After his seventh Super Bowl win, Tom Brady is widely viewed as the best player the NFL has ever seen. With that settled, Brady has drawn comparisons to greats across other sports.

One debate is especially prominent: is Brady or Serena Williams the greatest athlete of all time? Williams is currently seeking her 24th Grand Slam title at the Australian Open, an event she once won while pregnant.

What’s less debated is their respective business acumen, but you could spark an argument there as well. Both are quite active as investors and entrepreneurs.

• Brady has founded two media companies, Religion of Sports and 199 Productions, which launched in 2020. He also started TB12, a packaged meal company geared toward athletes, and invested in the Series B round for watchmaker Hodinkee.
• Serena’s personal investments include Impossible Foods, Bumble, and carbon offset market Pachama. She is also the Chief Sports Officer for Aston Martin, and a board member of three companies including SurveyMonkey.
• Williams’ investment firm, Serena Ventures, has made at least ten investments since mid-2018, many in companies focused on women’s products and services.

In an interview with the New York Times, Williams agreed with Brady’s sentiment that his favorite title is the next one. “That would absolutely be my answer. Because otherwise you’re living off of what you’ve already did.”

When Brady and Williams decide to live off what they’ve already done, they’ll have plenty to work with.

Williams has netted over $92 million in tournament winnings. That, along with endorsements from the likes of Nike, Gatorade, Beats, Chase and more, have helped bring her net worth up to $225 million.

Brady, meanwhile, has raked in over $263 million in contracts from the Patriots and Bucs, and at least $140 million from endorsements.

Pickleball has emerged as the fastest-growing sport in America, with more than 3.5 million players across the country. 

Birthed in the 1960s, the game combines elements of ping-pong, badminton, and tennis. It’s become a trendy way to get exercise as people seek alternatives to closed gyms.

From 2016-2019, pickleball’s participation rate increased by 9.7%, with people 65 and older accounting for one-fifth of all players. Numbers from 2020 are not yet released.

Pickleball has gained enough momentum to attract endorsers and broadcasting contracts. 

• Last year, the Professional Pickleball Association announced an agreement with ESPN, which will see the network air all of the league’s 2021 tournaments.  
• In 2018, racquet maker Selkirk Sport signed Tyson McGuffin, the world’s top-ranked pickleball player, to an endorsement deal. Terms were not disclosed.

The accessibility of pickleball has made it attractive to a broad swath of the public. 

“Pickleball still has that backyard, beer-drinking sports feel,” said McGuffin. “Coming from playing college tennis and pro tennis, it is so much more enjoyable.”

The final match of the World Pickleball Championship aired on CBS Sports on Sunday. It was the first pickleball tournament with $100,000 in cash prizes and generated an estimated $1 million for the local Punta Gorda, Fla. economy.

Mark Cuban is getting back into audio.

The Dallas Mavericks owner is a co-founder of Fireside, a “next-gen” podcasting platform that will take aim at the live audio space when it launches sometime this year.

Fireside differs from popular audio app Clubhouse by allowing users to natively record conversations; it also reportedly plans to curate its selection of public speakers and offer creators the opportunity to monetize.

“Today we say goodbye to current media platform limitations created by one-way conversations, a lack of interactivity, and non-existent analytics,” co-founder Falon Fatemi wrote in an email to potential creative partners.

Live conversation apps are a hot commodity right now.

• Clubhouse raised $100 million in a Series B round led by Andreesen Horowitz at a reported valuation of $1 billion.
• Betty Labs, creator of sports-focused audio app Locker Room, raised $9.3 million in Google Ventures-led seed funding.
• Twitter is testing an audio chat feature called Spaces.

Cuban’s previous foray into audio ended with he and Todd Wagner’s $5.7 billion sale of Broadcast.com to Yahoo in 1999. He purchased the Mavericks for $285 million the next year. The team is now worth $2.58 billion.

The world’s biggest athletes continue to team up with new sports drink companies.

Ready Nutrition, which makes protein drinks, powder and snacks, announced earlier this month that it’s coming to grocery stores with help from investors like two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo. Two-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year Aaron Donald co-owns the company.

Antetokounmpo and Donald helped develop the company’s products. “That’s valuable information from two elite athletes with two different body types,” said founder and president Pat Cavanaugh. “We’re not trying to be number one this year. We’re trying to learn.”

A growing list of athletes have recently backed similar products.

• Bodyarmor announced NBA and WNBA players Trae Young, Kemba Walker and Sabrina Ionescu, and NFL players Drew Lock, CeeDee Lamb and Christian McCaffrey, as partners in August.
• BioSteel added several sports ambassadors in October, including Atlanta Braves pitcher Mike Soroka, sportscasters Erin Andrews and Amanda Balionis and personal trainer Brittany Matthews — making her a partner alongside fiancé Patrick Mahomes.
• Gatorade signed NBA All-Star Damian Lillard and golfer Matthew Wolff in December.

Cavanaugh says Ready Nutrition will target Cleveland, Columbus and Donald’s hometown of Pittsburgh initially, but has plans for a national campaign.

PepsiCo-owned Gatorade still maintains a more than 70% share of the sports drink market.