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Baltimore Ravens Chief Growth & Innovation Officer Moon Javaid covers several topics on the Access Holdings podcast, including private equity’s impact on teams…

➤ “When I worked in private equity, I did a study of all private equity firms and tried to understand why private equity had such strong returns. There was a meta study that talked through all the different reasons private equity and VC could add value, but the number one reason that was determined was the board. It was because boards were present and they were driving the leadership teams, asking a variety of different questions and pushing them in different ways. It wasn’t necessarily that it was capital. It wasn’t necessarily that it was networking introductions. It was really the value of having the board there. … As we’ve started to get the investment from private equity and VC and the valuations rise, we’re going to need to see these businesses run a little bit more efficiently and drive some more revenue. I think that value is going to come from the boards pushing leadership teams and ownership teams to adopt some of those practices.” 

➤ Javaid also talks about the next frontier of monetization and points to “probably digital streaming, number one – where we go with broadcast rights and how the games are broken out. I’d probably say second to that might be international, as we think about expanding into more and more international markets from a league perspective. … From a team perspective, I’ve had this line that food and beverage is the final frontier of hospitality. I think teams have not focused, in general, as much on hospitality as they potentially could. We can drive these experiences more.” 

➤ Javaid goes on to talk about buying real estate and/or having adjacent sports properties that drive revenue beyond game days. “As I look at new premium products: do you want to add in a suite to your building? A club? In LA they added a standing-room-only section called ‘the Wall’ that’s kind of intriguing for the everyday fan. Do you want to add in communal experiences adjacent to your stadium, like adding in bars or activation areas that simultaneously help to monetize and help build the energy and the footprint around your building? … I think you’re going to see a lot more of the adjacent spaces. Non-game-day or hospitality – that’s the area I tend to gravitate to, and that’s what gets me excited locally: making sure our fans are super excited, they continue to come to our buildings, and having those premium products for the fans that really want it.” 

➤ Check out the full pod. (link)

Margins of Victory host Craig Pintens (LMU AD) welcomed Crakes Media Principal, Pat Crakes, to provide a stark assessment of the sports media landscape:

➤ The Rise of Sports Priority: The pay TV bundle is becoming increasingly sports-centric as entertainment content migrates to streaming platforms. This structural change has driven an increase in intrinsic value for previously undervalued sports, making them more valuable to the overall bundle.

➤ Revenue vs. Reach Dilemma: When evaluating new media deals, athletic departments face a binary choice: Revenue over Reach or Reach over Revenue. Opting for a streaming silo may maximize immediate revenue, but it always comes with a price tag of reducing overall exposure.

➤ NFL Model of Disruption: Fox's successful entry into sports in the early '90s was achieved by taking a huge risk—spending heavily to upgrade its local affiliate network's footprint—thereby changing the economic structure of the media business and disrupting the established Big Three networks.

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

Revenue teams are leaning hard into incentive compensation as macro volatility reshapes how organizations motivate sellers, according to Revenue Brew’s Beck Salgado. Safety tech company Axon President Josh Isner says the company’s most important rule is no commission caps, arguing limits are demotivating and undermine trust. Isner also brings top sellers into annual plan reviews to secure buy-in: “When they go to all their colleagues…they’re saying, ‘I was in the room when we made this plan.’” Meanwhile, Brightspot Executive Chair Mike May highlights the rising importance of nonmonetary incentives, explaining that travel and experiences create “daydream value,” sparking motivation beyond cash. They also provide a “guilt-free splurge” compared to bonuses that get absorbed by bills. And for top performers, the biggest motivator may be “trophy value”: “If you want to brag…or notch something in your personal trophy case, it reaches that type of internal competitor.” (link)

Manchester United posted a £6.6M quarterly loss amid owner Jim Ratcliffe’s aggressive cost-cutting push, as revenues fell 2% to £140.3M due to the club’s absence from European competition. Bloomberg’s David Hellier notes Ratcliffe has raised ticket prices and slashed expenses — including eliminating up to 200 jobs, reducing London office operations, and even ending free staff lunches — in an ongoing attempt to reverse five straight years of annual losses. The club said it “continues to see the impact of operating cost and headcount reduction programs,” with total operating expenses down 7.1% and employee benefit costs down 8.2% to £73.6M. Despite the bottom-line loss, operating profit improved to £13M, up from a £7M loss the prior year, and employee costs as a percentage of revenue dropped from 56% to 52.5%. United reaffirmed full-year revenue guidance of £640M–£660M, though it remains far behind Real Madrid’s €1.19B haul last season. (link)

Disney will make a $1B equity investment in OpenAI and become a major customer under a new three-year licensing deal that will allow Sora users to generate videos featuring 200+ Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters starting next year. CEO Bob Iger calls the partnership a way to “extend the reach of our storytelling through generative AI, while respecting and protecting creators and their works.” Disney will also deploy ChatGPT internally and co-develop new AI tools and experiences with OpenAI. OpenAI has pledged “robust controls” to prevent illegal or harmful content and says users will gain “granular control” over character generation and also be able to use Disney IP in ChatGPT images. (link)

Meanwhile, OpenAI has named Slack CEO Denise Dresser as its first-ever CRO, and Revenue Brew’s Beck Salgado notes Dresser, a longtime Salesforce revenue leader before taking the helm at Slack, steps into the job as OpenAI positions itself as “the fastest-growing business platform in history” but still operates without a profit. Dresser’s charge: unify and optimize every revenue lever, restore confidence among business leaders, and guide OpenAI through its next commercial phase. As she put it: “I’ve spent my career helping scale category-defining platforms. … I’m looking forward to bringing that experience to OpenAI as it enters its next phase of enterprise transformation.” (link)

SportsVerse publisher Daniel Yaw-Miller observes the 2026 World Cup is shaping up to be “fashion’s biggest World Cup ever,” with Adidas and Nike preparing massive, highly stylized product pushes reminiscent of how the Paris Olympics elevated fashion’s role in global sport. Adidas, which unveiled products early and has created roughly 3K items for its tournament assortment, aims to score a cultural win in Nike’s home market, while Nike, seeking to “find its footing” again, is signaling the scale of its investment through drops like last week’s “Hollywood Keepers” goalkeeper-jersey collection. Both companies’ yet-unreleased on-field GK kits are described as “loud,” reflecting an emerging arms race in design and cultural positioning. Nike is also pouring resources into street-soccer culture, including a major Toma El Juego activation at Art Basel hosted by Travis Scott. (link)

Sports podcast network Blue Wire, which built its early audience around TikTokers and digital-native creators, is now accelerating a pivot toward athlete-hosted shows as it scales to roughly 20M monthly listeners across dozens of programs. Marketing Brew’s Alyssa Meyers notes that over the past two years, the platform has added D’Angelo Russell, Dwight Howard, Cam Newton and Michael Irvin, and Founder/CEO Kevin Jones. Jones describes the athlete-led podcasts as a cost-efficient endorsement vehicle for brands and a business model that lets athletes retain their IP while Blue Wire monetizes. Jones also says the company plans to expand into more live experiences and recruit women athletes and NIL creators, supported by a new partnership with Mogl. While football and basketball remain the network’s anchor sports, Blue Wire is also eyeing women’s sports and emerging digital-first leagues as it broadens beyond what Jones calls a “sports podcast network,” adding: “A lot of these NIL athletes are more entrepreneurial than college athletes five to 10 years ago. They already have some brand deal experience, or have some good ideas, or even have a production team around them. … You don’t have to be huge and on TV. If you have huge digital reach, we can bring sponsorships.” (link)

AdAge’s Gillian Follett reports that brands are increasingly embracing TikTok-style fan edits as a reliable way to reach Gen Z. Doritos intentionally shot its recent Walton Goggins campaign to enable a brand-made fan edit, which has now pulled more than 17M views. For Lionsgate, the strategy has become core to Gen Z marketing. Working with UTA’s Next Gen practice, the studio has amassed more than 300M views from commissioned fan edits, sometimes outperforming its official trailers. For instance, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping saw a fan edit draw 11M views vs. 9.5M for the teaser, and Lionsgate says the edits are translating directly into ticket sales for titles like The Long Walk, with commenters citing TikTok as the reason they bought tickets. The approach has become so effective that PepsiCo Foods CCO Chris Bellinger expects fan editors to emerge as a new class of influencers by 2026, valued for their ability to spark conversation, not just views. As Bellinger puts it: “I can buy a like or a view, but I can’t buy a comment or a share.” (link)

Instagram has introduced a new option allowing users to re-share any publicly posted Story to their own Stories feed, expanding a function previously limited to Stories in which users were tagged. The update mirrors Instagram’s repost tools for Reels and feed posts launched in August and is designed to simplify amplification while ensuring credit remains with the original creator. Social Media Today’s Andrew Hutchinson notes the move is part of Instagram’s broader effort to curb aggregator accounts and strengthen a healthier creator ecosystem, especially as original posting declines across social platforms and most users shift toward private DM engagement. The feature also opens new opportunities for brands, whose Stories can now be redistributed more widely through user re-shares. Hutchinson acknowledges some potential for misuse but says Instagram appears confident the tool will not overwhelm the platform. (link)