Bulls-of-the-Week
Hockey super agents Pat Brisson and J.P. Barry of CAA Sports LLC are operating in a robust bull market. As reported this week by Puckpedia, they have 146 active player contracts between the two of them. In terms of salary cap space occupied by their clients, CAA represents almost five teams worth of players, with Brisson holding the key to more than three teams equivalence himself.
Brisson is riding US$1.4B in active contracts for 83 clients and a combined salary cap hit of US$255M while Barry represents 63 players, US$603M in active contracts and cap hits totalling US$136M. That clearly makes CAA the biggest agency in professional hockey and locks in Brisson and Barry as two of the three most productive player agents in the NHL. Brisson’s annual commissions would be close to $10M in contract commissions alone, right up there with some of his highest-paid player clients.
Among those high-priced clients are Jack and Luke Hughes of the New Jersey Devils, two of the three athletes featured on the cover of EA Sports NHL 25. The third player on the trilogy cover is Vancouver Canucks captain Quinn Hughes, who is represented by Barry. That gives CAA Sports all three of the NHL 25 cover stars and a share of yet another revenue stream.
Meanwhile, Netflix is already seeing the impact of the rights it’s won for this year’s NFL Christmas Day doubleheader, which will be produced in collaboration with CBS Sports. The NFL package is one of the reasons the Netflix advertising tier has spiked 150 per cent this summer, growing from US$23M in January to US$40M now.
Yet with the biggest soccer leagues in the world opening play, Cristiano Ronaldo has been hotter than anyone and anything in the business of international football. His new YouTube channel made its debut this week and became the most-viewed on the planet. In his first day, Ronaldo posted a dozen videos and gained more than 24 million subscribers. That’s more than the 21.5M YouTube channel subscribers held by FIFA itself (21.5M) and comfortably more than the three hottest YouTube clubs in soccer: FC Barcelona (17.9M), Real Madrid (14.9M) and Liverpool FC (10.2M). Ronaldo came into the week already ranked as the world’s most popular social media athlete, with 700M followers on Instagram and X. Access to the world’s 2.7B YouTube users will only elevate his global reach.
Bears-of-the-Week
It hasn’t been a good summer for either of Major League Baseball’s two 1977 expansion cousins; the Toronto Blue Jays and the Seattle Mariners. The Jays simply never gained any traction from the get-go and were essentially out of contention before the MLB All-Star Game; never a good thing in a business that is built on a nine-month, 162-game marathon regular schedule. The Mariners, on the other hand, appeared home free going into the second half of the season and at one point held a 10-game bulge on the Houston Astros in the American League West. That’s what makes their August so disappointing for the M’s and their fans. It all culminated in the firing this week of field manager Scott Servais. It’s a peculiar move in terms of timing, to say the least, with the Mariners going into the weekend 5.5 games behind the Astros.
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