Project "Save College Sports"

“As legal mandates, cultural shifts and market forces have redefined the landscape, the NCAA has become a hollow institution that resists reform, evades responsibility and cedes authority to state legislatures and market actors.”

September 15, 2025

Cody Campbell’s NCAA Replacement Plan Hatched in Texas Think Tank
When Cody Campbell, the billionaire oilman and Texas Tech mega-booster, unveiled his ambitious plan to ‘save college sports’ earlier this year, a core part of his proposal—a federally chartered replacement for the NCAA—seemed to spring from nowhere. But documents reviewed by Sportico suggest a surprising intellectual origin: the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative, free-market think tank with no real footprint in the world of college sports.

“‘Since 1906, the NCAA has labored to uphold fairness, amateurism, and integrity in collegiate sports,” [TPPF’s chief researcher Derek] Cohen wrote in the first piece. ‘Yet as legal mandates, cultural shifts and market forces have redefined the landscape, the NCAA has become a hollow institution that resists reform, evades responsibility and cedes authority to state legislatures and market actors.’”

“The proposal largely went unnoticed. TPPF, a $25 million nonprofit, is better known for championing limited government and deregulation in the Lone Star State, than national sports policy.”
_Sportico

Live Nation’s Billion-Dollar Investment Will Happen Largely Around Stadiums and Arenas
SBJ’s Bret McCormick writes, “The entertainment juggernaut is developing a music venue with SEG in downtown Salt Lake City near Delta Center, one of 18 projects that Live Nation unveiled earlier this summer as part of a billion-dollar investment drive. The city list also includes Raleigh, Pittsburgh, Orlando and Atlanta, locations in which the Live Nation venue will be built within sports venue-anchored, mixed-use developments. Sports adjacency isn’t required by Live Nation, but it constitutes a significant part of its project pipeline…”
_{Sports Business Journal}

Trump Push to End Quarterly Earnings Has Major Sports Ramifications
FOS’ Eric Fisher writes, “U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday he is aiming to shift reporting rules from required quarterly reports to twice yearly for publicly traded companies. The move is subject to approval from the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission. Trump, however, said it would bring the country in alignment with other parts of the world, particularly China and Europe, and allow for a greater corporate focus on longer-term initiatives.”
_{Portland Oregonian via Sports Business Journal}

There’s No Sports Team Valuation Bubble, Arctos Says
Sportico’s Kurt Badenhausen writes, “Arctos Partners launched in 2019 as a private equity fund to buy limited partnership stakes in sports teams. Team valuations have soared since then, fueling talks about a bubble for these assets, irrational exuberance by billionaires and PE driving the gains. To all of the above notions, Arctos says no.

“Sports teams actually slightly lagged the stock market from 2019 through the first quarter of 2025, per Baran. The S&P 500 compounded 14.4% annually, while the RASFI, the index Arctos and Michigan Ross created to track team values, was up 13.8% during the same period. Yet, with sports teams, the volatility and leverage were ‘meaningfully lower.’”
_Sportico

Playfly Expands Ad Tech Around In-Market Streaming
SBJ’s Austin Karp writes, “Playfly Sports today is broadening its efforts around helping partners better monetize in-market streaming, as the company will expand its Home Team Advantage (HTA) ad tech platform. HTA will become the first such platform to provide end-to-end digital advertising solutions for all U.S.-based local/regional games across NBA, NHL and MLB partners, which is particularly important as those teams have seen a 36% year-over-year increase in streaming of games.”
^{Sports Business Journal}

WNBA Scores Another Record Regular-Season Audience on ESPN, NBA TV, CBS
Even with Caitlin Clark missing much of the season, the WNBA managed record regular-season audiences across CBS, ABC/ESPN and NBA TV. Figures for ION are still TBD, but the network’s package of Friday night games was flat at the All-Star break. ABC/ESPN had a record WNBA audience for the second straight year, up 6% from 2024 for its game coverage (boosted in part by Nielsen’s new Big Data). The 25 games on ABC/ESPN this season averaged 1.3 million viewers, up from 1.19 million in 2024.
^{Sports Business Journal}

Serena and Venus Williams are Launching a Podcast Called ‘Stockton Street’ on X
The two sisters and tennis stars — Serena finished her career at the 2022 U.S. Open; Venus just competed at that tournament in singles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles — will launch their podcast on X with a debut episode Wednesday. The podcast is called “Stockton Street,” named for where their home was in Compton, California. It is set to air every other week on Wednesdays and will be distributed on the social media site formerly known as Twitter.
^{AP News}

From the Court to the Page: Stephen Curry’s ‘Shot Ready’ Reveals His Secrets
AP News’ Tim Reynolds writes, “Curry’s book ‘Shot Ready’ was released this week and the immediate reviews are overwhelmingly positive; Amazon quickly had it ranked among its top 10 current best-sellers and atop its sports book charts.

“Over more than 400 pages and with more than 100 photographs, many of them of the behind-the-scenes variety, the Golden State Warriors star guard — a four-time NBA champion, an Olympic gold medalist and the league’s career 3-point leader — said he’s simply trying to give fans a new look inside his mind and at his process.”
^{AP News}

Leagues Cup Organizers Tout Attendance, Viewership Upticks
SBJ’s Alex Silverman reports: “A massive crowd of 69,314 at Lumen Field for the Leagues Cup final on Aug. 31 lifted the average attendance for the competition featuring teams from both MLS and Liga MX to its highest mark yet. Heading into the final match, Leagues Cup attendance was trailing last year’s edition by 3.7%, but the strong turnout in an NFL-sized venue for the Sounders’ victory over Inter Miami lifted this year’s average to 17,417 per ticketed session, up 1.7% year over year.”
^{Sports Business Journal}

LIV Golf CMO Adam Harter Steps Down From League
SBJ’s Josh Carpenter reports: “LIV Golf CMO Adam Harter, who had been with the organization since May 2024, said on Monday that he had stepped down from the league. Harter said in a LinkedIn post that he was ‘excited to soon take on a new challenge,’ while also noting he had ‘excitement’ for LIV’s future. Harter was hired by former CEO Greg Norman, prior to the arrival of LIV’s new leader Scott O’Neil. Among other executive moves, LIV hired Chris Heck as its new president this summer.
^{Sports Business Journal}

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After Firing DeShaun Foster, UCLA Football Has a Reckoning Ahead
Yahoo Sports’ Nick Bromberg writes, “Will UCLA football be relevant anytime soon? It’s a question worth pondering as the Bruins embark on a coaching search after firing DeShaun Foster on Sunday. UCLA dropped to 0-3 after a blowout home loss to New Mexico on Friday night and were just 5-10 since Foster took over for Chip Kelly in 2024.

“It’s hard to see how UCLA will be able to splurge for Foster’s replacement either. The school’s athletic department has been posting staggering annual deficits in recent seasons.”
^{Yahoo! Sports}

UCLA-Tennessee QB Trade Has Been Painful So Far
FOS’ Amanda Christovich writes, “This past offseason, Nico Iamaleava abruptly left Tennessee after reports surfaced of complications regarding his NIL (name, image, and likeness) negotiations and landed at UCLA. Just a few games into the 2025–26 season, however, Iamaleava has found himself in a losing situation.”
^{Front Office Sports}

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