NFL's most valuable teams and highest-paid players | TikTok success | Mets sale

Plus: Spencer Dinwiddie delves deeper into blockchain

Baseball

Sources tell us the $2.42 billion figure in Steve Cohen's deal for the Mets is the team's actual enterprise value—within 1% of our valuation from April. One former MLB owner tells us Cohen's involvement is a "big win for the industry."

Pro Basketball

TikTok has an uncertain future in the U.S., but every sports league wants a piece of the platform and its coveted demographic. Most successful has been the NBA, whose following of 11.7 million on the app is twice as large as any other league or team's.

For Nets guard Spencer Dinwiddie, launching a digital token in March was only the beginning of an ambitious plan to use blockchain to create a platform for a new generation of influencers and creators. His new app, Calaxy, is expected to go live in late October.

Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve, determining that she could no longer contribute to a WNBA coaching pipeline that fast-tracked male candidates and held back women, pledged to exclusively hire former players to her staff. "It has gone better than I ever could have expected," she tells us.

Tennis

The pandemic forced the French Open to move from May to late September. Luckily, organizers have been able to add lights to 12 courts to allow for longer play on the shorter fall days.

College Sports

Congress is taking up the issue of allowing college athletes to earn income from their names, images and likenesses. One line of proposals calls for athletes to receive a share of the revenue generated by their athletic departments in addition to NIL income. That would be a game changer—with several undesirable consequences.

Auto Racing

Bubba Wallace is leaving Richard Petty Motorsports at the end of the season, and Andrew Murstein, who owns a stake in the team, tells us he wants Wallace's replacement to come from an underrepresented group in a sport dominated by white men. Noah Gragson, a brash young driver in the Xfinity Series, isn't on the move quite yet, but his masterful trolling of Twitter suggests he may already have the support for a jump to Nascar's Cup Series.

Cricket

The head of the Pakistan Cricket Board believes cricket's new chairperson should come from beyond the sport's "big three" nations as support deepens for reform to address financial inequity among teams. One country outside the sport's traditional powers is ready to make a leap: The U.S. wants to attract headline names while developing its cricket infrastructure.

Sports Business

Under Armour long ago ditched its "shrink it and pink it" marketing strategy for women. Now, its female focus is paying dividends.

Featured Story

Most NFL teams are playing in empty stadiums because of Covid-19 concerns. That might crush most businesses—but the NFL is unlike most businesses. The average franchise value tops $3 billion for the first time this year, according to our ranking of the league's most valuable teams, while two teams have joined the Cowboys and the Patriots in surpassing the $4 billion mark. Who are the two new members of the $4 billion club? See the full ranking here.

Hot Reads

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Upon Further Review

One MLB insider predicts a grim off-season because of the pandemic, saying, "It's going to be a bloodbath." Super-agent Scott Boras is not running up the white flag just yet. "It might get cloudy, but the sky ain't falling," he tells us. That would be great news for players. MLB's ten highest-paid are pulling in a collective $152 million this year, down from $315 million last year. See our ranking of MLB's highest-paid players here.

The Last Word

“We’re not on top of each other, but I just think it’s abnormal.”

Doc Rivers

In a normal postseason, an NBA coach in a back-to-the-wall playoff scenario never bumps into another coach and receives a word of encouragement, especially when that coach is also neck-deep in a playoff series. But the Disney bubble is weird and unique—especially for coaches. Doc Rivers, Mike Malone and Brad Stevens explained the unusual circumstances of life in the bubble.

Across Forbes

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