The National Football League is sipping on spirits for the first time ever in a new partnership with the world’s largest distiller, Diageo.

The deal — the NFL’s first with a liquor sponsor — is worth a reported $30 million per year. 

Roughly half the amount is for rights fees, and the deal does not cover the Super Bowl, per the Sports Business Journal. Diageo’s Guinness beer, however, will not be a part of the deal — Anheuser-Busch has held exclusive rights to beer advertising for the Super Bowl since 1975, with the duo’s last deal worth roughly $250 million per year.

With exclusive rights, Diageo will focus marketing on its Smirnoff vodka, Crown Royal whiskey, Captain Morgan rum, and Tanqueray gin brands across the NFL’s broadcast, digital, and social channels.

Wednesday’s announcement is the latest in a string of moves by the NFL to leverage the $97 billion U.S. spirits industry.

• May 2019: NFL announced the decision to allow promotion of alcohol brands using team and player images. 
• June 2017: The league began allowing spirit brands to advertise on game broadcasts, with a limit of four per game. 

Diageo, which has a market cap of $104.4 billion, was the first industry sponsor of NASCAR. It has ongoing deals with 12 NFL teams and aired the first spirits commercial after the league’s ban was lifted in 2019.

“What they’ve done from a responsibility standpoint to us, really stood head-and-shoulders above the other spirit companies,” said Nana-Yaw Asamoah, the NFL’s vice president of business development and sponsorship.

The top Spanish soccer league is selling off packages of one-to-two match weeks instead of offering a traditional deal that would encompass most or all of the season. The structure is modeled after a deal Amazon struck with the Premier League and could prove intriguing to the retail giant.

“A 20-game package or so would be tailor-made for Amazon,” analyst Minal Modha told Bloomberg.

La Liga’s main buyer of domestic rights, Telefonica SA, is demanding lower prices. That could present an opportunity for Amazon, which has been buying up soccer rights across Europe. 

• France’s Ligue de Football Professionnel, which runs Ligue 1 and Ligue 2, signed a $302.6 million per year deal with Amazon. In protest, Canal+ pulled out of its concurrent deal with LFP.
• In December, Amazon made inroads into Italy, with a deal to broadcast Champions League soccer in the 2021-2024 seasons and the UEFA Super Cup for a reported $96-108 million per season.
• The Premier League, which had historic losses of $1.4 billion for the 2019-2020 season, re-upped its three-year, $7 billion domestic broadcast deals with Amazon, BBC Sport, BT Sport, and Sky Sports. 

In May, La Liga agreed with ESPN on an eight-year deal worth around $1.2 billion for the U.S. rights to all 340 games the league plays each season.

Aside from Amazon, La Liga’s à la carte offer could lure other entrants to European soccer that might not be ready for a full-season package, such as Discovery.

RedBird Capital, the private investment firm with investments in the likes of YES Network and Fenway Sports Group, is looking to divest its 40% stake in OneTeam partners, a sports management firm focused on servicing player associations. 

OneTeam was launched by the NFLPA, MLBPA, and RedBird Capital in 2019. Its purpose is to oversee licensing agreements as well as help athletes maximize their name value, image, and likeness rights. 

The initial $125 million investment, made by RedBird in late 2019 for a 40% stake in OneTeam, equated to a post-money valuation of $312.5 million.

Since then, the Wall Street brass has indicated that the sports licensing business could be worth north of $2 billion — roughly six times the return on RedBirds initial capital.

OneTeam is at the head of the movement.

• In 2021, the NFLPA reported $33.89 million of revenue directly attributable to OneTeam.
• During the same period, the MLBPA reported attributable revenues of $13.4 million to OneTeamNew.
• Investors in OneTeam will likely see value in the potential from NIL, monetization through NFTs, and the existing licensing agreements in place. 

While MLBPA members have raised questions  concerning a conflict of interest with their ownership investment in Fenway Sports Group, the justification for an exit is likely due to the increased valuation and short-term investment horizon of the private equity firm.