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The Valkyries Hit $100 Million in Revenue Before the Finals Even Start Feature image suggestion: a sold-out Chase Center during a Valkyries home game, or the WNBA Finals trophy The WNBA will crown a first-time champion this year. The Golden State Valkyries and Atlanta Dream meet in the Finals beginning October 17, a matchup that Sportico notes pairs the league's most valuable franchise with its least valuable one (Sportico). For a league that spent much of its history fightin

The timing gives this tournament extra pressure The Rugby League World Cup Kicks Off This Week With an Unusually Ambitious Format One of the biggest international events on the sports calendar starts in three days, and it will not get the same global spotlight as a soccer or cricket tournament. The 2026 Rugby League World Cup runs from October 15 to November 15, with 53 matches staged across Australia, Papua New Guinea, and New Zealand over 31 days (Superprof). It is the repl

Fanatics Is Preparing a $1 Billion Marketing Bet on Sports Gambling Fanatics started as a licensed merchandise company and has spent the last few years turning into something much larger. Now its chief executive, Michael Rubin, is signaling that the next phase involves taking on the biggest names in American sports betting with a marketing budget to match. Speaking to Bloomberg, Rubin said Fanatics could spend as much as 1 billion dollars on betting and gaming advertising in

Manchester City's Guilty Verdict Is a Sponsorship Scandal, Not Just a Football One Manchester City's long-running financial case reached its most consequential moment yet this week. An independent Premier League commission found the club guilty of all charges related to serious breaches of the league's financial rules over a nine-season period, along with the majority of charges tied to failing to cooperate with the league's investigation (Premier League, ESPN). The ruling cl

A Dramatic Comeback Just Gave the Presidents Cup Its Best Ratings in Years Golf's biennial team event wrapped up this past Sunday, September 27, with Team USA pulling off a dramatic comeback victory over the International squad at Medinah Country Club outside Chicago, winning 17 to 13 in the 16th edition of the Presidents Cup (Wikipedia, CBS Sports). It extended the United States' dominance in the event, which it has now won in all but one of the competition's editions, but t

After 70 Years in Paris, the Ballon d'Or Is Making a Calculated Move to London Football's most prestigious individual award is leaving home. The 2026 Ballon d'Or ceremony, the 70th edition of the award first presented by France Football in 1956, will take place on October 26 at the London Palladium, marking the first time in the trophy's history that the event has been staged outside Paris (Wikipedia, UEFA). For an award so closely tied to its French origins that its name lit

The NHL Opened Its Longest Season Ever Tonight, Here's the Marketing Behind It Hockey is back a full month early this year. The 2026-27 NHL season dropped the puck tonight, September 29, with an opening-night tripleheader broadcast exclusively on ESPN, kicking off the league's first 84-game campaign in more than three decades (NHL.com, ESPN Press Room). The earlier start isn't a scheduling accident, it's a direct consequence of the league's new collective bargaining agreement

UFC Ditched Pay-Per-View This Year, and It's Reshaping Combat Sports Marketing For decades, watching a big UFC card meant paying for it twice, once for a cable or streaming subscription, and again for the pay-per-view fee itself. That model officially ended this year. As part of a seven-year, 7.7-billion-dollar media rights agreement with Paramount, every UFC numbered event and Fight Night now streams live on Paramount+ at no additional cost, with select marquee fights simulc

Why NASCAR's Playoffs Are Quietly One of the Best Sponsorship Buys in Sports As the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs push toward the Championship 4 at Phoenix, the sport is leaning on a marketing asset most leagues can only dream of: fans who genuinely notice, trust, and reward the brands that sponsor it. That dynamic, more than any single ad campaign, is what continues to make NASCAR one of the more efficient places in sports for a brand to spend money, even as the sport's overall

MLB's Postseason Marketing Bet: More Sponsors, More Stars, More Screens Major League Baseball's 2026 postseason gets underway this week, with Wild Card Series beginning September 29 and Division Series play starting October 3, setting up a World Series slated to run from October 23 through as late as Game 7 on Halloween (MLB.com, Wikipedia). The Rays, Brewers, Dodgers, Yankees, Braves, and Red Sox have already clinched spots, and the field is rounding into shape as the league

The NBA's TV Deal Is Paying Off, and Opening Night Proves It The NBA tips off its 2026-27 season on October 20 with a three-game opening night slate on NBC, marking the second year of the league's new 11-year, 76-billion-dollar media rights agreement with Disney, NBCUniversal, and Amazon (NBA.com, CBS Sports). The night starts with an afternoon matchup between Eastern rivals Boston and Detroit, moves into a banner-raising ceremony at Madison Square Garden as the defending cha

Esports Marketing Has Quietly Become a Mainstream Sponsorship Category While traditional leagues chase broadcast ratings, a different kind of sports marketing battle has been playing out on gaming screens all year. Esports sponsorship has moved firmly out of its experimental phase in 2026, with tournament organizers posting record viewership numbers and a roster of sponsors that now looks a lot more like a mainstream sports property than the scrappy gaming scene of a decade a

Inside the Champions League's 870-Million-Pound Sponsorship Machine The UEFA Champions League's 2026-27 group phase kicked off this month, with Paris Saint-Germain chasing a record-equalling third consecutive title in the competition's expanded 36-team format (HITC). While the on-field storylines will unfold over the coming months, the commercial machinery behind Europe's premier club competition offers one of the clearest examples in global sports of how layered, tiered spon

The US Open Wrapped Up With Zverev, But the Real Story Was the Red Carpet The 2026 US Open closed out on Sunday, September 13, with Alexander Zverev overpowering American Ben Shelton 6-3, 7-6, 5-7, 6-2 to capture his second career Grand Slam title, extending American men's tennis' long wait for a home-grown major champion that now stretches back to Andy Roddick's 2003 win (CBS Sports). On the women's side, Elena Rybakina claimed the singles title earlier in the tournament, ad

College Football's New Marketing Playbook: Playoffs, Patches, and Sportsbooks College football is in full swing this September, and the sport's commercial landscape looks almost unrecognizable compared to just a few seasons ago. Between a massive new media rights deal, the arrival of commercial patches on jerseys, and sportsbook brands elbowing their way into the sponsorship conversation, this season marks one of the biggest shifts in how the sport is marketed and monetized i

How the NFL Is Marketing Its Return: Inside "The Season Is Your Stage" Football season is nearly back. The 2026 NFL season opens on September 9 with a rematch of last February's Super Bowl, as the defending champion Seattle Seahawks host the New England Patriots in the league's annual primetime Kickoff Game (NFL.com, Fast Company). Ahead of that opening whistle, the league has rolled out its official season campaign, and it says a lot about where sports marketing is headed wh

Inside the WNBA's Record-Breaking Sponsorship Season The WNBA is in the middle of its 30th season, and by nearly every commercial metric it is having its biggest year yet. What started as a modest sponsorship category just a few years ago has turned into one of the fastest-growing corners of sports marketing, with blue-chip brands now signing standalone, multiyear deals instead of treating the league as an afterthought bundled into broader NBA packages. From Potential to Proo

Why Every Brand Suddenly Wants a Logo on an F1 Car Formula 1 has spent the last several years transforming from a niche motorsport into one of the hottest properties in global marketing, and 2026 is shaping up to be the year that transformation becomes undeniable. Total global sponsorship spending in the sport is expected to exceed 3 billion dollars for the first time this year, up 15 percent from 2.5 billion dollars in 2025, according to Ampere Analysis (TheStreet, SportsPro

The Biggest Sports Marketing Story of 2026 Isn't a Sponsorship, It's a Creator For most of sports marketing's history, the biggest lever a brand could pull was a sponsorship logo on a jersey or a stadium banner. That era isn't over, but it is no longer the whole story. Heading into the back half of 2026, the clearest signal in the industry is that athletes have become independent media companies in their own right, and brands are restructuring their budgets to follow them the

Inside the US Open's Billion-Dollar Sponsorship Playground The tennis season's final major is underway in Queens. The 2026 US Open kicked off Fan Week on August 23 with Arthur Ashe Kids' Day, followed by qualifying and the Mixed Doubles Championship, ahead of a main draw that runs from August 30 through the men's singles final on September 13 (Tennis Majors). At 22 days total, this is the longest edition in the tournament's nearly 150-year history (Tennis Majors). While the o