The NBA wants to triple the value of its media rights — and hopes a midseason tournament will spice up the package.

The league is drawing inspiration from European soccer as it outlines the midseason contest.

• Current discussions revolve around an eight-team tournament with three single-elimination rounds.
• Players would be incentivized with a reward of $1 million per player on the winning team. 
• The WNBA is piloting the concept this season with a $500,00 prize pool. The tournament will be sponsored by Google and broadcast by Amazon.

On the cusp of its next set of broadcast deals, the NBA is targeting a $75 billion price tag over nine years, an impressive leap from the $24 billion in deals it’s currently locked into with Disney and WarnerMedia. The league is also in the midst of a five-year, $1.5 billion deal with Tencent to stream games in China.

NBA broadcasts on ABC, ESPN, and TNT averaged 1.32 million viewers this season, down 25% from the 1.75 million average of the 2018-2019 season.

A midseason tournament could raise the stakes and help reverse that downward trend, but the league will need buy-ins from 20 of its 30 teams and the NBPA to proceed. This year’s play-in tournament — another format experiment — was a runaway ratings success.

However, teams are wary of trimming the regular season to 78 games from 82 to accommodate the midseason contest. Pre-pandemic regular season games each brought in $2.5-$4 million for the home team.

Atletico Madrid agreed to a $216.9 million capital increase with U.S. investment manager Ares Management. 

Ares will receive a 33.96% stake in Spain’s LaLiga champions.

Atletico’s debt reportedly reached $1.2 billion following the 2019-20 season, however, investing in Atletico could pay off. LaLiga was the only top-five league in Europe to report positive results last season. 

The league generated record revenue of $5.96 billion in 2019-2020, compared to $5.32 billion the season before. 

Ares has approximately $227 billion in assets under management and has previously attempted to establish itself within the world’s most popular sport.

• Last year, the investment manager backed Kapital Football Group, a soccer-focused holding company, during its attempt to acquire Southampton FC.
• Failure to agree to a price with club majority owner Gao Jisheng forced KFG and Ares to look elsewhere. 
• KFG and Ares are also considering investments in clubs from Brazil, Portugal, and Belgium. 

ESPN recently reached an eight-year broadcasting rights deal for all 380 LaLiga matches per season, with coverage slated to kick off in August 2021.

LaLiga is also home to Barcelona FC — the only sports team to surpass $1 billion in annual revenue — despite financial woes from the pandemic and the highest salary bill in Europe.

With Wimbledon underway and the Tokyo Olympics coming up, July should be a high point for tennis fans — but, as we learned in the pandemic, nothing is guaranteed.

A number of tennis’ biggest stars, including Rafael Nadal, Dominic Thiem, Simona Halep, Serena Williams, and Naomi Osaka will be absent from at least one of the events due to mental health, family obligations, injuries, or COVID-19 protocols. 

The absence of big names could lead to a colossal waste of broadcast opportunities.

• NBC is paying roughly $8 billion for Olympics broadcasting rights.
• ESPN struck a 12-year deal for U.S. Wimbledon rights in 2011 after NBC’s $13 million, four-year deal expired.
• BBC announced in 2016 — the year Andy Murray’s second Wimbledon win reached 13.3 million viewers in the U.K. — an extension to broadcast Wimbledon into 2024. 

Osaka and Williams — the world’s highest-paid female athletes — averaged 1.41 million viewers on ESPN2 during their most recent match at the Australian Open. The entire telecast was the most-watched Australian Open window of any kind since 2017.

Wimbledon will receive $141 million in insurance for last year’s canceled tournament, though for the last 17 years it has paid a $1.9 million insurance premium. This year’s total prize purse was cut by 5% to $49.4 million.

The month-long Euro 2020 championship continues over the next couple of weeks before the final takes place on July 11.

You won’t see anyone in a Chinese jersey on-field, but China is heavily involved. 

Chinese businesses are capitalizing on Euro 2020, attracting new customers and gaining exposure in existing markets.

• Alibaba-affiliate Alipay agreed in 2018 to an eight-year partnership with UEFA that’s worth about $238 million.
• By 2025, home appliance company Hisense, another sponsor of this year’s tournament, hopes to generate half its revenue, a projected $23.5 billion, from overseas.

Two billion people watched the last Euro championship in 2016, and the numbers look promising this year, too.

The tournament is averaging 965,000 U.S. viewers per game, a 33% increase from five years ago. Four matches from this year’s competition have already made it to the top 10 in all-time Euro viewership.

Until China produces an international-level soccer team — which it is actively working to accomplish over the next decade — sponsoring events in other countries may be the best bet for the country’s businesses.