Before the Chiefs and Ravens kick off another season of Heisman House commercials, the NFL is finishing up some business. The league is expected to vote today to allow private equity ownership of franchises, marking a significant change to its ultra-exclusive ownership club and paving the way for nicer stadiums with comfy seats.

The vote, all but guaranteed to pass, is a historic softening by the NFL, which will be the last of the major sports leagues in North America to permit private equity ownership. The NBA, MLB, and NHL currently allow PE to own up to 30% of a team, while the NFL’s expected cap is 10%.

Why this is happening: NFL teams have gotten too expensive. It’s nearly impossible to buy a team if you’re not a multi-billionaire, and even then, you probably need some reinforcements to meet liquidity requirements. (See: Josh Harris and 15 of his friends buying the Washington Commanders for $6 billion.) This is a problem for the NFL because:

1. It severely limits the number of possible owners.
2. It ties up existing owners’ money in the team itself, leaving them without much to spend on improvements, like new stadiums.

Enter private equity. Like a fairy godmother dressed in Brioni, private equity will free up owners’ cash, allowing them to get some of their quarter back. It will also make deals easier by streamlining a source of capital to seven approved PE firms, including big names like Ares and Blackstone, as well as smaller, sports-centric ones like Arctos Partners and Dynasty Equity.

What’s in it for them? Bookoos of money and a big payday when a team gets resold. Over the last two decades, the NFL’s total value has gone from $23.46 billion to $190 billion, according to Sportico.

Looking ahead…there are still some unknowns, like whether the league will allow unapproved firms to get in on the play. As for who will make the first deal, favorite guesses include Buffalo Bills owner Terry Pegula, who wants to build a new stadium.—CC

Monogram (Nasdaq: MGRM), known for their autonomous robotic surgical systems, completed a crowdfunded public offering and Nasdaq listing last year. What’s next?

They just filed for FDA approval to market and commercialize their patented AI joint replacement tech. By the year 2027, 50% of knee replacement surgeries will be robotic—up from 12% today.

Now, Monogram’s offering a new chance for investors: the opportunity to invest in preferred stock with an 8% dividend (in cash or kind). Their common stock closed as high as $3.40 in the past week, but the unlisted preferred stock (which is convertible into one share of common) is available for $2.25/share.

Monogram currently plans to close the Series D Preferred offering on September 12, 2024.

The Trump–Harris debate isn’t quite set yet. The presidential candidates’ campaigns are arguing over the debate Donald Trump was originally scheduled to have against Joe Biden on Sept. 10 on ABC, with Trump signaling he may pull out of the event (he previously agreed to attend with VP Kamala Harris at the other lectern). Trump cast doubt on whether he might show up by criticizing the host network as biased against him, and now the campaigns are locking horns about whether microphones should be left on or muted when the other candidate is speaking. Harris’s camp wants them on, something Trump has claimed he’s open to but his campaign won’t sign off on.

Israel and Hezbollah escalated, then pulled back. There’s still plenty of tension and concerns about regional warfare in the Middle East but for now, Israel and Hezbollah seem to have stepped back from the brink after exchanging attacks over the weekend. On Sunday, Israel sent 100 warplanes to take out thousands of Hezbollah rocket launchers in Lebanon that were pointed at Israel for an attack the militia said was a retaliation for Israel killing one of its top commanders last month. Though both sides have said the conflict is ongoing, things remained quiet after the incident. Meanwhile, negotiators continue to try to help Israel and Hamas reach a deal for a cease-fire in Gaza, and Iran has vowed to retaliate for Israel’s killing of a Hamas leader in Tehran.

France’s president says Telegram founder’s arrest was not political. French President Emmanuel Macron defended the arrest of Telegram’s Russian-born CEO, Pavel Durov, at a French airport, saying France is committed to free speech and it was “in no way a political decision.” Prosecutors say the arrest was part of a wide-ranging investigation, opened in July, that touched on the messaging app’s role in crimes including child pornography, drug trafficking, and fraud. Under French law, they can detain Durov, who has not been named as the investigation’s target, for questioning until tomorrow. Telegram said Durov has nothing to hide.

Humans will soon take their first steps in space without any prompting from the government.

The SpaceX-operated Polaris Dawn mission will carry a four-person crew of civilian astronauts on a daring cosmic adventure: the first spacewalk undertaken by people not employed by a national space agency. It’s expected to launch later this week at the earliest after a helium leak stymied plans to blast off this morning.

Billionaire entrepreneur and enthusiast pilot Jared Isaacman will lead the five-day space voyage aboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, which will serve as a landmark test flight for private scientific space exploration.

Cosmic itinerary

Isaacman will be accompanied by his longtime friend and colleague, Air Force pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet, as well as SpaceX engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis.

• The quartet will first soar past an extreme radiation zone as far as 870 miles above Earth, an altitude not visited by humans since NASA’s last lunar expedition in 1972.
• They will then descend to 435 miles above Earth, where Isaacman and Gillis will step out of the spacecraft while rocking SpaceX’s sleek new spacesuits for a quick but risky spacewalk that will require the entire vehicle to depressurize.

The astronauts will collect data on the health effects of space and test Starlink laser-based communications.

It’s just the dawn: Two additional Polaris missions are planned: a controversial project to move NASA’s Hubble Telescope and a first-ever crewed flight of SpaceX’s jumbo Starship spacecraft, designed for lunar and martian travel.—SK

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China is making a big splash in the world of joysticks with its first major video game, Black Myth: Wukong. It’s a visuals-forward adventure rooted in Chinese mythology that has shattered records since launching last week but has also been controversial.

The game was so hotly anticipated that some China-based employers gave workers time off to play, according to the Straits Times.

• In Black Myth’s first 24 hours, it became the most-played single-player game on Steam and the second-most-played game on the platform overall.
• Its developer, Game Science, sold 10 million copies in 83 hours, making it one of the fastest-selling games ever.
• Black Myth turned profitable on Day 1 and made $450 million in its first three days.

Players find the graphics so appealing that there’s been a real-life tourist rush to the temples and shrines shown in the game.

Why are people mad? IGN reported on sexism and toxic culture at Game Science in November. Then, before launch, the game’s marketing team instructed livestreamers to avoid mentioning “feminist propaganda, fetishization,” “COVID-19,” and “China’s industry policies, opinion, news, etc.” in their gameplay reviews…which predictably backfired. One 8-hour Twitch stream of Black Myth, titled “Covid-19 Isolation Taiwan (Is A Real Country) Feminism Propaganda,” garnered more than 300,000 views.—ML

The days of trying to subtly inch down the conference room table away from your coworker with the hacking cough may finally be behind us as more Americans are taking sick days—Gen Z especially. Human resources platform Dayforce found that sick leave jumped 55% from 2019 to 2023, while data from Gusto, which serves 300,000+ smaller businesses, showed 30% of white-collar workers taking sick days last year, a 42% hike from 2019, Business Insider reports, when 21.1% took sick leave. Both platforms also found younger workers were leading the not-toughing-it-out charge: Dayforce said sick leave rose more from 2019 for workers under 35, and Gusto found that the 24–35 set was taking more sick time than older colleagues. Experts attribute this post-pandemic rise in calling out to several factors, including Gen Z’s willingness (and need) to take mental health days.