Sports & Entertainment Beat

Welcome back to the Spotlight! Much as I would love to take your attention away from the “T” word (no…not “torpedo bats”), I feel obliged to open this week with a discussion on the impact of the across-the-board US tariffs on the sports and entertainment industries. At first blush, you might assume that there would be a minimal impact on sporting events, films and television or live musical performances – none of which being commodities in the traditional sense. But step back and consider, for example,  fan merchandise. Regardless of whether your official tour t-shirt or your favorite team’s jersey is made in the US, the price is almost certainly going to be higher – either because the tariffs drive up the costs of imported goods, or because they provide an economic incentive for domestic manufacturers to increase their prices up to the amount of what the imported goods would be. The same is true of production equipment – much of which is already made elsewhere, if not assembled in the US from foreign components. Concessions prices? Yep.  Imported beer and domestic beer (both of which seem especially enticing after looking at your savings) is likely to experience the same price increases. Yes, dear reader. Like a depressing game of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” – everything is interconnected.

• • Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions leads a $45 million funding round in creator-driven golf, media and lifestyle brand, Good Good Golf. Manning—who has rode a legendary professional on-field career to success in the years after he hung up his cleats—will not only be able to leverage Omaha Productions to produce new content for the brand, but he may also be able to see what ordinary people do when they retire.
     
  • Rapper Cardi B and Revolve Group announce a beauty and fashion joint venture, seeking to provide “Finesse” to “Girls Like You.”
     
  • Carolina Panthers Wide Receiver Xavier Legette lands an endorsement deal with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.  With Legette revealing last year that he eats racoon for Thanksgiving, I am encouraging my children to triple-check the label when Halloween comes around.

For inquiries and/or unabashed compliments, please feel free to contact me at josh.bloomgarden@foster.com or add me on LinkedIn. 

Welcome back to the Spotlight, to the Spring and to Major League Baseball. As the season starts anew, I can’t help but think about this time last year when I was celebrating a New York Yankees Opening Day victory thanks in part to a game-ending out at home plate off a perfect throw from the Yankees’ then-right-fielder Juan Soto. Fast forward to today, and I am celebrating a Yankees Opening Day victory after an eventful offseason following a crushing loss in the World Series, in which Juan Soto left the Yankees to sign an obscene 12 year, $765 million contract with the crosstown rival New York Mets. If I were a petty and obnoxious Yankees fan, I might point out that Juan Soto had another game-ending play on Opening Day for his new team: he had a super expensive strikeout. And, well…I’m pointing that out. Perhaps the Soto acquisition will be an investment to help Mets owner Steve Cohen in his bid to develop Metropolitan Park—a casino and entertainment complex—near the Mets home stadium in Flushing, Queens. I’m all for that—just as long as it doesn’t come with on-field success. After all, in the Bronx, my Yankees play for ‘ships, not for chips. 

• • This week brings a dose of Millennial nostalgia as Napster is back in the news, having been acquired by Infinite Reality, a 3D technology company that plans to use Napster’s capabilities to create, music-filled virtual spaces in the metaverse. The purchase price of the deal is reportedly $207 million – roughly equal to the amount of damage you did to your family’s computers using the initial iteration of Napster.
     
  • Nintendo strikes a deal with the Seattle Mariners to be its uniform patch sponsor for the 2025 season. In a related story, the Mariners have hired some super bros. to handle plumbing issues at T-Mobile Park.
     
  • Pop star Dua Lipa notches a copyright lawsuit victory surrounding her smash hit “Levitating,” with the court citing a case related to fellow pop recording artist Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” to conclude that “a chord progression and harmonic rhythm, in combination, could not constitute protectable expression under copyright law.” Now that’s something to sing about

For inquiries and/or unabashed compliments, please feel free to contact me at josh.bloomgarden@foster.com or add me on LinkedIn. 

Welcome back to the Spotlight! Just as Spring arrived yesterday, so too did the NCAA’s crown jewels: the NCAA Basketball Championships. The former has the potential to usher in hay fever while the latter has the potential to bring fans (whether alumni, or bracket pool participants) to a fever pitch. Undoubtedly, much of the allure about March Madness comes from overlooked and largely unknown schools and individuals who find themselves thrust into the national spotlight—and lucrative marketing opportunities. Usually, the individuals from these schools are the players who help teams play David to the Goliaths, but in the NIL era, it could apparently be a team manager. Case in point, the team manager for the McNeese State University Cowboys, Amir “Aura” Khan has seen his star rise in recent days, having signed first-ever student manager NIL deals with national brands Buffalo Wild Wings, TickPick and Insomnia Cookies. With the Cowboys’ improbable victory over the Clemson University Tigers on Thursday—during which fans saw him energetically lead his team out of the tunnel (not to mention seeing his face printed all over a cheerleader’s socks), his aura will continue to build as he looks to capitalize on his proverbial fifteen minutes.

• • The Beatles’ Paul McCartney trades songwriting for letter-writing, warning the Trump Administration against copyright reform that would allow artificial intelligence programs led by OpenAI and Google to train on copyrighted works, potentially stifling human creative innovation.  After all, the copyrighted works you take are equal to the copyrighted works that you make.
     
  • Primary Wave cuts a B.I.G. $200 million check to acquire the rights to the song catalog of Christopher Wallace (better known as “The Notorious B.I.G.,” “Biggie Smalls” or simply “Biggie”) from the late rapper’s estate.
     
  • Finally, blending endorsements, music and sports into one, Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder licensed his name to the MLB for a Seattle Mariners and San Diego Padres rivalry baseball series (the Vedder Cup). Given Vedder’s history of having recorded the trilogy of famed songs “Once,” “Alive” and “Footsteps” from a demo tape while in San Diego, and subsequently moving to Seattle, you could say that you can’t find a better man after whom to name the series.  

For inquiries and/or unabashed compliments, please feel free to contact me at josh.bloomgarden@foster.com or add me on LinkedIn. 

Welcome back to the Spotlight! You need not be Irish to enjoy the luck of having wound up here, just a few days before St. Patrick’s Day. You may however need to be Irish to enjoy corned beef and cabbage. But whether it was a shiny penny, a rabbit’s foot, a four-leaf clover or maybe even a slip of the finger to click “read” instead of “delete,” allow me to be the first to congratulate you on finding this sports and entertainment pot o’ gold. That type of luck would have been great for the Yankees to stave off injuries during Spring Training, but I digress.  Fittingly, the NCAA’s own pot o’ gold—the Men’s and Women’s College Basketball Tournaments, or March Madness—is upon us (you’d be forgiven for feeling as if every month carries its fair share of madness nowadays), giving some of the sport’s premiere athletes a shot to make history, become household names (if they have not already signed seven figure endorsement deals) and remind you that the money you put into your bracket would have been better spent elsewhere. Meanwhile I can’t think of anywhere else your time would be better spent, so let’s make the most of it…

• • Beverage brand Liquid Death becomes the official Iced Tea partner of the Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles in the brand’s never-ending quest to “murder thirst.” Though, it’s worth noting for Eagles home games that thirst need only wear the opposing team’s jersey to meet its maker.
     
  • Mission-based private equity fund Monarch Collective grows to $250 million to spread its wings further to invest in women’s sports – a pretty hot trend, if you did not yet get that memo (perhaps you were living under a rock or bundled in a chrysalis).
     
  • Sony Music reports it has taken down an astounding 75,000 tracks that use generative artificial intelligence to im”person”ate its artists. As a friendly suggestion to Sony Music: if/when the AI uprising occurs, I would lay low.

For inquiries and/or unabashed compliments, please feel free to contact me at josh.bloomgarden@foster.com or add me on LinkedIn. 
 

Welcome back to the Spotlight! Hard enough as it is to believe, with this week’s entry, the Spotlight is celebrating its fourth birthday. (sniffle, sniffle…our business development content grows up so fast). No magicians at this party but, as luck would have it, there’s always a clown.  What started out with a small audience as a way of getting my name and passion for the sports and entertainment industry out there in a post-COVID world still somewhat hesitant to jump back into in-person networking, has grown with the help of a slightly-less-small audience into a conversation starter for in-person networking. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that I owe a debt of gratitude to those of you who have been on this ride from the beginning and offered words of support an encouragement along the way.  I probably also owe that much more in apologies for the cringe dad jokes I’ve made you suffer through and all those yet to come. That’s right—I’m just getting started.

• • OK, so maybe there is magic for the 4 year celebration after all: Vegas casino RIO debuts a branded table game Penn & Teller’s Casino Monte bearing the name, image and likeness of the magician duo. For their first trick, they’ll make your life savings disappear!
     
  • Stephen Curry and Marshawn Lynch – themselves Bay Area sports legends—are collaborating to produce a documentary on the life and legacy of Bay Area hip-hop artist Mac Dre. The biggest hang-up to the collaboration may be whether to go for 3 points or 6.
     
  • A new private equity-backed music rights acquisition joint venture named Raven Music Partners comes knocking at the chamber door with an initial $250 million investment. My two-cent investment is that it would be wise to stay away from the slogan, “Never More.”
     
  • Several strip clubs are the subject of claims that they had misappropriated the name, image and likeness of ten celebrities including Carmen Electra – when reached for comment, the strip club owners said, “Miss Appropriate? There’s no one here by that name.”

Welcome to the Spotlight!  Whether you’re a returning visitor or the planets have aligned in the sky to bring you here for the very first time, it’s clear that the Universe is telling you you’re doing something right and maybe it’s time to subscribe and/or tell your friends, family, clients and colleagues to do the same.  Indeed, those looking skyward towards the stars tonight will be able to see each of the other seven planets (many of which by the naked eye) in our Solar System—an event not supposed to happen again until Saturday Night Live approaches eligibility for Social Security (I wonder how well this statement will age…).  Of course, a few weeks ago, was opportunity to see the stellar, star-studded 50^th Anniversary Concert and Special r for Saturday Night Live, which garnered record ratings of 15 million viewers – a testament to the show’s music and comedy that has permeated pop culture since its debut.  Not to be outdone, this weekend you’ll also have a chance to catch a glimpse of your favorite stars in tuxedos, evening gowns and anything in between at the 97^th Academy Awards (your eye might not be the only thing naked if the Grammys fashion were any indication).  For now, let’s get into this week’s Spotlight:

• • As Amazon MGM Studios acquired full creative control over the James Bond franchise for a cool $1 billion, Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos solicited public feedback over who should be cast as the next 007.  That should be a much more difficult task than finding a Bond villain particularly one of the bald, megayacht-owning, billionaire archetype.
     
  • Speaking of yachts, rapper Lil Yachty wades into the alcohol business with a spiked sparkling beverage brand called “Yacht Water”—a name I have a hard time not saying in an obnoxious Long Island (“Longuyland”) accent.  
     
  • Not content to have his own line of suits, NFL Hall of Famer Michael Strahan (LET’S GO G-MEN) seeks horizontal integration opening his own tailoring business. A notable choice for someone used to putting people in sacks.
     
  • A proposal by newly sworn-in Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. would put television advertisements for pharmaceutical companies – a cash cow for professional sports – on the chopping block. Potential side effects could include fewer celebrity endorsements, increased beer advertisements, dry mouth, fatigue and decreased hypochondriasis.

For inquiries and/or unabashed compliments, please feel free to contact me at josh.bloomgarden@foster.com or add me on LinkedIn. 

Welcome back to the Spotlight!

For inquiries and/or unabashed compliments, please feel free to contact me at josh.bloomgarden@foster.com or add me on LinkedIn. 

Welcome back to the Spotlight! Love is in the air around here for Valentine’s Day, which is more than can be said for last weekend’s Super Bowl. For one thing, the Philadelphia Eagles, a team for whom I hold no love, handily defeated the two-time defending champion Kansas City Chiefs. In so doing, the Eagles may have at least temporarily blunted Cupid’s arrowhead and forestalled a marriage proposal from Travis Kelce to Taylor Swift. Meanwhile, in Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show notable on its own for its storytelling and use of hidden and overt symbolism, the artist proved in front of 133.5 million viewers—the most ever for a Super Bowl halftime show—that there is no love lost between him and “Not Like Us” subject Drake. Lastly, and by far most disgraceful was the airing of a bizarre commercial featuring a washed-up rapper/producer (who spent the week leading up to the commercial spewing antisemitism and championing Nazism) filming himself in a dentist’s chair, inviting viewers to his brand’s e-commerce shop that was offering one item: a white T-shirt emblazoned with a black swastika across the chest. How such a hateful commercial was able to air is beyond disturbing, and made an anti-hate commercial featuring Snoop Dogg and Tom Brady that aired during the first half of the game a distant memory. Serious questions need to be answered—and there ought to be a clear rejection by the entertainment industry of this person’s ideas, but for now I suppose I can take a modicum of comfort in the fact there are still some people with moral clarity—the aforementioned rapper/producer had his e-commerce shop shut down and received a divorce petition from his would-be Valentine. Without further ado, allow me to change the crocodile tears to tears of laughter (or at least that’s the goal).

• • National Women’s Soccer League’s Gotham FC strikes a sponsorship deal with Unilever’s Dove brand to appear on the back of players’ jerseys. A much more attractive partnership than a similar deal with “Kick Me.”
     
  • Donald Trump, Jr. is investing in a startup seeking to launch an Olympics-style competition in which the competitors can use performance-enhancing drugs. Or as Russia calls it, “The Olympics.”
     
  • A production studio called Promise is offering content development deals for AI “talent.” Long term, such a move is likely to raise its own set of questions as it could have broad implications for intellectual property law, as well as for human entertainers. In the short term, one question I have is how the “talent” celebrates the news.

For inquiries and/or unabashed compliments, please feel free to contact me at josh.bloomgarden@foster.com or add me on LinkedIn. 

Welcome back to the Spotlight! If you missed the GRAMMY Awards last week—as nearly 10% fewer did TV-ratings-wise, as compared to the last year’s show—allow me to start off with a little primer.  Females largely owned the night, with Beyoncé winning both Best Country Album and Album of the Year, Chappell Roan winning Best New Artist, Doechii winning Best Rap Album and Sabrina Carpenter winning Best Pop Vocal Album.  That’s to say nothing of Bianca Censori’s very un-censor-y award for least dressed. Meanwhile, Taylor Swift, nominated for six awards, walked away without any trophies, though she may cross paths with the Lombardi Trophy and at least one ring this Sunday at Super Bowl LIX. Speaking of which, bucking the female trend, Super Bowl halftime performer Kendrick Lamar kicked off a memorable week for himself, bringing home five GRAMMYs, including for Record of the Year and Song of the Year for his diss track of fellow rapper Drake, “Not Like Us.” As sure as I favor drums and blue cheese over flats and ranch, that song is likely to be performed in the halftime spotlighta.

• Curiously, the price of Super Bowl tickets has actually been trending downward this year. Clearly, no eggs are being served in the stadium.
   
• NBA Executive and Hall of Famer Pat Riley is poised to make some money off of a Kansas City Chiefs victory on Sunday, having agreed to license the use of his trademark ‘THREEPEAT’ for use on merchandise celebrating a prospective third straight Super Bowl title. There go my plans to license “Number Threesy in the Big Easy.”
   
• The Los Angeles Rams are scheduled to play the NFL’s first game in Melbourne, Australia – which is great news for bringing in an even larger global audience and for those curious to see a football spiral the opposite way.

For inquiries and/or unabashed compliments, please feel free to contact me at josh.bloomgarden@foster.com or add me on LinkedIn. 

Welcome back to the Spotlight! The stage for Super Bowl LIX is set, with the Philadelphia Eagles due to square off against the 2-time defending champion Kansas City Chiefs.  More history repeating itself (a la Groundhog Day) as this will be a high stakes rematch of Super Bowl from two years ago between two cities known for steaks.  As a fan of the New York Giants (a division rival from whom the Eagles’ star running back Saquon Barkley left after last season) and parity (but also parody), as far as the game is concerned, I will again be much more invested in Puppy Bowl licks. By contrast, Taylor Swift cares more about the outcome of the Super Bowl (and not just because she’s a cat person).  One thing’s for sure, no one will be quite as invested as advertisers shelling out $8 million per thirty seconds of Super Bowl commercial airtime, bidding to go down in pop culture history while the Chiefs pursue history of their own as the first team to win three straight Super Bowls. That said, we have a little over week to prepare for the game, but don’t despair-trust your training in patiently waiting a week for the next Spotlight.

• • Originally slated to take place this year, the International Olympics Committee is having difficulties starting-up its inaugural Esports Olympic Games. And before you ask…yes it tried unplugging the router, waiting 5 seconds and plugging it back in.
     
  • WNBA All-Star Angel Reese makes more women’s sports history, becoming the first female professional athlete to have a signature menu item at McDonald’s—a meal comprised of a BBQ Bacon Quarter Pounder with Cheese, fries, and a soft drink.  Between this deal and her endorsement deal with Hershey’s brand Reese’s, her endorsement portfolio is an agent’s dream and cardiologist’s nightmare.
     
  • The highly coveted University of Texas Longhorns Quarterback Arch Manning signs an NIL endorsement deal with Red Bull, and I would love nothing more than to see him use his wings to follow his uncle Eli’s lead and fly to the Giants.

For inquiries and/or unabashed compliments, please feel free to contact me at josh.bloomgarden@foster.com or add me on LinkedIn.