The NFL has more to gain from the Super Bowl than ticket sales and broadcast deals as it increasingly invests in the hospitality business surrounding its major events.

Last month, league owners reportedly voted to grow its stake in On Location Events from 13.5% to nearly 45%.

The Endeavor-owned company packages tickets, hotels, and other offerings for the Super Bowl, Pro Bowl, Olympic and Paralympic Games, Rose Bowl, the NCAA Final Four, and tennis’ Grand Slam events.

• On Location’s Super Bowl bundles start at $5,950. Pro Bowl packages have a minimum price of $2,020.
• The NFL licenses 9,500 Super Bowl tickets to the company.

The NFL is exercising call options that reportedly value On Location at $482 million, based on a previous deal.

The On Location Shuffle

Launched in 2004, the events company was originally a division of the NFL. In 2015, it was taken over by a private equity consortium of RedBird Capital Partners, Bruin Sports Capital, the Carlyle Group, and the NFL’s investment arm 32 Equity.

Endeavor took a majority stake in the company in 2020 at a valuation of $660 million. The company paid $366.4 million in cash and acquired debt.

With its renewed investment, the NFL is buying back into the company it spun off seven years ago.

Peloton is expanding its footprint — literally. The fitness company known for its at-home treadmills and bikes unveiled its second pair of cycling shoes today.

The Altos, which retail for $145, are designed specifically for the Peloton Bike and Bike+, adding to Peloton’s growing list of products.

In the past few months, the company has added shadowboxing classes to its offerings, unveiled the $495 Peloton Guide — a device that connects to a TV with guided strength-training exercises — and began offering classes on Delta Air Lines.

Multiple reports suggest Peloton is working on a rowing machine, too.

Peloton’s Struggles

Despite its new products, Peloton has had its fair share of troubles recently.

• For 2021, Peloton’s Google Search trends showed a 30% drop year-over-year in the U.S.
• Searches for “cancel Peloton subscription” rose 809% after a character died following a Peloton workout in the premiere of “And Just Like That” on Dec. 9.
• In response, Peloton released an ad including the character, but it was taken down after claims of sexual assault were made against the actor.
• In November, Peloton filed lawsuits against Echelon and iFit over alleged patent infringement.

The new cycling shoes should add to Peloton’s revenue, which grew 6% to $805.2 million in Q1.

As the sports betting industry’s foothold in college sports grows, so do concerns about corrupt gambling. One major college sports company has created a product to help police it.

On Tuesday, Learfield announced a partnership with U.S. Integrity, a responsible sports wagering watchdog, to create a product to assist athletic departments with betting “monitoring, education, and advisory services.”

A few athletic departments have launched initiatives to support responsible betting. But Learfield’s program provides arguably the first major responsible gambling supervisor in the college sports space since betting operators first entered the industry.

• The program, called BetDetect, will offer athletic departments a way to conduct “integrity monitoring.”
• It will use data analysis to find “potentially suspicious wagering activity and irregular contest-level patterns.”
• U.S. Integrity has already worked with the Pac-12 and SEC.

“Schools want to avoid game manipulation, match-fixing, and other potentially nefarious behavior,” said Matthew Holt, CEO and co-founder of U.S. Integrity.

Bring On the Bets

Betting on Power 5 sports has become an industry worth $11 billion annually, according to U.S. Integrity data. This year’s College Football Playoff drew about $500 million worth of bets alone.

Sports wagering profits are flowing directly to schools, too, through department-wide sponsorship deals with betting operators — LSU and Colorado have already signed them.

Partnerships are even possible in the NIL space.

LinksDao aims to go beyond the world of crypto.

The decentralized autonomous organization’s founders are “creating a modern golf and leisure club” through the sale of NFTs and the eventual purchase of an actual golf course, according to LinksDao’s website.

The organization’s idea appears both popular and lucrative. In one day, LinksDao sold about 9,000 membership NFTs worth a total of about $11 million, per Golf.com.

• The NFTs “allow for community access, governance, a wide variety of perks, and games in the near term,” and are “the key” to membership at the future golf course, the website says.
• The company will reportedly use the funds to purchase the golf course.

To jump in now, potential buyers could look for one of the NFTs on the secondary market.

Finding a Home

It’s still unclear which golf course LinksDao will target — and how the group will work out several other logistics — but it appears many are interested in solving these issues.

The group currently has a Discord channel to choose a golf course that the company hopes to purchase and open by early 2023. The channel has more than 12,000 members, according to CoinDesk.

“There are obviously still a lot of uncertainties,” LinksDAO founder Mike Dudas told Golf.com. “But this is how startups work. People just usually aren’t privy to this much detail this early on.”