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NWSL side Gotham FC is overhauling season ticketing with “The Blueprint,” a capped-at-5K membership that blends scarcity and flexibility to deepen loyalty. Priced from $238, perks include a five-year price lock, two buddy passes per seat, a personalized bomber jacket, and a digital “member wall.” VP of Brand & Fan Experience Laura Petro says the club is at roughly 60% to goal (~3,000 signups) after about a month, building on a 38% attendance jump since 2023. Perhaps the signature feature is a “no-ticket-goes-unused” model whereby members can pre-flag games they’ll miss and shift those tickets to other dates to bring friends, cutting resale headaches and boosting in-stadium community. Petro tells SBJ’s Ethan Joyce: “It’s easy to be like, ‘Here’s all this stuff, here’s the benefits, here’s a big list.’ And that’s great, and people are excited about that. But making sure you come at it from a more emotional-first lens because, again, that’s such an important part that I often see people overlook or take a more standard approach.” (link)

Cadillac’s new U.S.-based F1 team launches in 2026 with a strategy aimed at converting the sport’s surge of newer, movie- and Drive to Survive-era fans rather than poaching diehards. CEO Dan Towriss wants the team’s identity to be “approachable” and “optimistic,” with a headquarters and manufacturing campus in Fishers, Indiana, that’s “going to [be] almost like a modern ballpark entertainment district. You don’t have to drive 45 minutes out of the city to see what a Formula 1 team is doing. You might live next door to it in a condo. You might drive by it…on your way to the office.” With U.S. fandom rising—74% of new fans in the past year are women—the team is leaning into consistent storytelling and access while building a sponsor roster early. Tommy Hilfiger and Jim Beam are already aboard, and Marketing Brew’s Alyssa Meyers notes naming rights are reportedly priced up to $70M per year. Meyers adds: “The fact that Cadillac F1 parent company TWG Global also owns sports properties, including the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Lakers and Sparks, and Chelsea FC, has been another selling point for marketers, according to Towriss, and creating ‘connections and crossovers’ between those properties is likely in the cards for Cadillac sponsors.” (link)

Sporting Lisbon raised $261M in its biggest bond sale yet, as it looks to turn its football stadium in the Portuguese capital into a modern entertainment hub and pay down debt. The bonds carry a fixed annual interest rate of 5.75% and mature in 28 years, with proceeds to fund the redevelopment of the stadium and repay existing debt. (link)

Margins of Victory: Episode 3
ACC Chief Revenue Officer Anthony Macri joined host Craig Pintens to share his insights on sport sponsorships and his breadth of experience around sports business, what private equity would look like in college sports, the push to share business data within the league and more. 

Key Revenue Strategy Takeaways:

➤ The Pro-Sports Model: Macri is establishing a new Team Marketing and Business Operations (TMBO)-like function for the ACC to foster a rising-tide environment where member schools can share anonymized data, benchmarks, and best practices to strengthen the entire conference's revenue base.

➤ Affinity and Untapped Value: Macri confirmed that college sports boasts even greater fan affinity than professional sports due to its globally dispersed, built-in alumni base -- a massive market that offers substantial, yet untapped, commercial potential.

➤  Learning from Pro Mistakes: Macri shared that a critical value-add is giving ACC members the benefit of learning from mistakes already made in pro sports, effectively fast-tracking the adoption of business rigor and preventing the league from falling behind in innovation.

CLICK HERE for the episode or listen anywhere you get your podcasts.

U.S. Soccer generated $263.7M in revenue during FY25, which marks a 37% increase over FY24 and its highest total since FY17 when it hosted the Copa América Centenario. SBJ’s Alex Silverman adds more context: “The uptick reflects the federation tapping into the business buzz around soccer in the lead-up to next summer’s FIFA World Cup in North America. The organization’s $250M National Training Center project outside Atlanta has also spurred a sharp increase in fundraising activity. After expenses and investment returns, the nonprofit posted a net surplus of $8.3M, down about 9% year over year. It’s the second straight surplus for the organization after posting deficits each year from 2018 through 2023. The federation’s fiscal years run from April 1 through March 31. U.S. Soccer has seen significant commercial momentum ahead of the World Cup, with income from sponsorships, licensing and fan engagement increasing by 19% in 2025 to $121.1M. The federation secured deals with The Home Depot, Bank of America, Jim Beam, Henkel and Haleon during the fiscal year. The governing body also raised $50.3M in philanthropic contributions, about seven times as much as in 2024. … Total assets rose from $192M in 2024 to $459M in 2025, fueled by the donation of $12.5M in land and an $86.4M increase in construction-in-progress as work accelerated on the training center project. To finance the build, the national governing body conducted its first-ever bond raise, issuing $200M worth of debt.” More. (link)

During the 40 Major League Baseball playoff games leading up to the World Series, German apparel company Strauss’ decal on all batting helmets has driven just more than $8M in equivalent media value (EMV), according to SBJ’s David Broughton, who notes the company’s logo was on the TV screen for approximately 3 hours and 37 minutes during live game coverage, earning more than $6.8M in EMV, and garnered more than $1M from 5 hours and 16 minutes of additional screen time from TV highlights and sports talk programming. Broughton adds: “Depending on the number of total games the Dodgers and Blue Jays play in the World Series, Strauss is projected to earn a range of $13.6M to $17.8M in media value during the postseason.” (link)

United Talent Agency’s Gen Z marketing conference, ZCON, underscored rising Gen Z digital fatigue and a swing to “IRL” connection, according to AdAge’s Gillian Follett, who notes that  81% of Gen Zers report fatigue and 47% still spend 2-4 hours on social media daily but want those communities extended offline. UTA Next Gen’s Ziad Ahmed: “Social media used to be social. The idea was that you had a platform to connect with your friends. Now, it’s…like going to the movie theater. You’re consuming professional entertainment. The social might live in the DMs or group chats, but we’ve really disaggregated ‘social’ from ‘media.’ And I don’t think we’re talking enough about what we’ve lost in that.” For their part, brands are pivoting to creator-led, entertainment formats that fit shorter, intentional sessions, and Amazon Head of Entertainment and Content Marketing Hannah Broadhurst said: “Our strategy is really…finding these stories and formats that already have credibility with an audience or…partnering with the right creators and really finding that place for our brand to play a role. The bar is so high now for what it takes to engage and entertain an audience. So, we’re trying to really meet that moment by finding those frameworks and shows that resonate.” (link)

Quad CMO Josh Golden, former MoneyLion CMO Cynthia Kleinbaum Milner and Convince & Convert Founder Jay Baer join Monday’s Michelle Golladay on The Bottom Line podcast to discuss brand vs. performance. Monday suggests allocating 40-60% of the budget towards brand building (vs. a traditional baseline of 30%), but Golden emphasizes the focus should be and always has been on nurturing both. “You have to brand and you’ve got to do demand, and if you don’t do them in concert with each other, it won’t feel authentic. So, it has to feel unified. Done in concert, it can have at least a 2x multiplier on brand plus demand or brand times demand is even higher if you do one or the other.” Kleinbaum Milner agrees and adds that everything should be measured. “You can measure awareness efforts. You just can’t measure them with the same KPI as an SEM ad or a display ad that you can click and you can make a purchase. So it is our job as CMOs to educate the CEOs and the rest of our organization on the effectiveness or on how our funnel is working and why we are deciding to run ads based on a CPM basis and not based on acquisition or a demand action. … I think AI is the moment in which CMOs will be able to measure the full funnel.” (link)

Quotes & Notes…

➤ Instagram Reels advertising is on track to be larger than the entire U.S. television ad industry, according to LightShed Partner/TMT Analyst Rich Greenfield, who notes Meta Founder Mark Zuckerberg “just said Reels revenues is now over $50B annually. U.S. TV advertising is ~$65B and shrinking.” (link)

➤ Reddit/Seven Seven Six Ventures Founder Alexis Ohanian on AI and personal leverage: “Super-intelligence is now commoditized. Whatever your thoughts are on AI, at the end of the day, this is the worst it’s ever going to be. The ability for all of us to now tap into, in real time, PhD-level intelligence is trivial and that is a modern miracle. For people who are high agency, for people who are high curiosity, for people who are high getting things done, you have just been gifted superpowers. One of the best investments you can make is actually in yourself.” (link)

➤ Heineken will no longer serve as beer sponsor of the UEFA Champions League after a 30-year run. The Athletic’s Matt Slater reports the world’s biggest brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev is in exclusive talks with UC3, the joint venture between UEFA and Europe’s leading clubs. Heineken still has two years to run on its most recent three-year deal, which is worth $139M per year, but AB InBev has reportedly offered $232M a year to secure a six-year contract that would start in 2027. Slater offers more context: “While this is clearly a huge win for Europe’s top clubs, it will also be seen as vindication of UC3’s decision to give Relevent Football Partners the global contract for marketing UEFA’s club competitions, another move that brought a 30-plus-year relationship to a dramatic end, as Swiss-based TEAM Marketing had been UEFA’s partner since 1992.” (link)

➤ Chipotle has cut its outlook for the year as diners pulled back from eating out, a warning sign for consumer spending. The company now sees sales for the full year slipping in the low-single digit range from a year earlier, and CEO Scott Boatwright says the “consumer slowdown is really affecting our business in a meaningful way.” (link)

➤ Hermès Artistic Director Pierre-Alexis Dumas centers the brand on desirability with meaning, insisting Hermès must “change all the time” to stay itself—and flatly rejects AI as a substitute for human craft. “It’s all about the human touch. Yes, you can program a machine. But what the machine doesn’t have is feelings. It doesn’t have consciousness. It’s not aware of what it’s doing. It’s just doing what it’s supposed to do. … You’re talking to someone working for a company with over 7,000 craftsmen. No. I would not do it. Over my dead body.” (link)

➤ KFC U.S. President Catherine Tan-Gillespie: “The Colonel would not be happy about our market share.” The Wall Street Journal takes a look at how the chain plans to win customers back. (link)