SBJ Unpacks: Las Vegas gets Super Bowl in 2029

Tonight in Unpacks: The NFL awarded Las Vegas the Super Bowl in 2029, its second in five years, showing that sports has fully embraced a city it once avoided over gambling concerns.

Also tonight:

• Inside JPMorganChase’s push to guide athletes on finances
• Deputy CEO Justin Papadakis leaves USL
• Fertitta confirms return of Houston Comets to WNBA after buying Sun
• Op-ed: Go beyond a patch slap to engage college fans

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Abe Madkour opens the week with takeaways from SBJ’s 2026 Business of Soccer and lessons on listening from AMBSE’s Arthur Blank, the Denver Summit setting an NWSL attendance record with its inaugural home match, the Sun selling for an WNBA-record $300 million and moving to Houston and more

NFL owners voted to award the 2029 Super Bowl to Las Vegas, which will be the second time in five years the city has hosted the game after being off the radar for decades before sports gambling was legalized. The NFL says there is no informal rotation, and each Super Bowl is awarded on the specific merits of a bid for a given year, but a league official Monday indicated Las Vegas has all the makings of a regular Super Bowl destination.

“Clearly, Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas [in 2024] was a tremendous success. Every element of that, everything that Las Vegas brought to bear -- the energy, the size, the scale, the hospitality,” said NFL EVP/Club Business, International & League Events Peter O’Reilly.

Conversations around a return to Las Vegas started immediately after the game in 2024. Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority President & CEO Steve Hill said he wants to “raise the bar,” giving two examples of challenges they want to fix this time.

“We had a couple events from a traffic standpoint conflicted earlier in the week, not the Super Bowl itself, but on a Thursday night and Friday night, where maybe we didn’t think through traffic flow in the city quite as well as we could, and that was one of our points of emphasis as we look at Super Bowl LXIII,” said Hill. “The demand for the fan fest was a little bit surprising -- 40,000, 50,000 people at the fan fest every day.”

Dwyane Wade can still vividly remember his first big purchase after the Miami Heat picked him fifth overall in the 2003 NBA Draft.

“Cadillac Escalade, for sure. Electric blue. 26-inch rims. Yeah, I remember,” Wade recalled with a laugh. “I already knew what I was getting before I got my check. I’d been talking about it for months. And I’m around a lot of athletes who don’t have anything who are going, ‘Yeah, that’s smart.’”

Wade now reflects it would have been far smarter to instead pursue a sponsorship with a local car dealer that included a vehicle.

“There are just all these ways to think differently,” Wade continued. “If I could go back, I would. I would listen a bit more. I would reach out and try to find people who had been through this already so they could help me through this process.”

Wade isn’t the only one to recognize the power of firsthand athlete experience.

Kristin Lemkau, the CEO of J.P. Morgan Wealth Management, said that kind of feedback from Wade and other athletes drove home lessons about the need for more specialized wealth management resources. Now, she hopes that the input of top athletes will help the bank redesign its athlete wealth management playbook.

The newly formed JPMorganChase Athlete Council is a collection of nine athletes who will meet every few months to reflect on their own experiences and inform how JPMC approaches its athlete clients. The council will focus especially on providing resources to younger athletes.

“We know there’s a need. We know JPMorganChase can fulfill that need. And hopefully this is the beginning of a multiyear journey where we learn as we go,” Lemkau said. “There’s going to be a playbook on how we actually go out and talk to young athletes and get them to understand a bit more about their own financial habits. But the playbook will change.”

Athlete wealth management is a large and growing industry across banking, with nearly every major bank, including JPMC, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and others, managing specialty practices. That’s driven largely by the fact that athletes are making more money than ever. Consider the NBA’s team salary cap is $155 million this season, more than doubling from $70 million a decade ago. The league’s minimum salary is $1.3 million this year. And with the arrival of NIL payments in college sports, athletes are also now capable of longer earnings careers.

Lemkau said that athletes’ financial challenges came into clearer focus in the years since she took over as CEO of J.P. Morgan Wealth Management in late 2019, following six years as the bank’s chief marketing officer. That move was partly a recognition by JPMC’s leadership that, despite being the nation’s biggest bank by assets, it was lagging in retail wealth management. Since Lemkau took over the division, it’s grown from $500 billion in assets to $1.3 trillion, and its headcount has gone from 4,000 financial advisers to 6,000.

“Most people in my seat and in my business are going after the Dwyane Wade wealth, which, of course, we all should, because there is a lot of it. But there is a massively underserved group of athletes before they get to the point where you make more money than you can spend.”

—  Kristin Lemkau, CEO, J.P. Morgan Wealth Management

“All that is great, but what became clear to me is that most Americans are underinvested, particularly when interest rates were zero,” Lemkau said. “As it relates to athletes, it is a much more acute problem than I think people have given it attention for. Most people in my seat and in my business are going after the Dwyane Wade wealth, which, of course, we all should, because there is a lot of it. But there is a massively underserved group of athletes before they get to the point where you make more money than you can spend.”

Lemkau said she met Wade through CAA Sports’ Paul Danforth and former Hollywood agent Michael Kives around seven years ago, with Wade fresh off retiring from the NBA and Lemkau early in her stint overseeing wealth management. Their conversations echoed feedback Lemkau had received from other athletes, including Steph Curry and Serena Williams, whom she’d interacted with through JPMC’s sports sponsorship work (Chase has the naming rights to the Golden State Warriors’ arena and is a longtime U.S. Open sponsor in tennis).

“We developed a dialogue over the years, and [Wade] is one of the people who helped me realize that, on the way up, most of these young athletes make many of the same mistakes, or get much of the same misguided advice, or think ‘Oh my god, I just got a $5 million check, I’m rich forever,’” Lemkau said. “We started having a conversation a long time ago where I said, I want to design something by athletes, for athletes; to not just serve the 0.1%, but to serve the college athlete, the professional athlete and the retired athlete, all three of which have different challenges.”

For Wade, open and honest athlete communication is of utmost importance. He wishes he had more guidance early in his career, and he reflected on how much he learned from the Heat’s veteran-stacked locker room around a dozen years ago.

“When I got my first check, it was impulse spending. I’m buying big houses, I’m buying luxury cars, I’m buying jewelry,” Wade said. “We have an opportunity here to be able to help [young athletes] build better habits earlier. The most important thing: The people who did the same things that you do, the ones you know you can trust because they went down the same road.”

Hence a council of athletes with diverse firsthand experiences. Lemkau said the bank prioritized equal gender representation and over-indexed in basketball, given JPMC’s sponsorship spending in the sport. Council members range from 48-year-old Tom Brady to 25-year-old Kayvon Thibodeaux, a 2022 NFL draftee and one of the first athletes of the NIL era. Lemkau suggested the committee’s makeup may evolve in the months and years to come.

“When I got my first check, it was impulse spending. I’m buying big houses, I’m buying luxury cars, I’m buying jewelry. We have an opportunity here to be able to help [young athletes] build better habits earlier.”

—  Dwyane Wade

Thibodeaux and A’ja Wilson are represented by Klutch Sports Group. Brittany McCallum, Klutch’s senior vice president of athlete strategy, said JPMC’s initiative aligned with those athletes’ hopes to drive systemic change and establish off-field legacies.

“It moves beyond traditional endorsements toward a model of genuine partnership and financial empowerment,” McCallum said. “We were drawn to this initiative because JPMC prioritized A’ja and Kayvon’s authentic voices from the beginning, working closely with their broader teams, including our own SVP of football marketing, Joe D’Amelio, to create a collaborative space where athletes are treated as true stakeholders.”

Perhaps even more importantly, Lemkau stressed that JPMC is open to recrafting its offerings, which may include creating sector-specific products. Lemkau noted that most wealth management divisions have specialized products for particular verticals, like auto dealership owners or private equity fund managers.

“In those cases, we design products that work for that particular set,” Lemkau said. “One of the things we’re going to talk about is what do we need to build [for athletes]? Do we need some type of annuity, or something where you put your money into a trust and it spits out annual income, but the principal goes untouched? Or do you need some other type of trust, or have a co-trustee? I don’t know; that’s why I need these guys there to figure out the innovation we can provide that would be helpful.”

Lemkau added that those products could even tap into the sports asset class directly. “There’s potentially a fund we could start with advice from these guys,” she said. “Women’s sports is taking off. How do you create something where athletes themselves can benefit financially from the businesses they helped create?”

JPMC’s new athlete council also will engage directly with college students and other young athletes as part of the bank’s existing programming on campuses and around major sports events.

Adam Frank, J.P. Morgan Wealth Management’s head of wealth planning and advice, noted that the stakes are especially high given how short athlete careers tend to be.

“With the rise of NIL, student athletes have an extraordinary opportunity to earn money. But many of these young players don’t have a solid financial education, which can lead to poor money decisions,” Frank said. “One of the best ways to provide that education is by learning from current and former players … who have navigated the challenges firsthand.”

The council members are paid, though Lemkau, the former CMO, stressed that the new initiative is not a sales ploy, even if she expects the council’s star power is likely to attract new customers.

“We’re going to listen most of the time. I want their input. I’m not hiring them to sell credit cards. We’re hiring them to give us insight into how to design great advice,” Lemkau said. “We’re also not hiring them to sell or refer. We wanted to make sure we’re not off hawking our wares. We’re here to try to understand, to try to build a great practice. Yes, I believe I will get business for it. But I don’t want Dwyane Wade out there shilling self-directed accounts.”

Earlier this month, JPMC welcomed a few dozen media members to its newly opened, $3 billion Manhattan headquarters on Park Avenue to debut the star-studded athlete wealth management initiative. Visitors to the building’s 51st floor were treated to stunning views across New York City’s Central Park.

The press event followed the athlete council’s first meeting. Five members — Ally Love, Megan Rapinoe, Brady, Wade and Wilson — attended in person, with others teleconferencing from afar. Love shared that the council’s initial conversation included discussions about how JPMC could reach younger athletes via digital channels and “tiered layers of content.”

When asked about how he’ll judge the committee’s success, Wade told SBJ that his fundamental goal is to ensure athletes have “the right information and right support from the start.”

“We have very unique financial needs, and to be able to have something that feels custom for you or to feel like you have a space. Not everybody reaches the top of their wealth in their teens, 20s and early 30s,” Wade said. “This is great to be able to customize something for these unique needs, and that, to me, is what’s very important.”

Team JPMorganChase

Meet the roster of the company’s new athlete council

JPMorganChase has assembled a team of nine top athletes to help advise its athlete wealth management practice. Members of the group will meet periodically to discuss their experiences and inform the bank’s approach to athlete clients, especially those earlier in their careers.

Basketball Hall of Fame member Dwyane Wade, who will chair the group, said he’s hopeful the council will serve young, up-and-coming athletes.

“It’s going to be very important for us to talk about things that people may not talk to athletes about,” Wade said. “We want to talk about ownership, we want to talk about investing, we want to talk about building brands while they’re still playing. We want to give them an opportunity to ask questions to us, and to feel comfortable asking questions to people they know are doing all these different things.”

Here are some highlights of the athletes’ careers on and off the field of play.

Dwyane Wade — Chair

Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame member; three-time NBA champion; investor in the Chicago Sky and Utah Jazz

Sue Bird

Managing director of USA Women’s Basketball; five-time Olympic gold medalist; co-founder of media group Togethxr; investor in the Seattle Storm

Tom Brady

Seven-time Super Bowl champion; investor in NoBull, Religion of Sports and the Las Vegas Raiders

Jalen Brunson

New York Knicks guard; three-time NBA All-Star; co-founder of Second Round Foundation

Ally Love

Peloton instructor and VP of instructor strategy and development; founder and CEO of Love Squad

Alex Morgan

Olympic gold medalist; two-time FIFA World Cup champion; co-founder of Trybe Ventures; co-founder of media group Togethxr; investor in Unrivaled and San Diego Wave

Megan Rapinoe

Olympic gold medalist; two-time FIFA World Cup champion; gender equity and equal pay activist; co-founder of lifestyle brand Re-Inc.

Kayvon Thibodeaux

New York Giants defensive lineman; 2022 NFL Draft fifth overall pick; founder of the Jream Foundation

A’ja Wilson

Las Vegas Aces center; four-time WNBA MVP and three-time champion; expected to sign first $1 million-plus WNBA supermax contract

Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta on Monday publicly acknowledged his deal to purchase and relocate the Connecticut Sun, all while his front office began fast-tracking a Houston Comets website and a ticket deposit plan for the 2027 season.

At 9am ET Monday, the Rockets and Fertitta Entertainment launched houstoncomets.com, where fans could place a $99 per seat deposit and secure priority access to next year’s season tickets.

“We believe the time is right to begin the next great era of Comets basketball, and we look forward to working with the WNBA as we move through this process,” said Rockets Alternate Governor Patrick Fertitta after his father’s company agreed to pay a reported $300M to the Mohegan Tribe for the Sun.

In Connecticut over the weekend that sales price seemed to unnerve the state’s Attorney General William Tong because a group led by Celtics minority owner Steve Pagliuca and another by former Bucks owner Marc Lasry each offered $325M last summer to move the team to Boston and Hartford, respectively. But the league has veto power over franchise relocation and steered the team to Houston, even for $25M less.

“I am aware of concerning reports regarding a sale that would move the Sun out of Connecticut at a price far less than what was on the table to keep them here at home,” Tong said in a statement through his office Sunday. “The Office of the Attorney General previously requested relevant documents and we have reviewed portions of certain documents requested of the WNBA. We are consulting with our partners in state government and local leaders regarding this disappointing news.”

The Comets, meanwhile, were one of the WNBA’s eight original franchises in 1997 and also the original dynasty, winning the league’s first four titles behind HOFers Cynthia Cooper, Sheryl Swoopes, Tina Thompson and coach Van Chancellor. But their demise in 2008 shows how much the league has evolved the past 18 years.

The franchise’s original owner, Les Alexander, had sold the Comets to Houston furniture tycoon Hilton Koch in 2007, but Koch lost a reported $4M on the team right away and wasn’t generating much interest locally, either. To reduce costs, he moved the team from Toyota Center to the matchbox 7,200-seat Reliant Arena, but it was far from a salve.

The WNBA, in 2008, assumed control of the team, but could not locate a buyer and disbanded the franchise after the season, costing 37 employees their jobs. “You can’t ignore the fact this team was the engine that drove the league,” then-WNBA President Donna Orender said of the Comets at the time. “…Maybe one day the corporate and city leaders [of Houston] will aggregate their resources and resurrect a formidable franchise."

That day is Monday, although the WNBA’s Board of Governors still needs to approve the purchase. While the team will not hold a formal press conference until the sale closes -- likely in two to three weeks -- sources said the Sun’s final season in Connecticut this year will be a collaborative effort between the Sun and Comets front offices. With free agency looming in early April, the future of the Comets’ roster will soon take form.

Considering Fertitta’s net worth is reportedly above $12B, the franchise should have the financial wherewithal to improve on last season’s 11-33 record, the worst winning percentage since the franchise launched as the Orlando Miracle in 1999. The Sun, though, lost its lottery slot this season due a pick swap, and will instead have the 12th and 15th overall selections in the April 13 draft.

USL Deputy CEO and Chief Real Estate Officer Justin Papadakis has departed the organization after more than a decade in senior leadership roles, marking a significant change within the league operator’s executive ranks following an influx of new capital.

USL confirmed Papadakis’ departure to Sports Business Journal, stating he left the organization last week, but declined further comment. Multiple sources said Papadakis intends to pursue opportunities outside the league more directly aligned with his focus on real estate.

Papadakis, the son of longtime USL CEO & co-owner Alec Papadakis, played a central role in the organization’s expansion into new markets, including its push to pair clubs with soccer-specific stadiums and surrounding mixed-use development.

He spearheaded a model in which USL identifies sites and advances development work in advance of securing a club ownership group. The development of One Spokane Stadium, which is now home to both a USL Championship men’s team and a Gainbridge Super League women’s team, is one example of the approach working as intended.

“We find the right stadium site, work with stakeholders, assemble the land and all the entitlements and a whole bunch of professional services that go along with creating a stadium anchored development and get those projects started,” Papadakis told SBJ in a 2022 interview. “And then along the way we could identify and select the ownership partners that would ultimately take the club forward.”

His exit follows new institutional investment in USL from BellTower Partners in September 2025 and Weatherford Capital in February 2026. A source with knowledge of the investment said BellTower initially took a 20% stake in the company and later sold a portion of that equity to Weatherford. BellTower founder Kewsong Lee joined the USL board as vice chair alongside Chair Robert Hoskins and CEO Alec Papadakis.

Critics of USL’s growth strategy in recent years have said the league’s push to add franchises, which generates expansion fees for the league office, has at times come at the expense of maintaining the value of existing clubs and ensuring long-term sustainability. In addition to launching the Super League in 2024, the organization has added a wave of new teams across its men’s leagues. Over that same period, however, several clubs have folded or gone on hiatus.

USL is working toward the launch of a Division I men’s league in 2028, along with the implementation of a promotion-and-relegation system. The organization said earlier this year it intends to have 20 teams in each of its top two men’s divisions, with its third division organized regionally.

It is unclear whether USL plans to fill either of Papadakis’ roles or how it will approach its real estate-driven expansion strategy going forward.

In an hourlong sit-down just hours before the Braves’ new TV network, BravesVision, went live at Truist Park on Friday afternoon, SBJ’s David Broughton spent an hour in the ballpark with team President/CEO, Derek Schiller talking about the significance of the launch (which was accomplished in about 30 days).

The team partnered with Gray Media, with an assist from Raycom, to air 140 games and shoulder programming in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and western North Carolina.

“Eighteen years ago was the last time that we were on SuperStation, and [Friday], you and I sit here just three hours from the launch,” he said. “That’s how long it’s been since the Braves games were in possession of the team and on our own network, and we’re now redoing that with BravesVision.”

After a full weekend of operating, Schiller said this afternoon that the club has heard “fantastic fan feedback.”

The telecast was enhanced by new multicolored LED field lighting (showcased by five Braves’ home runs this weekend) and included footage from their own drones that circled the stands prior to the start of the games.

Six seconds on the clock. Down 64-63. The 2023 MEAC Championship is on the line. I’m standing at the free-throw line in Norfolk, Virginia, and the only thing between Howard University and its first trip to the NCAA Tournament in 31 years is two shots. The crowd is deafening. I step to the line, find my routine, and sing myself a lullaby to quiet my mind. Sink both shots. 65-64. The clock expires. Howard is dancing. The alumni are in the stands, faces full of euphoria. You can feel the pride in the air. History.

What followed those free throws: national media coverage, better recruits, and the very next year, another championship. The first and only back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances in the history of Howard basketball.

That moment wasn’t just about talent. It was about infrastructure.

The summer before I transferred to Howard, two major announcements changed the trajectory of the program.

Jordan Brand entered a 20-year partnership with the university, and Nuna became the court sponsor at Burr Gymnasium. Many saw those deals as Howard catching up to the field; that they finally had sponsors to help them grow. But here’s what people missed: Jordan didn’t just give us gear; they immersed themselves in campus culture. Homecoming activations, sponsored content and recruiting infrastructure changed what 17-year-old recruits believed was possible about playing at an HBCU.

Nuna didn’t just slap a logo on the court — they redid the gym, built a new weight room and refurbished the practice gym. They became true partners to the program.

It was the dawn of the NIL explosion, before revenue sharing and before the NCAA opened the door to uniform patches, which are coming in August. College sports is professionalizing right now — not someday, not eventually, but now. Brands have been able to participate at different entry points: apparel deals, arena sponsors, NIL, facilities. Jersey patches are the newest door and perhaps the most significant. But most brands will treat them like billboards — check written, logo up, move on. The brands that understand that patches are permission, not product, will own the space for the next decade and beyond.

This new territory isn’t about logo placement. It’s about building trust and owning emotional connection with audiences in ways virtually no other property can match. The brands that successfully professionalize this space won’t just sell products. They’ll build competitive moats their rivals can’t replicate.

Why college sports is the rarest media play brands have

College sports isn’t just an entertainment property — it represents passion and identity. People often feel more strongly about college rivalries than they do about any other sports. That emotional intensity is currency that brands can’t earn with traditional media buys. Fans don’t just watch games; they identify with schools. Alumni donate when teams win. Students apply because of athletics. Local communities rally around teams. When brands align with this level of identity, they move from awareness to trust.

College sports is also one of the last properties in America that genuinely spans elite to mass. Ivy League to JUCO. Private schools to state flagships. Every geography, every income level, every age cohort. You’re not buying a demographic slice; you’re buying cultural ubiquity. March Madness features significantly higher co-viewing rates than typical television, with families watching together across multiple generations. In a fragmented media landscape, where the average American subscribes to four streaming services and consumes most content alone, college sport offers rare collective attention.

Here’s why that matters: Across major sports properties, a well-leveraged three-to-five-year partnership works harder than traditional media. Influence and emotional connection — more than reach and frequency — drive consideration and purchase behavior, especially in trust-based categories. Pair that approach with institutions that fans deeply identify with, and brands signal legitimacy by association.

Patch as permission — partnership as value

In August, the NCAA will allow corporate logos to be placed on uniforms and equipment for the first time, the newest entry point in a professionalization wave that’s been building for years.

This model already works. NBA jersey sponsors generate more than $250 million annually, and Nike’s billion-dollar apparel deal coexists without dilution. Rakuten used its Golden State Warriors partnership to break into the U.S. market, driving a brand awareness increase of 300%. That’s not theory — it’s proven ROI.

But college sports offer something that the NBA doesn’t: identification with an institution, not just a team. NBA franchises relocate. College programs are permanent. That permanence makes college sports a better long-term bet for brands looking to build trust with their consumers.

Smart brands will treat patches as the starting point, not the destination. From patch to partner, the right approach extends into NIL deals, content and storytelling beyond traditional game highlights, campus activations that immerse brands in culture and product integrations that solve problems or unlock capabilities for athletic departments at scale. The patch gets you in the door. Everything beyond the patch determines whether you build lasting value.

College sports are professionalizing. The brands who professionalize alongside them — who treat the moment as an opportunity for partnership instead of placement — will own cultural territory for decades.

Jelani Williams is a strategic partnerships manager at M+C Saatchi Sports & Entertainment NA.

• The NFL signed up a series of funds as early investors in its new pro flag league it is launching with TMRW Sports, including Ariel Investments/Project Level, Bessemer Venture Partners, Blue Pool Capital, Dynasty Equity, Silver Lake and Sixth Street, reports SBJ’s Ben Fischer.
• The PGA Tour has yet to confirm plans for when its new two-track structure will be in place, but one thing is now clear: The 2027 season will begin in Jan. 21 with the American Express tournament, writes SBJ’s Josh Carpenter.
• The Professional Bull Riders Teams Series is moving into its next phase of growth after team owners approved a plan to expand the league to 12 teams for the 2027 season, reports SBJ’s Irving Mejia-Hilario.
• Teamworks strengthened its position in elite football with the acquisition of Pro Football Focus’ enterprise data analytics platform, writes SBJ’s Joe Lemire.