Just one week after announcing wide-ranging tariffs, the White House today reversed course, indicating nearly all foreign nations would face a universal 10% tariff for 90 days while negotiations continue. The tariff relief does not apply to China, which is now facing a 125% rate.
Equity markets rallied in response, logging the best single-day performance in nearly two decades. Sports stocks that collectively shed billions in value across the last week likewise surged on the news, with some sectors performing better than others.
Both betting- and sportswear-related stocks closed up by around 13%, on average — with Nike, Lululemon and Under Armour, among others, all posting double-digit gains — while venue and experiential firms saw their share prices rise by 11.6% on the day. Those all outperformed the broader market, with the S&P 500 up 9.5%.
Publicly traded media firms, leagues and teams showed minimal gains, but that’s largely because those stocks didn’t lose as much value over the preceding week, proving more resilient to the initial tariff news than the overall market.
The top-performing sports-related stock of the day was Sphere Entertainment, which closed up by 19.1%. Three of the six best performers were betting stocks: Penn Entertainment (up 18.4%), Caesars (17.3%) and MGM Resorts (16.1%). Perhaps unsurprisingly, six of the 10 best-performing sports stocks on the day were among the biggest losers following the initial tariff announcements.
Overall, sports stocks are up about 3% since April 3, the first full day of trading following tariff announcements, but remain down around 12% since Trump’s inauguration.
