SBJ Unpacks: Ohio State's collective effort

C igar smoke trickled through the Ohio State locker room, a smoky haze cascading over the scarlet and gray uniforms scattered about.

Kodak Black lyrics blared as the victorious Buckeyes puffed on stogies, FaceTimed family members and snapped photos future versions of themselves will reflect on with ear-to-ear grins.

This team was beaten in its regular-season finale by an unranked Michigan, leading to message board posters across the state demanding that head coach Ryan Day be fired. Its fan base was borderline outnumbered in its own stadium against Tennessee a month ago in the first round of the College Football Playoff.

And yet these Buckeyes are national champions after a 34-23 win over Notre Dame in the CFP national championship game in Atlanta on Jan. 20.

“They can’t take this away from us,” an Ohio State staffer mumbled between drags on his cigar. “They can’t take this away.”

But this scene, with all its glory and unfiltered joy, felt like a snapshot of a college football landscape that’s tilting toward a new reality over the coming months.

The Buckeyes reportedly spent around $20 million to compile this group of superstars, an effort spearheaded by their collectives, The 1870 Society and THE Foundation.

Those collectives are expected to continue in the immediate future no matter the outcome of the upcoming House settlement, which is scheduled for a final hearing before Judge Claudia Wilken in April. Yet in a world potentially governed by revenue-sharing caps and a clearinghouse vetting NIL deals for fair-market value, it’s unclear what role they and others nationwide might play.

Collectives helped build the first 12-team playoff national champion. Will they ever again?

“We had to adjust to what was new for us,” former Ohio State Athletic Director Gene Smith said as confetti crunched under his feet on the field at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. “You either embrace it or you become irrelevant.”

■ ■ ■ ■

D ay stood before a group of roughly 100 local business leaders in the Covelli Center in Columbus in 2022 to unveil an NIL Corporate Ambassador Program that would encourage businesses to hire Buckeyes athletes through the athletic department.

He offered those Ohio State faithful in attendance a figure needed to compete for the shimmering gold trophy the Buckeyes hoisted last week — $13 million.

“If the speed limit’s 45 mph, and you drive 45 mph, a lot of people are going to pass you by,” Day said, per Cleveland.com. “If you go too fast, you’re going to get pulled over.”

There’s no shortage of resources in Columbus. The school regularly ranks among the most significant revenue-generating athletic departments in the country. During the 2023 FY, it slotted first among all Division I schools in total revenue at $251.6 million — $12 million clear of second-place Texas and almost $40 million north of third-ranked Alabama, per USA Today’s College Athletic Department Database.

The shift in thinking around college football over the past three years, however, has been convincing boosters to evolve from “Paying players is wrong” to “Paying players is the way.”

Russell White, president of The Collective Association, estimates the most lucrative collectives nationally built rosters worth $15 million-plus. That scale, naturally, ranges widely, as schools like BYU — an 11-game winner in 2024 — and CFP participant Arizona State did so with less than $10 million.

Money doesn’t cure all, of course. It’s marrying it with a program’s culture that builds a contender.

“People get focused too much on the money,” Ohio State AD Ross Bjork said after the game. “If you have all the money in the world and you don’t have the other stuff, none of that matters.”

Ohio State is the poster child for such an approach. Its roster was littered with upperclassmen who could’ve gone elsewhere or turned pro. Instead, they returned — with a little help from the school’s collectives — to create one of college football’s most talented rosters.

THE Foundation signed deals with quarterback Will Howard, safety Sonny Styles and Alabama transfer Caleb Downs, also a safety. The 1870 Society inked agreements with cornerback Denzel Burke, running back Quinshon Judkins, defensive end J.T. Tuimoloau, linebacker Cody Simon and center Seth McLaughlin.

Superstar freshman wide receiver Jeremiah Smith cut deals with both collectives.

“The investment was in the players that came back,” said offensive coordinator Chip Kelly outside the Ohio State locker room. “We didn’t go out and open up the gates for [transfers]. … The predominant way they invested was in their own team. That’s the way it should be.”

“We were able to make it where they didn’t have to make a decision on money [and the NFL Draft] and [instead] just a decision based on coming back to win a national championship,” Brian Schottenstein, co-founder and board member of THE Foundation, said. “Which we did.” 

■ ■ ■ ■

T wo days before the game, Smith addressed a gaggle of reporters from one of the eight podiums set up throughout the Georgia World Congress Center.

The 6-foot-3 phenom, who some contend would be the top pick in the NFL Draft this year if eligible, has evolved into an NIL darling. His deals include Red Bull and Lululemon, while he added Nintendo and Epic Games in the days leading up to the national title game.

“The environment is pretty crazy, seeing all these cameras,” Smith said during CFP Media Day. “Something I never thought I’d see a day in my life.”

Maurice Clarett stood to the side of a set of bleachers across the carpeted space, a black OSU hat hiding the ex-tailback’s face in plain sight.

Two decades ago, Clarett challenged the NFL’s rules around early draft entry, contending they prevented his services from being sold to the league until he completed three college seasons (he eventually lost the case). Now, just a 15-yard dig route to his left, another Ohio State freshman superstar not yet allowed to make a payday in the pros can at least earn hundreds of thousands or millions in marketing dollars during his college days.

“It has progressively gone the way it should go,” Clarett said of the broader landscape of player compensation. “Anybody within any industry, when you’re trying to pioneer something, you may not reap the benefits or reap the rewards from what’s going on. But if you have enough conversations for enough people talking about how things should change, then things will change and they’ll change on their own timeline. … That’s where college sports are at.”

The payment of athletes in the college space has evolved with the precision and speed of an Audi zipping down an icy autobahn without brakes.

Colorado, Kansas, UCF and Utah are among the handful of schools that have shut down their collectives in recent months to likely move such operations in-house, should the House settlement be approved. Others, such as those at Arizona State, Indiana and Penn State, are continuing as planned, seeing collectives as marketing agency vessels that could help supplement the proposed $20.5 million cap spelled out in the settlement.

Schools have also added internal infrastructure to better prepare for coming financial decisions via positions such as general managers and chief revenue officers. But what those jobs actually entail likely hinges on the outcome of the House settlement.

“Anybody else who pulls it in-house or eliminates their collective will very quickly relaunch in some form or fashion if they’re serious about sports,” White said. “If you’re a Power Four school and you’re not fully funding up to the cap and have an active collective, then your administration doesn’t really care about sports as a priority.”

As Ohio State players barreled toward midfield to celebrate the program’s first national title since 2014, former head coach Jim Tressel, the man who coached Clarett two decades ago, waded through the throngs of reporters and streamers that littered the playing surface.

Tressel resigned in Columbus in 2010 amid an NCAA probe into star quarterback Terrelle Pryor, among others, receiving tattoos in exchange for memorabilia. Now almost every starter on a high-major FBS roster has a significant marketing deal.

“It’s always been a great place and it always will be a great place, no matter what the rules of engagement are,” Tressel said of his former employer, a smile cresting on his face. “Whether it’s the old rules, NIL or the [transfer] portal, Ohio State’s always going to be good.”

On Monday, the Buckeyes and their deep-pocketed boosters nabbed the ultimate ROI — one worth $20 million and then some. 

Last seen a year ago, the NBA All-Star Game loped out of Indianapolis with its tail between its legs, and with Larry Bird (a face of the ’80s) shaking his head and wagging a finger.

On a scale of 1 to 10, eyewitnesses say Commissioner Adam Silver’s annoyance level was also about a 9 (give or take a few), considering the Olé defense and the infamous final score of East 211, West 186. With no easy answers — especially after Bird had begged everyone to play D and the NBA shortened player intros so their bodies wouldn’t stiffen — it’s been back to the drawing board for the last 11 months, with an actual task force trying to save the league’s oldest tentpole event.

The NBA All-Star Game, as Silver has pointed out, was once a rare seasonal reunion that had players actually boxing out and hand-checking. Back in Bird’s day, Hakeem Olajuwon even fouled out of one for (heaven forbid) trying to block shots. It was an era when East vs. West meant bragging rights, or when Kobe vs. Michael was either going to be a beatdown or a coronation.

“When I was a kid growing up, watching All-Stars, it was one of the only opportunities that you had as a fan to see many of these players,” Silver said in Las Vegas during the NBA Cup. “It was one of the only times that these players came together. It’s such a different world now. They are together all the time. They are together in the summer. They are together on national teams. For us, it’s [become] a recognition that it’s a different time.”

Almost from the minute last February’s debacle ended, everyone and their uncle have made suggestions on how to fix the game. If it wasn’t the league’s most marquee event for partners (where fans worldwide can book flights years in advance, something they can’t do with the NBA Finals or with the NBA Cup potentially leaving Las Vegas), it wouldn’t have been such a priority. But the NBA will keep tossing darts until the game is a destination again, and if that means Caitlin Clark is going to be shooting 3s in San Francisco on Feb. 16, so be it.

If nothing else, the leadup to this year’s event at the Chase Center is a microcosm of how the NBA league office works. Silver will want a problem solved, and his smartest executives will dive in. In the case of this latest mandate (“Please fix the All-Star Game”), Silver turned to, among others, Byron Spruell, president of league operations; and Evan Wasch, executive vice president of basketball strategy and analytics — who, in turn, took a circuitous journey to what will be the most out-of-the-box NBA All-Star Game in history next month.

“We had a sort of an internal view of it, first in terms of with our task force, and then we reached out to a number of stakeholders,” Spruell said. “And by the way, a lot of people came to us with ideas, whether it was a fan shooting an email or what have you … The rest of the weekend felt really strong, but the Sunday night game in particular, the actual All-Star Game, [we needed] to bring it to newer heights.”

The fan participation was illuminating. Spruell said unsolicited emails from the public mainly favored a U.S. vs. international format, which has been bandied for years. The thought of a LeBron James, Steph Curry, Jayson Tatum, Anthony Davis and Anthony Edwards squad against a Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokic, Victor Wembanyama, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luka Doncic team soundly resonated. Spruell said the league had even done mock U.S. vs. The World roster building over the past several years, but still wasn’t ready to give it the green light.

“At the end of the day, from a natural voting process, we didn’t feel like we’d have a complete 12-on-12 naturally there,” Spruell said. “There may still be some ways to think about selecting that way. I won’t go any further than that, but with a 5-on-5 format with 12 players each, we felt like we may fall a little bit short if you look at the last several years and do a mock of the rosters.”

Internally, the league wanted to bring some sort of “Rucker Park” element to the game, whether it was picking teams as if they were on a blacktop or incorporating a one-on-one competition. Spruell said one concept had eight teams of three players in a 3-on-3 tournament. Another scenario was adding a four-point line to the court. But he said stakeholders, the National Basketball Players Association and players were certainly leaning toward some semblance of a tournament format, and that’s when the league’s task force started to truly ideate.

It became clear to many within the league that the current Friday night Rising Stars Challenge was a tournament format worth emulating: Three teams made up the top rookies and sophomores, and a fourth team that included select G League standouts. Rising Stars games were played to 40 (guaranteeing a walk-off, game-clinching shot), and it was telling last season when a team with seven G League players won a semifinal game. They sprinted harder, wanted it more.

Spruell said momentum then grew to mirror the Friday game on Sunday, with three teams made up of eight NBA All-Stars being joined by the winner of the Rising Stars Challenge. The theories were, one, the Rising Stars winner will play a million miles an hour and could shock an all-star team “on any given night.” Two, the all-star team that plays them won’t want to be embarrassed and will play more desperately. Three, the overall novel tournament format will inherently get players to play with urgency.

“When our guys just go hoop, things naturally happen,” Spruell said. “I just want guys to kind of lean into it and have fun with it.”

While that template was praised and ultimately approved by the league, stakeholders, the NBPA and players such as Curry, that didn’t stop the brainstorming. Spruell said the task force discussed adding an “interim” one-on-one matchup at the halfway mark of the 40-point games, where two players would go head-to-head for five bonus points. That still may materialize in future seasons (not this year), and they eventually settled on the four-team tournament — with one twist.

Sources said the league is likely going to move its second annual Steph vs. Sabrina Ionescu 3-point shootout to Sunday, in between the second semifinal game and the championship game. A year ago, the Steph-Sabrina matchup was the gem of the Indianapolis weekend, staged on All-Star Saturday to rave reviews. But the sense is the league wants to make Sunday superior to Saturday — considering Sunday has previously been the ultimate letdown. And the way to potentially blow away Indianapolis is to add Clark to the mix.

Going back months, reports have been that Steph vs. Sabrina 2.0 at Chase Center will morph into a shootout that includes Clark and former Warrior/Splash Brother Klay Thompson. If it happens, Sunday would go to another decibel level.

The league has thought all of it through as it brings its All-Star Game off life support, even the remote possibility that Bronny James — as part of the G League team during the Rising Stars Challenge — could end up facing his father in a Sunday night semifinal.

“It could happen,” Spruell said. “It’s a scenario that we could have. Remember last year, G League won in the first round of Rising Stars.”

It just hammers home the point: This is no longer your father’s All-Star Game.

S prawled across four parking spots outside Wayfair Arena in suburban Miami earlier this month sat a long, white trailer. But this wasn’t part of a TV broadcast production, nor was it for a movie star, although nearly every player in the new Unrivaled basketball league took turns ascending the metal stairs and entering.

Inside, a portable MRI machine needed only 10 minutes to scan the women’s lower bodies, at which point AI algorithms from Springbok Analytics took the 2D imaging and converted them into 3D digital twins that can be used for muscle analysis — establishing baselines that can be used to individualize training and flag latent injury risk. 

Unrivaled, the 3-on-3 women’s league that debuted on Jan. 17 in Miami, is the latest league to partner with Springbok Analytics. In the past two years alone, Springbok has collaborated with three of the five biggest North American sports leagues: It graduated from NBA Launchpad; completed data collection on an NFL-funded research project into hamstring injuries; and began the initial phase of an MLB-backed study into pitcher health. 

Now boosting Springbok’s rapid growth across pro sports and into broader populations is a newly closed, oversubscribed $5 million Series A led by Transition Equity Partners , which also led a $3 million seed round in 2023. Joining the investment were the NBA, which added to its initial equity stake from Launchpad, and Cartan Capital , a sports tech venture firm led by former pro tennis player CiCi Bellis . 

“This is a clear sign that our current and new investors are excited to see us scale all aspects of our business,” Springbok CEO Scott Magargee said, “and from a dollars-in-the-door perspective, it allows us to advance what we believe is our global leadership in the area of muscle analysis for large demographics of athletes and patients across the entire health care landscape.” 

The interactive reports Springbok produces are musculoskeletal avatars shaded various hues of red, orange, tan and blue that detail muscle asymmetries, fat infiltration and a proprietary score comparing a person’s muscle size with others of similar sex, size and sport. Springbok recently released sport-specific databases for men’s pro basketball and soccer athletes — a women’s soccer counterpart is planned soon — for more apt comparisons. It received FDA clearance in October on its flagship lower-body scan, and added core and upper-body scans to what previously was lower extremity only. 

Such a tool is even more important when the athletes are such physical outliers as in the NBA. More than 100 players are in that database, and in addition to partnering with nearly half the league’s teams, Springbok continues working at the league level during the pre-draft process. 

“Their work with us proved that this is a really interesting new dataset in elite sports,” said NBA Senior Vice President Tom Ryan , who oversees Launchpad and all basketball R&D. “Springbok data is starting to become an important piece of the puzzle to help support player health and performance initiatives. That’s really the story: It’s very strategic for us, both at the league and team level.” 

The continued strategic relationship helped facilitate the additional funding, NBA Investments Associate Vice President Pat Crouch added. “First and foremost, for companies that come out of the NBA’s Launchpad program, we look for follow-on investment opportunities when there is a continued strategic relationship. We only invest in companies where there’s some type of commercial partnership, at either the league or the team level, that has gained meaningful traction and has upside to continue to grow and expand.”

Notably, Springbok has no true competitor and a 15-year head start on understanding the use of this data, making it “a piece of the puzzle that nobody else is,” said Magargee.

“The fact that our expertise is the technology, but also in human performance and muscle physiology, we know where to keep going with it in a way that’s meaningful,” said Silvia Blemker , Springbok’s chief scientific officer. She added that one recently devised new metric is an objective injury severity score, which can quantitatively assess a strain or sprain rather than rely on a human practitioner to subjectively evaluate it. 

Though Springbok Analytics’ work in sports has intensified in recent years, the foundational technology has roots dating back to 2009 and Blemker’s biomedical engineering lab at the University of Virginia. The company’s headquarters remain in Charlottesville, sitting in a nondescript office at one end of its pedestrian-friendly Downtown Mall. Springbok’s dual recognition in 2024 from SBJ Tech — as a Most Innovative Sports Tech company and SBJ Tech Award winner for Best in Athlete Performance — prominently greets visitors.

In those early days, Blemker was working on solutions to aid treatments of cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy when the lab began developing the machine learning to extrapolate 3D data from MRIs. Those life science use-cases remain a part of Springbok’s mission, while also adding the human performance sector that makes it a highly differentiated product appealing to investors. 

“Not only do we really believe in the team, but the technology, we think, is pretty unprecedented, especially with the years of R&D,” Bellis said, “and then the beachhead that they’ve had into the sports market is super interesting, because they can really instantly provide value to these sports teams and instantly give them money back, so to say, by having this preventative health measure for athletes.”

That expediency of the scans — much quicker than what’s needed for traditional MRIs — has helped Springbok amass its large elite athlete databases, including a thousand college and pro American football players, Blemker said. Those were collected to build a hamstring injury predictive index in collaboration with researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Australian Catholic University, and funded by a $4 million grant awarded by the NFL’s Scientific Advisory Board.  

It’s that rich dataset, as much as any algorithm or an investment check, that is sparking Springbok’s growth — and the same competitive advantage will only continue to grow the same way it started. 

“It’s taken us time,” Magargee said, “and it’s taken us partnerships.” 

Joe Gibbs Racing has found a replacement for FedEx in the freight category with Atlanta-based Saia LTL Freight, keeping the NASCAR team in a familiar business space. Saia joins JGR as a multiyear sponsor and will have its colors and logo etched onto the No. 54 Toyota driven by Ty Gibbs for seven Cup Series races in 2025. In 2024, Saia was the No. 6 less-than-truckload carrier based on revenue of $2.8B, according to Transport Topics, with FedEx Freight at No. 1 on revenue of over $9B. Saia chose to join NASCAR over entering the NFL, college football, MLB, soccer and golf, according to Chief Customer Officer Ray Ramu, who said the company was embarking on its first serious sports marketing play. He said the company is looking to build brand awareness and give its employees something to rally around. Saia leadership was drawn to NASCAR because of its national reach and demographic fit. “Our drivers, our dockworkers love racing, so we think it’s two-fold for us: We’ll be able to help brand the company and we’ll have a cultural touch to it as well,” Ramu said. Last year, Saia added 21 facilities to take its count in the U.S. up to 214, which Ramu said “cemented our position as a national LTL freight company across the United States, and we felt that NASCAR would give us the lift that we needed from a branding and marketing perspective to let people know that we’re not just a regional company (anymore).” Saia Senior Director of Corporate Communications Mona Gore also noted that the company liked how team sponsorships in NASCAR allow brands to have a more complete takeover by wrapping a car entirely in its colors, versus things like jersey patches in stick-and-ball sports.

MARKET SHARING IS CARING: Saia, which was founded in 1924, breaks the U.S. into six geographical regions, and it has 10% marketshare in what it calls the South Central, and between 5½% to 6% in the other five, according to Ramu. The company is both B2B- and B2C-focused as it does some residential deliveries, but Saia saw particular B2B potential in NASCAR. It will do hospitality with employees and customers at races. Saia will track the lift in revenue from customers who are invited to NASCAR races and track its share in certain markets where it will be activating around the partnership. The company’s name is pronounced “sigh-uh,” and one of the goals of this deal is to get consumers more aware of how to properly say its name and to recognize its logo. Gore said Saia chose Ty Gibbs, team owner Joe Gibbs’ grandson, to be its driver in part because he’s only 22 years old, providing the opportunity to have longevity to their partnership, and because Ty Gibbs can help share with younger consumers Saia’s message of how important the trucking industry is to the economy.

TO BE OR NOT TO B2B: JGR has prided itself on helping its sponsors find new incremental revenue in the sport by introducing them to other corporate partners who could do business together. Saia is hoping that JGR will be able to do the same thing with it. Ramu: “That’s another thing that’s pretty attractive; there was some of that opportunity in some of the other sports that we looked at; this feels like it’s a very defined process that the industry goes out of their way to connect sponsors to work with one another and that’s pretty attractive to me.” Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Saia will handle the deal in house. FedEx left JGR last year after being with the team since 2005.

Multiple sources say Texans Chair and CEO Cal McNair, along with a search firm, have already conducted a search and tentatively identified a replacement for team President Greg Grissom, whose departure was announced via press release earlier today.

The hush-hush search and selection, which was conducted without Grissom’s knowledge, first came to SBJ’s attention more than a week ago, but I was unable to confirm the details prior to today’s announcement. The hiring is not fully complete, but industry sources have called it a high-profile selection from outside the organization, and expect an announcement to come as soon as Monday. 

McNair declined to comment beyond what he said in the statement: “We will provide updates regarding the team's next president in the coming days." Grissom also declined to elaborate on his prepared statement, which read in part: “Over the past four years, I am incredibly proud of what we accomplished for our fans and for our business.”

Grissom had been with the club since its 2002 founding, but took over the presidency at a tumultuous time in Houston -- one month after troubled team President Jamey Rootes resigned and nine days after the first of dozens of women accused then-franchise QB Deshaun Watson of sexual assault.

Grissom, who had been SVP/corporate development, had a four-year tenure that included two more losing seasons, but following the hire of DeMeco Ryans as head coach and drafting QB C.J. Stroud, attendance improved, with big gains in local TV viewership as the team won the last two AFC South titles, along with a major rebranding and uniform change. 

Making a return after 11 years in mothballs, EA’s college football game had a freshman season like no other. EA Sports College Football 25 finished its first run on the market as No. 2 in sales for the U.S., per data from Circana, trailing only Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (one of the most dominant video game franchises in history).

It was the best-selling game on Xbox platforms (maybe an indication that players there played Call of Duty on Game Pass subscription plan and didn’t buy it). And, of course, it became the best-selling sports game in U.S. history back in November.

And in a good sign for the industry, sales of video game content (that’s software, in-game transactions and the like) was up 2% to $50.6 billion, the second-highest total on record (2021 set the high mark, $52 billion, during the pandemic, when consumers spent more money on gaming than ever before). But there were some weaknesses here.

“On the console side, 2024 digital add-on content spending, which would include things like battle passes, was flat compared to 2023, while full game sales drove the overall decline in console content spending,” said Circana Executive Director/Video Games Mat Piscatella.

Another item to keep an eye on: Spending on in-game transactions could be stronger. “Overall spending on digital add-on content for console was flat this year compared to last, where we have seen growth in the past,” Piscatella said.

For the year, Take-Two Interactive’s NBA 2K25 finished fifth in sales, with EA Sports’ Madden NFL 25 coming in sixth (it was third in 2023), EA Sports FC 25 placing eighth and a newcomer of sorts -- the EA Sports MVP Bundle of College Football 25 and Madden NFL 25 -- rounding out the top 10.

WWE 2K25 had a strong showing, coming in at 13th, with Sony’s MLB: The Show 24 sliding in at 14th. And in another win for 2K Sports, NBA 2K24 placed 20th (it was fifth in 2023).

Drilling into sports games

The big franchises from EA and 2K (this year and last year’s versions) dominate the best-selling list of sports games, though NHL 25 did sneak in at the 10th spot.

The year for sports games in 2024 was “fantastic, thanks to EA Sports College Football 25,” said Piscatella. “Spending on Sports video games, excluding add-on content like DLC/MTX, was up more than 25% this year. EA Sports College Football 25 was a massive hit and really helped the market overall.”

Strength in VR?

Growth in non-console VR sales helped offset a dip in console and PC content sales. “So, the PC, Cloud and Non-Console VR bucket is inclusive of all three. Primarily because, in many cases, there is interoperability between them. But for this case this is primarily a PC story. PC add-on content spending helped offset declines in PC full game spending,” Piscatella said.

Rough year on mobile

While sports is one of console and PC gaming’s strongest categories, it’s not faring as well on mobile in the U.S. Per Sensor Tower Insights Analyst Sam Aune, downloads of sports games are down 19% year-over-year, with a drop of 7% in spending on in-app transactions. But he did highlight some bright spots.

“Hunting Sniper by Sparks Info, launched in March 2023, saw huge growth to become the No. 3 sports game by U.S. in-app purchase revenue,” Aune said. “Additionally, Konami's eFootball grew in-app purchase revenue by over 50% in 2024. Unfortunately, most other top sports games did see decline or stagnation in revenue and downloads.”

The top three sports games by U.S. in-app purchase revenue:

• EA Sports FC Mobile Soccer (EA Sports)

• Golf Clash (EA Sports)

• Hunting Sniper (Sparks Info)

The top three sports games by U.S. downloads:

• 8 Ball Pool (Miniclip.com)

• EA Sports FC Mobile Soccer (EA Sports)

• Madden NFL 25 Mobile Football (EA Sports)

• LIV Golf Chief Media Officer Will Staeger is no longer with the organization in what sources are telling SBJ's Josh Carpenter is a mutual parting of ways.

• The sports licensing industry gathered in Las Vegas for the annual Sports Licensing & Tailgate Show have a clear favorite for the Super Bowl, reports SBJ's Terry Lefton: Bills vs. Eagles.

• NASCAR believes its three official carmakers are satisfied with their ROI in the sport and remain committed to it, despite Ford, GM and Toyota all working on varying entries into rival racing property F1, writes SBJ's Adam Stern.

• PGA Superstore continues to grow at a rapid pace in the U.S., adding eight more this year while also getting a boost from the TGL, notes Carpenter.

• U.S. Ski and Snowboard is working with Ski Austria to develop commercial and sport performance opportunities, reports SBJ's Rachel Axon, marking the first time the national governing body has formed an official partnership with an international peer organization.