Controlling The Memorabilia Market | NBA Finals By The Numbers | An English Soccer Bailout?

Plus: Israel's unlikely bid for Olympic medals in bobsled and skeleton

Sports Owners

More than 230 billionaires are spending money to help keep President Trump in the Oval Office—or kick him out. How much are sports owners like Arthur Blank, Arte Moreno and Dan Snyder contributing to the presidential candidates? See our one-of-a-kind interactive tracker here.

Pro Basketball

LeBron James is back in the NBA Finals for the ninth time in ten years, and his first trip with the Lakers. They’re the overwhelming favorites against the Heat, who faced odds of 75-1—the lowest of any Finals team in the past 30 years—to win the title at the season start. Here are the numbers you need to know about the matchup. 

The Sun just missed the WNBA Finals, but the team’s impressive run is a chance to reconsider the league’s playoff structure. The predominant issue: the single-elimination game in the second round. One coach believes there is enough momentum that a change could be implemented as soon as next year.

Trail Blazers star CJ McCollum is swapping his team uniform for his press hat, tackling today’s most challenging social issues with a new talk show on PlayersTV. 

Baseball

If Steve Cohen’s $2.4 billion bid for the Mets is approved, expect Sandy Alderson to return, this time as team president.

In another comeback: With the expanded playoffs, MLB saw games aired on ABC nationally for the first time since 1995.

Tennis

The French Open is putting artificial intelligence at the heart of this year’s tournament with the hope that the tech—for both fans and players—will help compensate for the lack of spectators.

Soccer

With fans unlikely to return to stadiums in the U.K. until at least March, there is concern that lower league clubs, which depend on ticketing income more heavily than their richer rivals, could go bust; English Football League chairman Rick Parry says more than $300 million is needed to make up for the lost earnings. Should the Premier League be on the hook to bail them out?

FC Pinzgau Saalfelden is owned entirely by fans. "While we are an Austrian club, we are specifically targeting an English-speaking fan base, primarily from the U.S.A.," Pinzgau's managing director tells us.

Winter Sports

The Israeli Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation came up with just enough money to make an unexpected Olympic appearance in 2018. Now, with financial backing from an Arizona-based businessman, the team is setting its sights even higher.

The ski industry suffered a brutal hit in March, the second-highest revenue-generating month of the season, when most of the 460 U.S. ski areas in 37 states had to close early because of the pandemic. Now, a clearer picture is beginning to emerge of what ski resort recreation will look like this season.

Featured Story

Fresh off a five-year, $63 million contract extension, Dalvin Cook is taking charge of his game off the field with an online memorabilia shopping mall. Managed by sports agency Loyalty Above All Sports & Entertainment, the move is a shift from the traditional marketplace, which is largely dictated by dozens of firms that pay athletes a fixed fee in return for a certain number of signed items and keep as much as 80% of the gross revenue for the work. “If you have the right players that understand they can control their own market, it is way more profitable to keep everything in-house,” LAA founder and Cook’s agent Zac Hiller says. For more on the changing collectibles market—and how it is becoming more lucrative during the pandemic—read the full story here. 

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Upon Further Review

Alessandro Del Piero, the legendary Juventus and Italy forward, tells us his life is no longer consumed by soccer. Since retiring from the sport in 2014, he has stayed busy with a restaurant and investments in a sunglasses brand and a virtual sports marketing platform. He appears to be enjoying the kind of true financial success that is relatively rare for pro athletes while unwittingly following a road map that MLS star Alejandro Bedoya laid out for aspiring athlete entrepreneurs earlier this year.

The Last Word

“Just because I have one leg doesn’t mean my life is over.”

Dani Burt

Dani Burt had her right leg amputated above the knee after a motorcycle accident when she was 19. She awoke from the medically induced coma feeling destroyed and was soon placed on suicide watch. Now 35, with a doctorate in physical therapy and a world championship in surfing—a sport she did not even take up seriously until after her accident—she understands that her life was only just beginning. For more on Burt, as well as the fight to get para surfing added to the Paralympic program, read the full story here.