The Greatest Fight in History ⚡️🥊
Plus Premier League blocks huge deal for Chelsea and Nike secures the future of Basketball.
Welcome to Athletic Interest.
It is said that when billionaires get bored they kidnap random people and force them into cage fights. As it turns out, in reality, they start fighting each other.
Yes, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg could actually be about to face off in a cage fight.
So, how did we get here?
On Wednesday, Musk called out Zuckerberg on Twitter for attempting to create his own Twitter alternative.
Another user warns Musk to be careful because Zuckerberg knows Jiu-Jitsu.
Musk responds that he was up for a cage fight with the Meta founder.
Zuckerberg takes to Instagram to accept the fight, asking Musk to name the location.
Initially, this appeared to be more of a publicity stunt, with most people expecting either Musk or Zuckerberg to back out and move on.
But UFC President Dana White claims to have spoken to both sides and insists that they are very serious.
Watching two high-profile billionaires beat each other has the potential to break some viewership records, especially when one of the names on the fight card is Elon Musk.
To make things even more interesting, Mark Zuckerberg is a medal-winning Jiu-Jitsu fighter, while Elon Musk is untrained, older, and out of shape. If anything this makes the fight easier to sell, with millions of people willing to part with their money at the prospect of Elon Musk being thrown around a ring for several minutes.
Dana White has already predicted that this fight will easily eclipse the record set by Floyd Mayweather and Connor Mcgregor in 2017 when 50 million people watched in the U.S. alone.
This spectacle will likely feature as a Pay Per View event with the proceeds being donated to charity.
In some ways, this fight makes a lot of sense. The two billionaire tech moguls have been in a metaphorical fight for years, first for the top places on the Forbes rich list and more recently in the field of social media.
Taking that confrontation to the physical is perhaps an odd move, but this is not the first time that a major business dispute has been settled through physical confrontation.
In 1992, Southwest Airlines had a dispute with another airline over which company could use the term “Plane Smart” in their company motto.
The CEOs decided to resolve the dispute with an arm-wrestling match. Southwest Airlines ended up losing in front of a 4,500-strong crowd but was able to win back the motto in the end by donating $5k to charity.
👹 Manchester United’s owners are no strangers to controversy, but could they have made their biggest mistake yet?
It may not seem like a big deal, but United’s third kit next season will not have their normal logo, but instead will just feature a single red devil.
Changing the logo of a football club is probably one of the easiest ways to unite fans in hatred. When Leeds and Everton tried to do it recently, they had to backtrack after fan protests.
United’s recent change has been met with some negative reactions, with a selection of fans labeling the decision a disgrace. According to reports, Adidas and United made this change for aesthetic purposes and to give the kit a clean modern feel.
This is exactly the dilemma faced by most football clubs. Do they attempt to modernise the logos and feel the wrath of the fans, or stick with the old and potentially damage the club’s long-term marketability?
In this week’s video, we delve deeper into this dilemma and understand how the rise of fashionable football shirts has put your club logo in a prime position for modernisation.
🍎 Sports Business Bites
❌ Premier League block major deal for Chelsea
Talking of major dilemmas, Chelsea were set to announce Paramount Plus as their new shirt sponsor in a deal that could have reached between £45-50 million per season, that was until the Premier League blocked the deal in the final moments.
Why? Apparently, the Premier League was trying to protect the interests of its broadcast partners in the U.S. and the U.K. More specifically, the league did not want to force the likes of Sky, BT, and NBC to advertise the logo of a rival streaming company.
This places Chelsea in an odd position. Their front-of-shirt sponsorship is worth a minimum of £40 million per season, a huge payday in a season without UCL football, but there is only one company that seems willing to make that payment…the online casino Stake. This deal has angered Chelsea fans, with 77% of the respondents to a survey by the Supporter’s Trust coming out against the deal. Not forgetting that betting sponsorship has been considered so bad for football, that it will be banned from club shirts in 2026.
📺 La Liga wants to make football games more interactive.
Live broadcasts of the Spanish top division could now include interactive elements after LaLiga agreed to a deal with tech company Play Anywhere.
Utilising AI, LaLiga fans will now be able to interact in real-time with the live game. This includes personalised gaming, sponsorship, and e-commerce opportunities (imagine being able to buy a player’s boots after seeing a clip of him scoring.)
One feature that La Liga seems to be pushing for sponsors is the ‘magic moment.’ This is where sponsors will be able to have their name associated with a specific sporting action, athlete, or team (imagine seeing an advert for Nike when Vinicius jr scores.)
🇫🇷 🏀 Has Nike just secured the future of Basketball?
The current NBA draft’s 1st pick Victor Wembanyama, considered by many to be a generational talent, has confirmed that he will go into the next season as a Nike athlete.
Nike first picked up Wembanyama when he was playing in the French leagues, and has supported him on his rise to the NBA. Wembanyama has returned the favour by representing several of the company’s new releases including Drake’s unreleased Nike/NOCTA glides.
Wembanyama has the potential to be one of Nike’s most marketable names. The presence of a huge French talent in one of America’s biggest sports offers a lot of potentials to connect the U.S. and European markets, something that has always been difficult for American sports.