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Good Thursday Morning. Here’s the rundown of this week’s Sports Business Playbook:

• 📰 This Week’s Topic: We close the book on a successful Paris Olympics. Before moving onto 2028, let’s look back at the business success of Paris 2024 through three key metrics.

• 🤯 “Whoa of the Week”: The NFL valuations are here and they are huge

• 💪 Weekly Reminders that Sports are Awesome: A hero’s welcome in Botswana, and one of the grossest sponsorship deals ever.

Hey team,

The 2024 Paris Olympics just wrapped up this past weekend, and they were a return to normal for the Games, which had been plagued by challenging time zones, geopolitical tensions, and the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic the past few cycles.

Barring a few oddities with the decisions around having the swimming portion of the triathlon in the potentially unsafe Seine River and the one hit wonder of breaking (there will never be another Raygun), this year’s Olympics was a smashing success from start to finish.

Now, the Games have concluded, and the torch was passed to LA28 in the most American way possible — if Tom Cruise ziplining down from the top of the stadium and taking the American flag out of the stadium on a motorcycle followed by a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert doesn’t get your patriotic juices flowing, then I can’t help you.

As we close the chapter on Paris 2024, let’s look at the business success of this year’s event through three key metrics.

32.2 million

That’s the average number of daily viewers on NBC owned platforms across the first two weeks of the Games (and I would expect this number to go higher given the exciting gold medal basketball and soccer matches that took place on the final days plus the high-profile closing ceremony).

It’s truly astounding to see the stark contrast optically and energetically between this year and the Tokyo Games from 2021, and the numbers tell the same story.

This year’s Games had a 76% higher audience than Tokyo, and it was also the first time that NBC’s big bet with using its streaming service, Peacock, as the flagship for the Olympics paid off.

The streaming platform had over 19.1 billion minutes of Olympics content viewed, which was more than the 16.8 billion minutes watched on the service for all previous Olympics, winter and summer, combined.

This growth, coupled with the strong linear numbers, resulted in NBC easily surpassing the then-record $1.25 billion it made in advertising revenue back in 2021.

As I mentioned in a previous edition, the good times will likely keep rolling for NBC — the Winter Games will have a strong showing in Milan-Cortina in ‘26 before the behemoth LA28 Games coming two years later.

$37,000

That’s the bonus that the U.S. expected to pay to its gold medal winners. Silver gets $22,000, and bronze gets $15,000.

Interestingly, this is lower than other countries, who reward their medalists with even higher payouts. This is largely due to volume — in the U.S.' case, if it paid out $200,000 to gold medalists like Morocco, Malaysia, or Serbia, it would be paying out $8 million in bonuses for the 40 gold medals, and that’s before you add in the incremental $200k for each of the gold medalists in all of the team sports. Back of the napkin math would suggest this number would likely end up closer to $20 million all in.

All of that being said, medalists in the United States and beyond can generate additional revenue streams.

Some governing bodies provide additional prize money for their respective sports, and many medalists can use their fame and exposure to sign lucrative sponsorship deals of varying sizes.

In my opinion, nobody has a better setup than the Filipino gymnast who won gold, though. Cash prizes, more funds via donations, a condo, free buffets for life, and even free colonoscopies apparently!

9.5 million

That’s the number of tickets sold (out of 10 million) to the events over the two and a half week event, according to the IOC’s official site.

Strong numbers across the board and there were sellouts for the highly publicized events. That being said, there were also a number of attendance records for less traditional sports:

• Rugby 7s – over 530,000 spectators

• Handball – nearly 500,000

• Beach volleyball – nearly 450,000

There was large attendance at both events and watch parties/fan fests, with over 6 million visitors going to “celebration sites” around the country.

Three of the biggest sites — Paris Hôtel de Ville, Parc Georges-Valbon and Marseille – averaged between15,000 to 20,000 people per day.

This felt like a return to normal for the Olympics, and the energy around Paris was palpable. Despite some grumbling by locals leading up to the Games, Paris came through and put together a truly one of a kind event that reset the tone for the Olympics and has the business side back on track.

🤯 “Whoa” of the Week

Insane, mind-blowing things constantly happen in the sports business world. Here was my favorite of the past week.

1. New Sportico valuations dropped for the NFL, and they are astounding. The Cowboys become the first team ever to reach $10 billion, and the growth of the league, particularly within the last decade, is jaw dropping.

💪 Weekly Reminder that Sports are Awesome

This newsletter is, of course, mostly centered on the business side of sports and the things that happen off the field. That being said, it’s important to remember why we fell in love with sports in the first place, though.

This section is meant to highlight the amazing things that happened in sports this week that serve as that reminder.

1. A hero’s welcome in Botswana

2. Titans QB Will Levis — who famously puts mayonnaise in his coffee 😷 — now has a mayonnaise based cologne courtesy of Hellman’s.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what feedback you have.

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Until next time, sports fans!

-Alex