Sports & Entertainment Beat

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.”