化投放。
3. 体育博彩合法化与交互式观赛革命
2018年，美国最高法院解禁体育博彩，至今已有46个州开放。去年东契奇被"莫名其妙"交易到湖人，就有知情人士称是德州在为博彩合法化扫清薪金障碍。
体育博彩这不仅创造一个千亿美元级的新市场，还彻底改变了观赛行为。博彩驱动了更长的观看时长、更高的互动率。用户愿意为实时数据、赔率分析和预测模型付费。而且，AI算法在预测和赔率生成中的需求暴增。
代表案例
- DraftKings、FanDuel：市值均超百亿美元；
- ESPN Bet：迪士尼与Penn Entertainment合作推出的新平台，三个月用户突破100万。
（图：原文此处有配图——DraftKings Inc 股价走势）
个人认为的创业机会
- 为博彩平台提供AI赔率预测与数据API；
- 做"Streaming + Betting"一体化观赛工具；
- 基于AI的虚拟体育博彩，模拟比赛+虚拟赔率。
4. 垂直化的运动员金融与管理服务
随着体育IP的全球化，顶级运动员的商业价值已经超越赛事本身。运动员的财务和合规需求，催生新的创业机会：
痛点：跨国参赛带来的税收和奖金结算问题；海量赞助合同、代言、NFT收入需要系统化管理；中尾部选手缺乏财务顾问、合规支持。
一些潜在创业机会：运动员财务中台：跨境奖金代收、税收优化、资产配置；跨境赞助撮合：把亚洲赞助商和北美运动员连接起来；以及运动员IP资产化平台：将选手内容、NFT、社区粉丝打包形成长期可交易资产。
二、中国市场：结构性红利与空白带来的机会
如果说美国的体育产业是一个"存量竞争"的生态，中国的机会在于"增量市场"。2023年中国体育产业总规模 3.4万亿元人民币，但赛事IP、职业化运营、运动员经纪等环节依然是蓝海。
1. 职业体育IP与联盟化运营
中国体育产业的核心矛盾是：用户基础庞大，IP稀缺。没有类似NFL、NBA的超级IP，意味着创业机会存在于两端：
- 赛事IP孵化；构建区域性、校园型、高潜力项目的联赛。然后结合AI做直播、数据可视化，降低内容生产成本。
- 青训+赛事一体化：美国的NCAA是一个超级商业模式，中国的青少年赛事体系仍在空白。
创业者可以用"赛事+数据+内容"的模式，帮助本土体育培养可持续的流量。
2. 体育科技与数据智能化
- 可穿戴设备 + AI训练反馈：用计算机视觉和物联网为大众健身和职业训练提供数据化指导。
- 康复与健康管理：中国体育康复市场预计在 2027年突破900亿人民币，AI驱动的远程康复和个性化训练正在起步。
3. 跨境体育经纪与赞助撮合
这是一个中美交叉的巨大机会。越来越多中国品牌希望赞助海外运动员，同时，中尾部职业运动员（尤其是网球、高尔夫等个人项目）急需东亚市场的资源。
一些潜在创业机会：中国品牌与北美大学生运动员的NIL撮合；跨境税务合规与奖金代收；打造面向亚洲市场的职业运动员数据平台。
总结：体育创业的三条逻辑
a. AI 是驱动力：从内容生产、数据分析到精准分发，AI正在赋能体育的每个环节。
b. 运动员IP是新资产：NIL、赞助撮合、社交平台带来的"个人品牌化"，是未来的商业化核心。
c. 跨境是长期机会：亚洲运动员出海与美国品牌东进形成双向需求，体育创业的价值链会越来越全球化。
未来10年，体育产业的感觉会更像"AI + 体育 + 金融"的混合模型。
顶级IP的估值会继续攀升，但增量机会会集中在长尾用户、大学生运动员、跨境经纪与AI驱动的体育内容分发。
07 写在最后
有一句话，我一直记着：什么是兴趣？实力就是兴趣。你在竞争中占优自然就有兴趣，你老是落后，自然就没兴趣了。
如果说AI正在"重塑一切"，那么体育是少数几个不能被直接取代的行业之一。
运动员的天赋、竞争的偶然性、现场的不可预测性，决定了体育产业的核心资产仍然是人的体验和情绪。
（图：原文此处有配图——每日原则：让热情与工作合二为一。@瑞·达利欧）
但这并不意味着体育创业容易。
恰恰相反，体育是一门"高门槛、长周期"的生意：
- 联盟和运动员生态的底层逻辑；
- 长期积累内容、数据、关系与资源；
- 选择一个足够细分的切口，从数据到内容，从运动员服务到跨境经纪，再到AI驱动的博彩或粉丝运营。
所有的生意都可以被AI重塑一遍，体育也不例外。
体育不是靠一轮流量套利而取胜，而是一个关于长期、耐心、资源和生态位的竞争。
风口会来，但只有在足够长的时间里持续深耕，才能接得住。
无论你处在人生中什么阶段，都希望你们可以找到能让你们人生立住，立足的东西和筹码，不是金钱，不是权力，而是内心发自深处的渴望。
参考资料
- 每年近30亿美元：美国大学运动员商单接到手软
- NFL："想亏钱都难"的媒体娱乐生意
- 体育赛事入股核心媒体，是好事还是坏事?
Preface: Life is about pouring old wine into new bottles
To catch up with OpenAI and Google, Meta has recently been spending wildly to poach talent, using the power of the checkbook to put on the table compensation packages the tech industry has never seen: individual signing bonuses of up to $100 million — a figure that usually only shows up in the top contracts of professional sports superstars.
The "fast, ruthless, expensive" poaching strategy did work in the short term: Meta rapidly assembled a so-called superintelligence lab boasting both high talent density and high compute density, aimed squarely at OpenAI and Google DeepMind.
But the good times didn't last.
The rapid promotion of astronomically paid newcomers triggered a serious internal fairness dispute, and the jockeying over resources grew ever fiercer, leaving many veteran staff feeling sidelined and morale visibly sagging.
As the talent tensions escalated, Meta ran another large-scale reorg. Its entire AI effort was split into four departments: a frontier-research team (TBD Lab), AI Products, Infrastructure, and long-term exploration (the continuation of FAIR) — all placed under the newly established Meta Superintelligence Labs.
Two employees, less than a month into their Meta tenure, had already returned to OpenAI. Even the newly appointed chief scientist Shengjia Zhao was reported to have tried to go back to OpenAI, going so far as to sign an employment agreement at one point.
From a core PyTorch developer to a generative-AI product director, from a frontier researcher to an infrastructure engineer, at least eight people left from key roles. One netizen joked that there was a reason the new frontier lab was named "TBD" (to be determined) — turns out the personnel are TBD.
Meta poaching frantically from OpenAI isn't a now thing — it's an always thing, a from-the-start thing. To keep its people from being poached, OpenAI hurried to give staff time off and $1.5 million bonuses.
Roughly seven years ago, back when Meta was poaching Google's people, Google gave its staff bonuses too: OpenAI handed out $1.5 million per person; Google gave $1,000 per person (thousand, not million) — but at the time $1,000 felt like plenty to employees.
Silicon Valley today grows ever more extravagant. It feels like the last madness of the AI bubble as it nears the technological singularity — because the AI revolution will be the single most consequential event in the history of human civilization.
America today feels like it's sliding toward a social form you might call techno-feudalism, whose social structure looks like this:
(Figure in original.)
- The top: the noble class — politicians and capitalists.
- The second layer: the priestly class — those who control AI, such as certain scientists drawing hundred-million-dollar salaries.
- The third layer: those who can never be replaced, like athletes and celebrities.
- The fourth layer: commoners — people not yet replaced by AI, like manual laborers: plumbers, caregivers, and the like.
- The fifth layer: those already replaced, who have entirely lost their social value.
This society is a very steep pyramid: the top three layers combined don't exceed 0.1% of the total population; the vast majority sit in the fourth and fifth layers. Finance workers and coders are mainly in the fourth layer — but as programmers get replaced by AI, they'll soon slide toward the fifth.
Many people are doing AI startups; the news and everyone's social feeds are flooded daily with AI Agents, and the anxiety of "one AI day equals a human year" is everywhere.
Ask yourself: without AI, would you never be replaced? Being replaced isn't because of AI — it's because you don't own the means of production and you yourself are the means of production.
For most people, doing one thing well for a lifetime is the right way to live.
Take an example. A hot direction in the internet and mobile-internet era was streaming media transmission: getting everyone higher-definition video by more efficient means. Before the AI wave arrived, people might have thought this direction was already dead — YouTube, Netflix, and TikTok (Douyin) were mature. But with the AI era, and multimodal AI especially, video and voice transmission face new demands, and in Silicon Valley at least a hundred such companies have raised money. Streaming-media veterans from the last era get poached back and forth by AI companies.
So I firmly believe: life is about pouring old wine into new bottles. Every trend eventually blows back onto the people who persisted over the long haul. Find one thing and do it to the end, over and over — the only new part is the bottle.
Others can grind at AI; I only care about sport.
The talent of the athlete, the contingency of competition, the unpredictability of the live event — these determine that the core asset of the sports industry remains human experience and emotion.
What follows are my own observations and views on sport, covering the NFL, NBA, NCAA, and the business logic of NIL, extending into an analysis of the potential opportunities in Chinese and American sports entrepreneurship right now. These are personal opinions only; discussion is welcome.
01 Sport: America's national industry
Sport is a core activity of American society and culture: the family watching the game, the social conversation topic — the Super Bowl is America's "Spring Festival Gala."
Among Western nations, America has the largest and most complete sports industry. In 2023, the global sports industry was worth roughly $2.65 trillion, of which the spectator segment alone was nearly $485 billion. America has the world's most mature template: the four major leagues — NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL — with media, sponsorship, ticketing, merchandise, and betting all operating as a full chain.
America's sports industry is also the world's leading operating model, built around events as the core — the handle and extension for all sports assets, including professional and college sports leagues, teams, and athletes. These assets sell media rights, endorsement rights, and licensed-merchandise rights to media companies, sponsors, sports-licensing firms, and so on.
The core commercial activity is organizing and participating in events, thereby earning revenue and profit from them. The value chain and core logic of the sports industry — content production (events) → distribution (media/streaming) → monetization (broadcast rights, advertising, tickets, merchandise) — is, in essence, remarkably similar to the logic of AI.
(Figure in original.)
Per Umbrex's analysis, the sports value chain runs from content creation to distribution to monetization. Traditional sports leagues like the NFL and NBA are the content core; media-rights value reached $56 billion in 2023 and topped $60 billion in 2024. Distribution channels include traditional TV, cable sports networks, and digital streaming such as YouTube, Twitch, and ESPN+. Monetization is varied: media rights, sponsorship ($68–70 billion), tickets (the sports-event market at $266 billion), and merchandise ($34 billion). Sports marketing and agency firms like IMG and CAA represent athletes in negotiating endorsements and sponsorships, and are key players.
2024 was a record-setting year for sports IP. Per TWO CIRCLES' sports-IP economy report, the world's top-500 sports IPs earned $170 billion in total revenue in 2024, up $11 billion from the prior year — a year-on-year growth rate of 7%. That figure makes sport the third-largest entertainment industry after video games and television, with revenue more than double that of the music industry. In 2024, global sports fans spent over a trillion hours on sport — the equivalent of roughly half an hour per person per day for everyone on Earth — likewise a new record, and one that will keep growing.
Sports IP is also a case of the strong getting stronger: the top 20 sports IPs earned $76 billion in total last year, 44% of the whole — an extreme figure. The top 20 grew 42% a year on average, and 13% over the past decade. But the remaining 480 of the top-500 sports IPs grew only 1% a year on average.
Not only that, the elite sports IPs even hold a bigger edge in cultivating the next generation of fans: they have 31% more fans "cultivated before age 14" than other sports. These fans are also more engaged, 92% more likely to watch sports programming daily. They also carry standout economic value, spending 88% more on sports content than other fans. Early-years affinity for these top IPs converts into habitual, high-frequency engagement, and this compounding effect makes it easier for top IPs to win high-stickiness fans.
In the future, sports IP will surely keep embracing entertainment and digitalization. Digital technology will give sports-IP owners more precise fan insight, richer interactive experiences, and more efficient monetization channels. Through AI, sports IP can better understand fan needs and improve marketing, strengthening fan stickiness and revenue. And even as these cases keep stressing that sports IP must embrace innovation, the sports industry remains a rare one where heritage and innovation coexist — a pattern not to be ignored.
Among the world's top-100 sports IPs, as many as 29 were born before the 20th century, taking a full 100 years to extend their influence worldwide. The success of these sports IPs owes something to their own excellent product strength, of course, but how they survived one economic crisis, social upheaval, even world war after another — crossing cycles — is the truly precious experience for them. And it is precisely because they are deeply embedded in people's social and cultural life that people are all the less likely to abandon them in hard times.
For sports IP, thinking about how to pass its influence down through society while embracing new things will matter more than valuation and share price.
02 Where Silicon Valley meets Wall Street: the NFL
Football — a field that seems to have nothing to do with high tech or financial derivatives — has, off the field, actually become one of the core things that both Silicon Valley's tech giants and Wall Street must watch. Its movements profoundly affect tech companies' user-growth models and traditional media companies' stock valuations.
For Silicon Valley: the NFL is the ultimate bait for the "ecosystem."
Silicon Valley's tech giants are pushing hard into the live-sports market. Apple, Amazon, and Google race to bid on NFL, MLB, and other rights to expand their streaming subscriber bases. For example, the NFL Sunday Ticket package was expected to sell for over $2.5 billion a year starting in 2023, with Amazon and Apple as the main bidders. Google won it in the end.
The NFL struck a seven-year exclusive deal with YouTube (Google), granting YouTube TV and YouTube Primetime Channels the residential broadcast rights to NFL Sunday Ticket from 2023. Google pays roughly $2–2.5 billion a year for those rights.
For tech giants like Apple, Amazon, and Google, the strategic intent of spending heavily on NFL rights goes far beyond the sports content itself.
For Silicon Valley, the NFL is an unrivaled tool for solving its most fundamental growth anxieties:
a. A "battering ram" for user acquisition and retention: in an increasingly saturated streaming market, the cost of acquiring new users is soaring. The NFL has a loyalty and must-watch quality no scripted series can match. Amazon uses Thursday Night Football to drive Prime sign-ups and renewals; Google uses NFL Sunday Ticket as the trump card for its YouTube TV subscription, snatching users straight from traditional cable. This deal isn't about turning a profit — it's about cheaper "buying of users."
b. The "adhesive" of the ecosystem: through NFL games, the giants can lock users more deeply into their ecosystems. A viewer watching the game on Amazon might casually use Alexa to check player stats or shop on Prime; a user subscribing to Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV will use Google's other services more often. Live sports create a high-frequency, high-engagement scenario that dovetails perfectly with the companies' hardware, software, and services.
c. A "beachhead" for the future living-room gateway: American family culture is fairly strong; family and friends often sit together to watch TV. As smart TVs and connected devices spread, the living room becomes the next traffic gateway. Whoever controls live sports — the highest-value content — takes the advantageous terrain in the coming war for the living room. This is about data, advertising, and the right to define the next generation of interaction.
For Silicon Valley, the NFL's value isn't on its income statement but in its position on the company's strategic map. It's a strategic expenditure, like R&D or marketing, meant to reinforce the moat of a vast commercial empire.
Silicon Valley's entry poses a challenge to traditional media such as Disney's ESPN, but at the same time the leagues benefit from the tech giants' deep pockets, pushing media-rights prices up. For consumers it means more options, but possibly higher costs. The future trend is tech companies further consolidating sports-streaming rights and reshaping the American sports-media landscape.
For Wall Street: the NFL is the "value anchor" of media stocks.
For Wall Street's equity analysts and investors, the NFL plays an entirely different role. It's a key analytical tool for gauging and judging the health and future of the media sector:
a. Traditional media's "last line of defense": against the surging tide of cord-cutting, cable's audience has nearly halved, yet NFL ratings have long been rock-solid. This makes the NFL the last — and firmest — justification on the balance sheets of traditional media companies like Disney (ESPN), Comcast (NBC), and Paramount (CBS) for the high subscription fees of their cable divisions. When valuing these companies' stocks, analysts must treat NFL-rights holdings as a core asset and risk point.
b. The "key variable" in valuation models: when valuing media companies, analysts must forecast future cash flows. Companies holding NFL rights have far more predictable ad revenue and subscriber-churn rates. Conversely, once a company loses NFL rights, its share price and valuation immediately face enormous downward pressure. So whenever the NFL's media contracts enter renewal talks, the whole media sector moves and fluctuates with them.
c. A barometer of tech giants' "cash-burning": Wall Street likewise watches closely how much tech companies pour into the NFL. On one hand, this huge outlay is seen as a sign of financial strength and long-term strategic vision; on the other, it also raises investor concern over margins and capital-allocation efficiency. Analysts carefully calculate how many new users this multi-billion, even ten-billion-dollar investment must convert, and how much ecosystem value it must bring, to "break even."
Faced with the tech giants' onslaught, the supertanker that is ESPN also made a dramatic turn. This past May, ESPN officially announced the DTC streaming service it had been preparing for years — ESPN's digital journey has taken nearly a decade.
This service really is an unprecedented transformation. Unlike its earlier internal codename "Flagship," the new DTC platform is called simply ESPN, with no suffix. Because this DTC service isn't any single branch of ESPN; rather, it's a consolidation of all of ESPN's services to date, plus brand-new content — as its slogan puts it: "All in ESPN, all in one place."
The ESPN DTC platform will offer subscribers live coverage of 47,000 events a year plus various original programming, including the four major North American leagues, the UFC, tennis and golf majors, 40 NCAA championships, European soccer leagues, and a huge event portfolio. Whether it's NFL games broadcast only on cable or La Liga and Bundesliga matches on ESPN+, once you subscribe to ESPN's DTC service you can unlock both complementary halves.
Priced at $29.99 a month; if a user pays $35.99 a month, they also get the bundled benefits of ESPN, Disney+, and Hulu, watching content across all three platforms at once. This bundle is priced at only $29.99 a month for the first year after the DTC launch. Meanwhile, users who already subscribe to ESPN via cable can become DTC platform members directly, with no extra charge. Users who only subscribe to ESPN+, however, can't convert directly to the DTC platform and keep only their existing benefits.
(Figure in original.)
The moment ESPN launched its DTC service, it became hard to keep calling it a "traditional cable broadcaster." The service it offers users has become richer and more varied — more like a content-led sports internet platform, whose core competitiveness is a vast portfolio of sports rights.
Before this, no TV broadcaster had ever moved its full pay-TV content onto a streaming platform. In North America, TV and streaming sports rights had been sharply divided: cable subscribers mostly add memberships like Netflix to watch platform-produced sports programming, rather than subscribing to Amazon Prime Video, which streams the same live games; and the new-generation streaming users do the opposite.
That's why, since streaming platform ESPN+ launched in 2018, its 25 million subscribers have lagged far behind ESPN's TV audience — even as the latter has bled users heavily over the past 15 years. Because ESPN+ and cable were more of a complementary relationship, and ESPN+ lacked many of North America's marquee events; as a streaming rights platform, ESPN+ was uncompetitive.
But once the two are integrated, everything changes.
The DTC platform ESPN just launched is, in form, a novel streaming and diversified internet service, and in content it's even richer than the original ESPN TV network. The old internet service, ESPN+, becomes an entry-level membership option within the DTC platform, resolving its muddled positioning. For ESPN as a whole, new DTC users can directly fill the gap left by cord-cutting — in the face of rates lower than cable and a rich content offering, cable users and streaming users alike may fall into the DTC platform's embrace.
As Pitaro said, today's DTC plan is really aimed at the over 60 million American households that watch sports, a good portion of which currently have no relationship with ESPN. ESPN hopes to win these people over with diverse services, using a one-stop experience to deepen their stickiness to ESPN — not merely to watch games or programs.
Once ESPN launches its DTC platform, its direct competitors will no longer be traditional broadcasters but tech giants holding exclusive streaming sports rights, like Amazon and Apple. Only by turning the ship around via DTC does ESPN finally catch the express train of the streaming era.
America's sports industry is both scarce "premium media content" and, more importantly, "high-end IP" that can accrue value over the long term. This dual nature makes it an investment hotspot and a cultural phenomenon, and the combination makes it a top-tier asset class in the eyes of advertisers, brands, and investors.
The NFL itself isn't a public company, but it's the anchor of media rights, the ballast of the ad market, and the focal point of streaming competition. As an analyst, if you're tracking Disney, Comcast, Fox, Amazon, Apple, or Google, the NFL is indispensable.
03 The NFL: a media-entertainment business that absolutely cannot lose money
In China, doing TMT investing basically means only the first T (Technology). But America is highly marketized across the board, and the remaining M (Media) and T (Telecom) are too — so there are far more themes you can act on. Right now in the S&P 500, Nvidia's weight is about 8.2%, the highest single-stock weight in the index's history. Its Nasdaq-100 weight is about 10.9%. If you look at Dan Bin's holdings, they're almost entirely Nvidia and the Nasdaq.
Nvidia did 20x in three years, but the value of the American sports industry is not one bit inferior to Technology.
One reason many top billionaires like to buy teams is that they're sports fans themselves; another is that sport is a very good investment. The four major leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL) hold team value exceeding $450 billion, and over a longer horizon it's grown more than 10x in 20 years, with annualized returns that beat not only the S&P but every major American asset class.
(Figure in original.)
The NFL's commercial essence is that of a media company. The core of the NFL's business model is the media business plus revenue sharing. In terms of commercial value in the American sports industry: sports programming contributes nearly 50% of TV ad revenue, and of the top-100 programs, nearly 70% are sports.
Just how much money does the NFL make? In 2021, the NFL signed 11-year deals with three major TV networks worth $110 billion in total; on media rights alone it ranks among the world's top-10 media companies. In 2023, total league revenue was $20 billion: 50% from broadcasting, 15% from sponsorship, 15% from ticketing, 20% from merchandise. The 32 teams have a combined valuation over $180 billion, averaging $5.7 billion per team, with the Dallas Cowboys above $10 billion.
Take 2023 as an example. The NFL's $20 billion in total revenue breaks down as:
- Media contracts (broadcast rights): about $10 billion (50%)
- Advertising and sponsorship: about $3 billion (15%)
- Venue tickets and concessions: about $3 billion (15%)
- Merchandise and other: about $4 billion (20%)
And in its business model, the "communist" distribution system — parity — is the key.
The key to the NFL's success is its revenue-distribution system, which treats most revenue as national revenue split evenly among the 32 teams, ensuring even small-market teams can go toe-to-toe with big-market ones. The detailed distribution rules for the NFL's revenue streams are as follows:
A. Media revenue (~$10 billion): 100% shared nationally. This is the cornerstone of the NFL system. Unlike the NBA and MLB, the NFL pools all media-rights revenue (national and local alike) and splits it evenly. The result is that it avoids the huge revenue advantage that teams in big cities like New York and Los Angeles would otherwise enjoy from their large local media markets. It also leaves the NFL financially more stable than other leagues as streaming disrupts local TV stations.
B. Advertising and sponsorship (~$3 billion): about one-third shared nationally, two-thirds kept by teams. The bulk of a team's local revenue comes from stadium naming rights, usually tied to well-known local companies (like SoFi Stadium and Allegiant Stadium).
C. Venue revenue (~$3 billion): about 20% shared nationally, 80% kept by teams. Regular-season tickets go to the home team, but because the schedule is evenly allocated, the actual differences are small. Playoff ticket revenue is shared league-wide. High-margin revenue from luxury suites, concessions, and parking belongs to the teams, which incentivizes teams to invest in more luxurious stadiums to boost local revenue.
D. Other revenue (merchandise, etc., ~$4 billion): about 10% shared nationally, 90% kept by teams. League-level IP licensing and merchandise revenue is shared; merchandise a team sells itself belongs to the team. The exception: Cowboys owner Jerry Jones pulled out of the collective merchandise agreement in 1995, keeping all his merchandise revenue for himself, and leveraging his powerful brand to earn far more than other teams.
Under this system, the league forms a virtuous cycle: competitive balance creates media value, which ultimately serves the game itself. On one hand it guarantees competitive balance: any team can succeed through excellent management rather than by financial muscle alone, keeping games full of suspense and more watchable.
At the same time it raises media value: highly watchable games bring a stable and vast audience, giving the NFL enormous bargaining power in negotiations with media platforms (traditional TV and streaming). Broadcast contracts keep hitting new highs, further boosting the league's national revenue, forming a perfect commercial loop.
The results are:
A. Highly concentrated revenue distribution: 63% of the NFL's total revenue is centrally distributed, far above the NBA (50%) and MLB (34%).
B. Financially healthy teams — it's hard to lose money even if you try:
Large league shares: in 2024, each team received $440 million from the league alone.
Strict salary cap: teams have a hard ceiling on player pay ($260 million in 2024) and a floor. This makes teams compete on management and roster-building rather than spending power.
Broad profitability: league shares far exceed the player salary cap, and combined with a team's own local revenue, every team can easily turn a profit (average EBITDA around $150 million).
C. High and narrowly spread valuations: with a stable, low-risk business model, the NFL's median team valuation ($5.2 billion) is the highest of any sports league. The gap between the highest- and lowest-valued teams is only 2.5x, far smaller than the NBA (3x) and MLB (7x), reflecting the league's overall balance.
The pros and cons of the NFL's "communist" model must be viewed from both the league's and the teams' angles. For the league itself there are three main advantages:
First, overall value is maximized. By guaranteeing competitive balance, every game is full of suspense, greatly boosting the product's watchability and making the league's media-rights value extremely high. Second, the league's finances are extremely stable. Revenue and profitability don't depend on a handful of big-market teams, so the overall floor and risk resistance are very strong. Third, powerful brand cohesion. All teams rally under the "NFL shield" brand, advancing and retreating together, which makes unified brand marketing and market expansion easier.
The drawbacks are also clear. First, innovation is constrained. Strong central control may limit bold business-model innovation by individual teams, because the impact on the other 31 teams must be considered. Second, growth depends heavily on the media market: over 50% of revenue comes from media rights, so league growth is tightly bound to the "bubble" or boom of the media-rights market. Once that market stalls, the league takes a huge hit.
For the teams, first, financial safety (guaranteed come rain or shine): whatever a team's record or market size, it receives a huge league share every year, enough to cover core costs like player salaries. It really is "hard to lose money even if you try." Second, asset value grows steadily: with guaranteed profitability and low risk, NFL teams are a very high-quality asset, with stable and continually rising valuations. Finally, competitive fairness: a small-market team (like the Green Bay Packers) also has a chance to compete on equal footing with a big-market team (like the LA Rams) and win a championship through excellent management, drafting, and coaching — not by outspending, but by testing overall operational skill.
The drawbacks are equally clear. Parity notably suppresses the revenue ceiling of top teams. For teams in top markets like New York, LA, and Dallas, without parity they would operate their local media rights and merchandise independently, earning far more than they do now. In effect, they're using their market advantage to "subsidize" small-market teams. Parity also brings lower ownership autonomy: team owners must submit to the league's collective interest on many major decisions, with relatively little autonomy. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is famous precisely for repeatedly challenging this system.
If you view the whole sports league as an investment portfolio, the NFL's model differs markedly from a traditional VC fund.
NBA/MLB (more like the traditional VC model): a VC invests in many startups, hoping 1–2 become "unicorns" returning 100x or even 1,000x, a return that covers all the other failures or mediocre bets.
The clearest examples: the LA Lakers, Golden State Warriors, or MLB's New York Yankees are just such "unicorns." Leveraging huge markets, powerful exposure, and brand effects, they command sky-high local media contracts and commercial revenue, directly lifting the whole league's valuation ceiling. But at the same time, the league also has many perennially loss-making, low-valuation "failed investments."
(Figure in original.)
NFL model (more like a very low-risk PE fund or mutual fund): the fund's strategy isn't to find one "unicorn" that delivers super-high returns, but to ensure every company in the portfolio grows healthily and steadily, thereby raising the fund's overall net asset value.
The NFL league = the GP (fund manager), responsible for raising the largest single pool of capital (national media contracts) and setting the investment rules (salary cap, distribution system). The 32 teams = the 32 companies in the portfolio.
National revenue distribution = fund-level cross-subsidy: the fund manager evenly distributes the money it raised (media revenue) to each company, ensuring they all have ample "operating budget" (far above the salary cap).
Salary cap = standardized budget control: the fund manager sets a strict labor-cost ceiling for each company, preventing them from vicious competition and reckless spending that leads to losses.
Investment objective: the ultimate goal isn't to send one or two companies' market caps soaring, but to keep raising the valuation floor of all 32 companies, achieving low-risk, stable, collective appreciation of the whole portfolio. The results show that the NFL's minimum team valuation is far higher than other leagues', proving the strategy's success.
The NFL also has one latest trend: on August 5, the NFL and ESPN swapped assets — ESPN got core assets like NFL Network, RedZone, and Fantasy, while the NFL got a 10% stake in ESPN. It's the first time the league has held equity in a media company, and it may reshape the sports-plus-media landscape.
(Figure in original.)
For ESPN, the NFL's core assets will further power its digital transformation and enrich its DTC content: NFL Network's year-round content, RedZone's game highlights (especially the synergy with the sports-betting business), and NFL Fantasy Football's interactive nature all fill gaps in ESPN's content.
For the NFL, it goes from being a rights licensor to a direct stakeholder — not only can it earn potential income from ESPN's DTC service, but it can use ESPN's user data to optimize content strategy and, amid cord-cutting, strengthen and consolidate its distribution channels. At the same time, since the NFL league itself is a private company, if ESPN's share price rises, the NFL's stake appreciates, directly benefiting the teams — and of course the reverse holds if it falls.
Through its distinctive, highly "communist" fiscal system, the NFL has achieved league-wide competitive balance and enormous commercial success.
04 The NBA: a commercial empire, domestic and global
As the world's top event brand and the second professional league to break $10 billion in revenue, has the NBA exhausted its commercial potential? The answer is likely: far from it. 450 — that's the number of new partner brands the NBA league and its teams attracted in the 2024–25 season.
Per a recent SponsorUnited report, in 2024–25 NBA team sponsorship revenue reached $1.62 billion, up 8% year-on-year, nearly doubling over the past five seasons: from $850 million to $1.62 billion, a 91% jump. The 11-year, $76 billion media-rights deal starting next season will further boost the NBA's revenue and earning power, driving team valuations sharply higher.
Some believe NBA team valuations are near the ceiling; others see plenty of commercial potential left.
In June 2025, the LA Lakers were sold at a $10 billion valuation, an all-time North American record for a team sale. The new owner is financial titan Mark Walter, CEO of Guggenheim, who also owns MLB's LA Dodgers. On August 19 Beijing time, per official NBA news, Mario Ho successfully completed his bid to become a co-owner (minority stakeholder) of the storied Boston Celtics.
(Figure in original.)
Why do the wealthy all love buying teams?
First, scarcity and recession resistance. Sport, in America and worldwide, has become an asset class — a phenomenon that didn't exist a decade ago. Traditionally, sports teams have very strong recession resistance, and their value doesn't drop sharply. Over a longer horizon, the teams sold below their purchase price in the past 50 years can be counted on one hand — testament to the scarcity of these assets. There are only 32 NFL teams, and no more are being created; new billionaires are minted every year. There are 30 NBA teams; commissioner Adam Silver is actively pursuing expansion, and two more will likely be added in the future. But expansion is quite rare, especially among North America's four major leagues.
(Figure in original.)
Second, the legalization of sports betting is a new engine of growth. In 2018 the U.S. Supreme Court made a historic ruling, after which sports betting quickly became a key catalyst driving the sports industry's value. This shift didn't just open a new revenue channel — it more profoundly changed how fans engage, the form media content takes, and ultimately directly raised teams' asset values.
First, betting created a brand-new, direct revenue source. The major leagues quickly packaged their official real-time data into high-value products sold to betting companies. For example, the NFL signed a multi-year, hundred-million-dollar exclusive deal with Genius Sports, licensing it to distribute official data to betting companies worldwide. Meanwhile, leagues and teams built deep partnerships with betting giants. The NFL has DraftKings, FanDuel, and Caesars as official betting partners; the NBA was even a pioneer, signing with MGM Resorts as early as 2018 and continually expanding its betting-partner network since. These partnerships bring hundreds of millions in sponsorship and licensing fees, a stable and highly profitable cash flow on teams' balance sheets.
Second, betting greatly boosts fan engagement and stickiness. When fans have money on a game, their motivation and focus in watching rise significantly. In the faster-paced NBA, fans can even place "live bets" on the next scorer or a quarter's score, keeping an ordinary regular-season game full of suspense from start to finish. This deep engagement translates directly into higher ratings and longer watch time, because every minute of the game may bear on fans' own stakes.
More importantly, this heightened engagement ultimately transmits to media-rights value. For broadcasters and streaming platforms, an audience that is more engaged and more willing to watch is more commercially valuable. Behind the astonishing scale of the NFL's 11-year, $110 billion-plus media deal signed in 2021 and effective from 2023, the ratings dividend from betting legalization was an important consideration. Likewise, the NBA's new roughly $77 billion media deal reached in 2024 and starting in 2025–26 fully reflects broadcasters' optimism about betting-driven future viewership. Today, openly discussing odds and spreads during broadcasts has become normal — unthinkable a few years ago — precisely to cater to this vast and growing audience.
(Figure in original.)
If the NFL's model is "communism," aimed at the league's overall prosperity and competitive parity, then the NBA's model leans more "capitalist": while setting basic sharing rules, it permits and rewards the individual value maximization of big-market teams and superstars. This model creates an extremely high commercial ceiling, but also a greater wealth gap and a continual challenge to competitive balance.
Take 2023–24: total NBA league revenue was about $11.3 billion. Its distribution rules differ fundamentally from the NFL's, chiefly in how local media rights are handled.
1. Media revenue: a "dual-track system" of national and local
- National media revenue: 100% shared. This comes from national broadcast contracts with ESPN/ABC, NBC, Amazon Prime Video, and others. Starting in 2025–26, the new 11-year, $76 billion contract takes effect, greatly raising the base of this shared revenue. This is also a major precondition for top players' salaries continually rising.
- Local media revenue: local broadcasting is both an important revenue source for teams and a key medium for building bonds with local fans. Each NBA team can sell its local-market broadcast rights independently. The gaps here are astonishing.
For example, the Lakers' 2024–25 revenue is projected at around $600 million, of which local broadcast revenue is a record $185 million — nearly 30% of total revenue. On viewership, per Sportico, 40% of first-round playoff viewership each year comes from local broadcasts, and in areas like Boston and New York the local station's share can reach half. Meanwhile, the corresponding revenue for small-market teams like the Memphis Grizzlies and New Orleans Pelicans is a mere fraction of the Lakers'. A week of the Lakers' local media revenue can exceed a whole season of the Grizzlies'. Although the league requires high-revenue teams to remit part of their revenue (including local media and ticket revenue) into a "revenue-sharing pool" to subsidize low-revenue teams, its leveling effect is far weaker than the NFL's model of pooling all media revenue.
2. Advertising and sponsorship: national and local in parallel
League-level sponsorships (like the $1 billion-a-year jersey deal with Nike) go into the shared pool. But teams can pursue sponsorships independently — jersey ad patches, arena naming rights — which likewise create huge disparities. The sponsorship value of the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden is obviously not something the Oklahoma City Thunder can match.
3. Venue and other revenue: mostly kept by teams
Tickets, luxury suites, concessions, and the like go mainly to the home team. Big-city teams with good records have high attendance and pricey tickets, so this revenue also far exceeds small-market teams'.
The NBA's centrally distributed revenue is about 50%, known as Basketball Related Income (BRI), split roughly evenly between owners and players. That ratio is notably lower than the NFL's 63%. It means a team's final revenue level depends heavily on its city's market size and its own commercial operating ability.
Spending control: a "soft" cap and "hard" penalties
Unlike the NFL's strict hard cap, the NBA runs a soft cap and luxury-tax system.
Soft cap: teams can exceed the cap through various exceptions (like the "Bird rights" for re-signing their own players) to retain a core roster. This gives the possibility, in terms of salary room, for "dynasty" teams to emerge.
Luxury tax: teams whose total payroll exceeds the luxury-tax line pay a penalty. The penalty is tiered — the more you spend, the heavier it gets. For example, in some seasons Golden State paid over $150 million in luxury tax.
The second apron: recent collective bargaining agreements added harsher penalty lines, severely restricting teams over the tax in player trades and signings.
This system lets deep-pocketed owners "pay for" winning, sustaining an ultra-high-salary "superteam" by paying steep luxury taxes. This directly leads to huge disparities in player spending between teams — a sharp contrast to the NFL, where team payrolls are highly uniform (89%–100% of the hard cap).
The effects of the NBA model
- Team valuations and the wealth gap are huge
On one hand, a high valuation ceiling: thanks to superstars' global influence and big markets' commercial potential, top teams' valuations lead by a wide margin. Per Forbes, the Golden State Warriors ($8.8 billion), New York Knicks ($7.5 billion), and LA Lakers ($7.1 billion) are far out front. In 2025, the Lakers changed hands at a $10 billion valuation. Against this is a marked wealth gap: the valuation gap between the priciest Warriors ($8.8 billion) and the cheapest Memphis Grizzlies ($3 billion) is about 2.93x, higher than the NFL's 2.5x. This directly reflects the asset-value differences that local-revenue disparities produce.
- The challenge to competitive balance: "dynasties" and "tanking" coexist
The NBA's soft cap and players' strengthened personal agency make it easier for superstars to gather on big-market or strong teams, forming "Big Threes" or even "Big Fours" — superteams or dynasties. This produces high championship concentration. By comparison, NFL championships are distributed more broadly.
This also worsens small markets' plight. Small-market teams struggle to keep the top stars they develop, who often, after their contracts expire, choose to join more attractive big-market teams, making it hard for small-market teams to maintain lasting competitiveness.
Unlike the NFL, which uses institutional design to force "shared wealth" and "parity," the NBA chose a more free-market path: a "heroic" league driven at its core by superstars. By maximizing the commercial value of top teams and stars, it raises the whole league's brand ceiling. It offers the strong the chance to build empires (and vast fortunes), but it also gives the league a more stratified "class" structure.
Can the NBA emulate the NFL? The answer: not fully, but it can borrow parts of the philosophy. The main obstacle is the two leagues' fundamentally different historical paths, league structures, and cultures:
First, the number and nature of games. The NFL has only 17. The NBA has a long season (8 months) — 82 regular-season games plus playoffs — and this vast slate of games provides rich, channel-filling content for local TV stations, making "local media rights" an enormous pie teams are unwilling to give up. NFL games are scarce, better suited as a national "weekly feast."
Second, historical path dependence. In the early golden age of TV, the NFL established the notion that "TV is a national product," firmly keeping broadcast rights in the league's hands. The NBA's growth, by contrast, was tightly linked to the rise of local cable; storied teams like the Lakers, Celtics, and Knicks built their "dynasties" on powerful local broadcast contracts, and that model is now deeply entrenched.
Third, differences in star culture and income. The NBA schedule is dense — 82 games plus frequent back-to-backs — a big challenge to player health. Star workloads are high, so "load management" appears often. The income model is more "salaried," with contracts mostly fixed pay plus some bonuses. The NFL plays once a week, giving longer recovery time, but each game is extremely intense with higher injury risk, and the average career is shorter than in the NBA.
The best illustration of the two leagues' pay differences is the mean and the median. Average NBA income is about $11.91 million, the NFL about $3.2 million — the NBA average is nearly four times the NFL's. And the median gap is even starker: NBA median income is about $6.7 million, the NFL about $860,000 — nearly eight times.
The NBA's high mean and median owe to smaller rosters (15 per team). Total league revenue is split among fewer players, markedly lifting the "floor." Even role players can earn multi-million-dollar salaries.
The NFL has huge rosters (53 per team) plus many non-guaranteed contracts, causing severe pay polarization. Core positions like quarterback can command sky-high contracts, but a large mass of role players, special-teamers, and rookies earn relatively little, pulling the median below a million dollars.
Looking at the top and bottom ranges: the ceiling difference is one of contract structure. The NFL's top contracts have a slightly higher average annual value than the NBA's single-season max. For example, Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott's contract averages $60 million a year. However, NBA max contracts are usually fully guaranteed, and as the cap rises, the total contract value and single-season salaries players can sign keep hitting new highs. In the coming years, several NBA stars will break $60 million, even $70 million, in single-season salary.
(Figure in original.)
The NFL's contract totals are large, but the guaranteed portion is relatively low. Players' income is more exposed to injury and performance, the later years of contracts are often non-guaranteed, and teams can cut players early to relieve salary pressure. The floor difference is mainly one of base guarantees. The NBA's minimum-salary standard is markedly higher than the NFL's, providing better security for the league's bottom-tier players.
So while the NFL, as America's biggest sports league, stands alone in overall commercial value, in "making players rich" — especially securing income for mid- and lower-tier players — the NBA is actually ahead.
For the NBA and for professional sports of all kinds, the fan economy is the core driver of commercialization. Changes in some revenue sources may dent income in the short term, but as long as the fans remain, the revenue model can be rebuilt. Whatever the rotation of stars, the turnover of owners, or the churn of commercial rules, the NBA at this stage — as a globalized event brand — has set its sights beyond its home base; its ambition is to sustain influence worldwide.
The young Thunder lifting the championship trophy is an ode to steady, solid team operation, and perhaps the story the NBA most needs right now — Oklahoma City is a small city in the south-central U.S. built up tent by tent, yet its residents too have a chance to follow their team to the summit of world basketball. And leading them, meanwhile, is a Canadian.
The number of international stars in today's NBA is probably the most in history: two-time MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Wembanyama (fresh from a stint studying at Shaolin Temple), Serbia's Jokić — right now they even outshine the homegrown players. Fortunately, the NBA needn't overly consider USA Basketball's feelings.
In recent years the NBA has been developing basketball culture across countries and regions worldwide, including hosting "Basketball Without Borders" and founding NBA global academies as direct means of scouting and developing players; it also includes the European basketball league in the works, an attempt to replicate the NBA model in more markets. The NBA's commercial value still has plenty of room to be developed.
05 $20.5 million a year — NCAA colleges are about to pay their players
To understand why American sport can become such a systematic, massive industry, and continually feed high-value assets to the pro leagues, there's one organization we can't ignore: the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association). The NCAA isn't just the governing body of college sports — it's the base of the whole pyramid of American sports talent.
For a long time, the NCAA — especially its top-tier Division I — has played the role of a "de facto development league" for North America's pro leagues, the NFL and NBA in particular. Unlike the secondary leagues the pro leagues must build and maintain out of their own pockets, the NCAA system saves the NFL and NBA billions in player-development costs.
Top universities use their vast athletics budgets to give student-athletes world-class coaching, training facilities, and a high-level competition stage. This lets pro teams' scouts conveniently observe, evaluate, and pick future stars at college games.
At the same time, national events like the "March Madness" basketball tournament and the college football playoff are themselves huge media IPs, giving young athletes precious national exposure and building up a large fan base and commercial value before they even enter the pros.
This seemingly stable system met a disruptive change in 2021.
In 2021, the NCAA for the first time allowed college athletes to profit from their NIL — Name, Image, and Likeness — a policy for the history books. At the start, NIL merely symbolized a series of small experiments posted on Twitter and Instagram. Today it has grown into a multi-billion-dollar platform where athletes earn handsome revenue shares, outside groups pour in huge sums, and brands adjust their advertising strategies accordingly.
NIL's arrival reshaped the ecosystem of college sports. Now, when top high-schoolers choose a college, they weigh not only the school's academics and athletics but the scale of the NIL contracts its region and school can offer. "NIL Collectives" made up of wealthy alumni and boosters have begun to play a role like a pro team's "salary cap," providing funding to recruit and retain top players.
(Figure in original.)
On June 30 alone, nearly $20 million flowed to athletes through NIL platforms, setting a single-day transaction record. This has gradually produced something like an inter-league "arms race" between universities, and made the college-sports transfer market as active as pro sports' free-agent market.
Since NIL's birth, it has not only unlocked college athletes' commercial value but opened up what has proven to be the highest-ROI marketing battlefield. Brands' enthusiasm is the best proof: the NIL market is expanding at an astonishing rate, expected to grow from an early $567 million (2021–22) to nearly $1 billion (2025–26).
(Figure in original.)
Brands are willing to invest heavily because college athletes have shown unmatched marketing efficiency. Their social-media engagement rate is nearly 4 times that of traditional influencers, meaning their bond with fans is more genuine and more compelling.
Moreover, when a brand runs a campaign involving multiple athletes together, its engagement rate is 45% higher than a traditional single-person ad, reflecting the compounding effect of team influence. This high-engagement, high-return quality has led leading brands in tech, apparel, and retail to treat NIL as a core marketing strategy. And brands see college athletes' fan bases as one of the best ways to embrace Gen Z and raise brand influence.
(Figure in original.)
The U.S. NIL market keeps growing, expected to rise 22% over the next year to $2.75 billion in total spending, of which college athletes are projected to receive $1.95 billion. That's nearly $2 billion flowing into athletes' pockets. By 2029, NIL's projected total spending will reach $3.15 billion, far above the first year's total of $918 million.
The arrival of the "pay era" has, on one hand, profoundly changed athletes' income sources, and more so reshaped the whole ecosystem of college sports. The line between college and professional sports is blurring more and more.
NIL broke a century of "amateurism," making college sports a whole new commercial track.
Athletes, brands, donors, and schools now form a new commercial ecosystem.
06 The outlook and opportunities in sports entrepreneurship
If the NFL, NBA, and NCAA represent the "peak state" of American sports commercialization, then the sports industry remains a vast ecosystem where opportunities keep emerging. It's both a vessel for culture and socializing and an industry with extremely high data density and extremely strong user stickiness.
In my view, driven by AI, multimodal distribution, betting legalization, and the full lifting of NIL restrictions, the American sports market is in a new growth cycle; meanwhile, China's sports industry is on the eve of a structural explosion, and founders can achieve outsized returns on a different curve.
I. The American market: fissures in a mature ecosystem, and a new cycle
America is the world's model market for sports commercialization. In 2023, the U.S. sports industry approached $500 billion in total scale, but in a seemingly saturated value chain, multiple new tracks still appear. The reason is simple: viewing habits are changing, the technology paradigm is changing, the monetization model is changing.
From my own observation, American sports startup opportunities cluster around four directions:
1. An AI-driven revolution in sports data and content
American sport is a high-frequency, data-dense industry: each NFL game generates over 3 million event-data points, and NBA players' average per-possession movement speed, shot angle, and make probability have all been captured down to the frame.
In the past, most of this data was monopolized by institutions like ESPN, Sportradar, and Genius Sports. Today, AI opens new startup space in three ways:
(1) Real-time data production and interpretation: using computer vision and multimodal large models to generate player movement heat zones, offensive efficiency, and tactical predictions in real time.
Case: Second Spectrum, the official AI tactical-analysis partner of the NBA and the Premier League, acquired by Genius Sports for $200 million in 2021.
(2) AI auto-generated video content: platform-based "Highlights-as-a-Service" is a new trend.
Case: WSC Sports, partnering with the NBA, NHL, and ESPN to auto-produce short-video highlights, valued at nearly $800 million.
(3) Personalized recommendation and interaction: multimodal AI combined with audience profiling precisely distributes a broadcast's highlights, odds, and player stories according to user interests.
Case: Amazon Prime Thursday Night Football, using AI to enable "watch and bet," raised Prime Video's sports-membership monthly active rate by 27%.
Some potential opportunities: build an "AI sports-data cloud" providing real-time APIs to betting companies, teams, and media; or, for platforms like TikTok and Reels, do AI-driven sports short-video content production.
2. The NIL model unlocks a new commercial continent in college sports
NIL's arrival directly spawned a multi-billion-dollar new market. College athletes, once passive suppliers of talent to the leagues, now hold the initiative in their own commercialization.
The market was $567 million in 2021, has topped $1 billion by 2025, and is projected to reach $3.15 billion by 2029. The core changes here are three:
a. High-schoolers choosing a college = choosing a "commercial opportunity," weighing not only athletic level but the NIL contract ceiling.
b. "NIL Collectives" appear — alumni, donors, and sponsors directly form capital pools, escalating the war for talent.
c. The college-sports transfer market fully professionalizes, like NBA free agency.
The opportunities correspond:
a. NIL matching platforms: matching buyers (brands) with sellers (athletes).
b. Athlete commercial-content management: AI-driven fan profiling, contract management, and customized marketing strategies.
c. Brand ROI tools: helping companies do fine-grained ad placement based on fan engagement rates.
3. Betting legalization and the interactive-viewing revolution
In 2018 the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the ban on sports betting; 46 states have opened up so far. When Dončić was "inexplicably" traded to the Lakers last year, insiders said Texas was clearing salary obstacles for betting legalization.
Sports betting not only creates a new hundred-billion-dollar market but thoroughly changes viewing behavior. Betting drives longer watch time and higher engagement. Users are willing to pay for real-time data, odds analysis, and prediction models. And demand for AI algorithms in prediction and odds-setting is surging.
Representative cases:
- DraftKings, FanDuel: both with market caps over $10 billion.
- ESPN Bet: a new platform launched by Disney in partnership with Penn Entertainment, surpassing 1 million users in three months.
(Figure in original.)
Startup opportunities as I see them:
- Provide AI odds prediction and data APIs to betting platforms.
- Build integrated "Streaming + Betting" viewing tools.
- AI-based virtual sports betting, simulating games plus virtual odds.
4. Verticalized athlete financial and management services
As sports IP globalizes, top athletes' commercial value has surpassed the events themselves. Athletes' financial and compliance needs spawn new startup opportunities:
Pain points: tax and prize-settlement problems from competing across borders; the massive volume of sponsorship contracts, endorsements, and NFT income needing systematic management; mid- and lower-tier athletes lacking financial advisers and compliance support.
Some potential opportunities: an athlete financial back-office — cross-border prize collection, tax optimization, asset allocation; cross-border sponsorship matching — connecting Asian sponsors with North American athletes; and an athlete IP-asset platform — bundling players' content, NFTs, and community fans into long-term tradable assets.
II. The Chinese market: opportunities from structural dividends and blank spaces
If America's sports industry is a "stock-competition" ecosystem, China's opportunity lies in the "incremental market." In 2023, China's sports industry had a total scale of ¥3.4 trillion, but event IP, professionalized operations, and athlete agency are still blue oceans.
1. Professional sports IP and league-style operations
The core contradiction of China's sports industry is: a vast user base, but scarce IP. The absence of a super-IP like the NFL or NBA means startup opportunities exist at both ends:
- Event-IP incubation: building leagues for regional, campus-based, and high-potential sports. Then combine AI for broadcasting and data visualization to lower content-production costs.
- Integrated youth-training-plus-events: America's NCAA is a super business model, while China's youth-competition system is still a blank. Founders can use an "events + data + content" model to help homegrown sports cultivate sustainable audiences.
2. Sports tech and data intelligence
- Wearables + AI training feedback: using computer vision and IoT to give data-driven guidance for mass fitness and professional training.
- Rehabilitation and health management: China's sports-rehab market is projected to top ¥90 billion by 2027, and AI-driven remote rehab and personalized training are just getting going.
3. Cross-border sports agency and sponsorship matching
This is a huge China-U.S. intersection opportunity. More and more Chinese brands want to sponsor overseas athletes, while mid- and lower-tier pro athletes (especially in individual sports like tennis and golf) urgently need East Asian market resources.
Some potential opportunities: NIL matching between Chinese brands and North American college athletes; cross-border tax compliance and prize collection; building an athlete-data platform aimed at the Asian market.
To sum up: three logics of sports entrepreneurship.
a. AI is the driver: from content production and data analysis to precise distribution, AI is empowering every link of sport.
b. Athlete IP is the new asset: the "personal branding" brought by NIL, sponsorship matching, and social platforms is the future core of commercialization.
c. Cross-border is the long-term opportunity: Asian athletes going global and American brands moving east form two-way demand, and the value chain of sports entrepreneurship will grow ever more global.
Over the next 10 years, the sports industry will feel more like a hybrid model of "AI + sports + finance."
Top IP valuations will keep climbing, but the incremental opportunities will concentrate in long-tail users, college athletes, cross-border agency, and AI-driven sports-content distribution.
07 A closing word
There's a line I've always kept in mind: what is interest? Ability is interest. When you have the upper hand in competition, you naturally take interest; when you keep falling behind, you naturally lose interest.
If AI is "remaking everything," then sport is one of the few industries it can't directly replace.
The talent of the athlete, the contingency of competition, the unpredictability of the live event — these determine that the core asset of the sports industry remains human experience and emotion.
(Figure in original.)
But this doesn't mean sports entrepreneurship is easy.
Quite the opposite — sport is a "high-barrier, long-cycle" business:
- The underlying logic of the league-and-athlete ecosystem.
- Long-term accumulation of content, data, relationships, and resources.
- Choosing a sufficiently narrow entry point, from data to content, from athlete services to cross-border agency, and on to AI-driven betting or fan operations.
Every business can be remade once by AI, and sport is no exception.
Sport isn't won by one round of traffic arbitrage — it's a competition about the long term, patience, resources, and ecological niche.
The trend will come, but only by deeply cultivating it over a long enough time can you catch it.
Whatever stage of life you're at, I hope you can find the thing and the leverage that lets your life stand and stand firm — not money, not power, but a desire that springs from the depths of your heart.
References
- Nearly $3 billion a year: American college athletes are flooded with endorsement deals
- The NFL: a media-entertainment business where "it's hard to lose money even if you try"
- Sports events taking equity stakes in core media — good thing or bad?