Friday Dump 🥟 - Political gambling, WNBA expansion, World Series ratings

Get out and VOTE for…Friday Dump 🥟 

Each Friday, we’ll breakdown 3 sports business stories that have caught our eye throughout the week. They will be assembled in the following format:

🔴 - Stories that make us stop, think, and question.

🟡 - Stories with a hint of risk and unpredictability.

🟢 - Stories that make us feel good to go and empowered.

Roses are red, violets are blue, get yo ass to the ballot box.

🔴 From political betting to sports gambling. Don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of this company, because honestly, it’s the first time we’ve come across them in our “database”. Polymarket is a crypto-powered platform that was first used as a political prediction market that has now jumped into political betting. The platform reported that users have placed $2.7B in bets over whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris will be elected president next Tuesday. Now, unfortunately Polymarket doesn’t permit U.S. users to bet on politics, but I think we can all come to the conclusion that not all $2.7B are from international users. People in the U.S. end up finding a workaround. But now, the company is starting to think about what it will look like once the ballots have officially been counted.

• Polymarket was founded in 2020 (backed by VCs including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund), the company tried to launch electoral betting in the U.S. before being forced offshore by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in early 2022 — it’s why we don’t see sports betting companies like DraftKings, FanDuel, MGM, etc. dip into political betting.

• And because the company doesn’t want to wait another 4 years of billions of dollars to be traded on their platform, they decided the next best step was into the sports gambling market.

  • The whole point of this new-age betting service will be based on Polymarket’s predicted markets model.

    • With traditional sports betting, the bookmaker makes the odds after it compiles and analyzes team and player data, then determines at what line it can attract a roughly equal amount of money on either side of the bet…obviously the goal is to ensure that, the house wins.

    • With Polymarket, however, no one is setting the odds. Instead, prediction markets use event contracts, which ask whether an event will happen by a specific date: “yes or no”. Will Jake Paul beat Mike Tyson? Will Georgia win the college football championship? Will the Celtics repeat as NBA champions?

🟡 Higher viewership, more expansion opportunities. You get a team! You get a team! Oh and you guys get a team! That’s kind of what it seems like now that the WNBA is in high growth mode. Just a year ago, the WNBA was essentially a penny stock. With the increase in competition, Caitlin Clark’s popularity, and an ingest of cash when it comes to media rights, the WNBA is a officially a booming stock! And with this increase in popularity and cash comes a want to grow more as a league. How might you do that? Expansion baby! The WNBA aims to add another expansion team by the 2028 season — and there is no shortage of eager potential owners. The league is already preparing to welcome 3 expansion franchises over the next two years, but WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert has said the league is evaluating up to “12 cities.” Let’s review who else might be interested in joining ownership groups to bid on the WNBA’s next team…

• Kansas City (Patrick Mahomes): The NFL superstar and his wife are already part owners of the NWSL’s KC Current. On Thursday, Mahomes called the decision to invest in a WNBA team a “no-brainer” given the league’s success over the past few seasons. Mahomes is also in the ownership group of MLB’s Royals and MLS club Sporting KC.

• St. Louis (Jayson Tatum): The Celtics star has agreed to join a group looking to bring a team to his home city. The 2023 NBA collective bargaining agreement included a rule allowing players the ability to own up to 4% of a WNBA franchise.

• Milwaukee (Bucks ownership): The NBA owners have placed a bid for a WNBA franchise, according to Wisconsin Public Radio. It’s unclear which of the several majority owners of the Bucks — which includes Browns owner Jimmy Haslam — have a hand in the bid.

• Jacksonville (Donna Orender): The WNBA’s president from 2005 to 2010 told Sports Business Journal in September that she has joined an ownership group aiming to bring a team back to Florida.

• Orlando (Magic front office): SBJ also reported in September the NBA franchise is “studying” the WNBA’s business model. The city had the Orlando Miracle for ~4 seasons before they relocated to Connecticut.

• Denver (Robert Cohen, Navin Dimond, and Ashley Dimond): Commissioner Engelbert visited Denver last August to assess the city as an expansion possibility. In 2023, The Denver Post reported the interested group included Cohen, chairman and CEO of IMA Financial Group; and the Dimond family, who runs Stonebridge Companies, a hospital and hotel firm.

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🟢 Baseball might be back. Just as we were punching out our Fox article in time to see the Yankees choke away a 5-run lead in the bottom of the 5th inning, no less than a couple hours later did the Dodgers put the finishing touches on the series to win their 8th Fall Classic! It’s no shock the Dodgers are the big winners of October, but let’s not forget to give MLB their flowers. Fox Sports said the series averaged 15.8M viewers across all network platforms — that’s 74% higher than last year’s matchup between the Rangers and Diamondbacks. So let’s break it down by game, because both series lasted 5 total games:

• Game 1 (Oct. 25): 15.2M viewers.

• Game 2 (Oct. 26): 13.8M viewers. Important to note, this game fell on a Saturday, competing against a full slate of college football.

• Game 3 (Oct. 28): 13.6M viewers. This gave the MLB a rare head-to-head win over the NFL’s Monday Night Football game between the New York Giants and Pittsburgh Steelers.

• Game 4 (Oct. 29): 16.7M viewers. Until Game 5, this was the most-watched MLB game since Game 7 of the 2019 World Series.

• Game 5 (Oct. 30): 18.6M viewers. The Dodgers’ clinching game was up by 58% from last year’s Game 5. The game peaked at a whopping 21.3M viewers in the 9th inning as Los Angeles closed out the dramatic, comeback victory.