Josh Faize

I like to write words from time to time.

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

The NBA built the most balanced league in sports in 2023. Its Finals audience has been shrinking ever since.

Baseball has no salary cap, and its World Series is up.

Maybe fans never wanted fair. A thread:

Right now the Dodgers ($433M payroll) are playing the Brewers (smallest market in baseball) for a World Series spot.

MLB management wants a hard cap. A lockout is expected in December. The pitch: competitive balance.

So look at the sport that already did it.

NBA Finals, average viewers:

2015-17 (Warriors vs LeBron): 20.2M
2024-25: 10.8M
That’s -47%. And 37% below the 2010-14 baseline of 17.1M.

The NBA has had a soft cap since 1984. The second apron in 2023 effectively made it a hard one.

Baseball, no cap:

World Series 2010-14: 14.5M
World Series 2024-25: 15.3M

With the Dodgers in it: 14.7M
Without them: 11.6M
2023, no Dodgers: 9.1M
2024, Dodgers: 15.1M

I think it comes down to stars.
Steph changed how basketball is played. Ohtani is a once-in-a-generation unicorn. Concentrated talent gives us a reason to care. Caps are built to spread that talent out.

The other half is older than sports.
Americans love an underdog. We love a giant just as much, because we love watching one get knocked off.

Put the Brewers against the Reds and I’d bet the interest drops.

Caveat: none of this proves a cap caused the NBA’s decline. LeBron and Steph aged, the bubble happened, people cut cable.

And I’m not against competitive balance. The Rays ($113M) and Guardians ($93M) are in the final four, so access isn’t the problem.

My fix is a higher floor and real incentives to win, not a ceiling.

Because the best stories in sports need two things: a king, and someone with a real shot at the throne.

We don’t tune in for fair. We tune in for the fight.

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

Fourth quarter always requires your best

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

Much easier to point the finger than to look in the mirror.

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

Context matters

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

No one is coming to save you

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

Kushner and Iger were about to spend $2-3B building an NBA team in Vegas.

Today they spent $12.5B buying the Lakers instead.

The $10B gap is what a brand costs when you can't build one.

The Buss family called it "the family business" for 46 years. Mark Walter, who owned it for 10 months, called it "an extraordinary investment."

Same team. Three different games.

[Ramona Shelburne @ramonashelburne]

The Los Angeles Lakers are being sold to American businessman Josh Kushner and Bob Iger for a record breaking price over $12 billion, multiple sources told ESPN.

Kushner and Iger were involved in the expansion process in Las Vegas, but a stunning turn, they pivoted to make an aggressive offer to buy the Lakers from Mark Walter, who had purchased a controlling interest in the team from the Buss family last year.

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

Life is a single player game

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

Life isn't fair, and it is not supposed to be.

It's not the Dodgers fault, and it isn't anyone else's in your life, either.

[Colin Cowherd @colincowherd]

The Dodgers gave up 3 solid prospects for a three month RENTAL. And that’s the final straw? Oh, I thought it was Kyle Tucker who couldn’t hit this season until a recent heater. Or Edwin Diaz who missed the first 85 games. Lots of lines in the sand. Just trying to keep up.

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

FIFA just tried to sell $20 billion of something it doesn't own. Took 72 hours to find out.

The plan: carve the World Cup's commercial rights into a new company, sell 20% to private investors. Same playbook PE ran on French soccer, the NBA, the Seahawks.

One problem. FIFA is owned by 211 national federations, and the World Cup is 90% of its revenue — money that flows back to them. Infantino sold a slice without asking.

And the World Cup isn't stadiums or a logo. It's national teams showing up. The teams belong to the federations.

So Europe's 55 federations voted unanimously to skip future World Cups. No lawsuit. No lobbying. Just: we won't come. The $20B asset evaporated on the spot.

Every sports-PE deal before this one worked because the people with the votes were the sellers. This time the people with the votes were the ones being sold. They walked.

Ownership isn't the paperwork. Ownership is being able to deliver the thing without anyone's permission.

Your biggest customer. Your platform reach. Your rainmaker. Same rule.

If the people your asset depends on can kill it by leaving, it was never yours to sell.

https://t.co/rHuFqMc2HN

[Sky Sports News @SkySportsNews]

BREAKING: Gianni Infantino has scrapped World Cup investment plan admitting the project had created divisions and was no longer in the interest of its original objective. 🚨

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

Sometimes you just have to be grateful they made your decision easy

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

Nvidia just co-signed a $250 billion mortgage for its best customer.

Simple version:

You sell pizza ovens. Best ovens in the world. Everyone wants one.

Last week you made two moves.

First: your ovens need a special stone, and one factory makes it right. You lock up that factory's output for years. Competitors can design better ovens all day — they can't build them. You didn't win on product. You won on parts.

Second: your biggest customer wants to open 1,000 pizzerias, all running your ovens. He can't afford the buildings. So you co-sign his mortgage. Then you finance the ovens too. Your own ovens.

Your sales numbers look incredible. But ask one question: whose money bought those ovens?

Partly yours.

That's the week in AI. Nvidia locked up SK Hynix — the memory every AI chip needs to run — and is now negotiating to guarantee $250 billion so OpenAI can lease a data center. A data center filled with Nvidia chips.

The seller is financing the buyer. The supplier is also a customer. Nobody in the loop is at arm's length.

That matters because prices are information. When two people who owe each other nothing agree on a number, the number means something. A "$500 billion deal" between people who all need the story to be true isn't a price. It's a handshake.

If AI demand is real, this is genius. You own the parts, the ovens, and a claim on the restaurants.

If it's soft, you don't lose a customer. You eat the mortgage.

Every business owner has run the small version of this. Stretched terms to close the deal. Discounts to buy revenue. Free work to keep the big account happy.

It felt like growth. It was co-signing your customer's mortgage.

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

Founders keep buying AI tools and getting no ROI on them. The reason isn't the tool. It's that nobody told the AI what the operator's actual move IS. You can't automate what nobody's ever written down.

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

Top rep energy: instinct, unreasonable focus, impatience with process. Manager energy: teaching, patience, systems. These are opposite skill stacks. Almost nobody is elite at both — and pretending otherwise costs you your best rep.

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

Rogers hit its cap on phone customers. Only way to grow: buy something scarce that customers already love. Enter the Leafs. The Leafs aren't content — they're the reason 3 million people don't cancel their phone bill.

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

Wimbledon fired the line judges. Kept the strawberries, the whites, and the royal box. That's the whole automation playbook: mechanics → machines. Theater → protected. Most companies can't tell which is which. That's the consulting fee.

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

@Boomskie Not far!

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

@MonteroOnBoxing Thank you! I agree !

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

Good things in life take time

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

@DaleJ_1031 Very true indeed

[Josh Faize @Josh_faize]

ESPN just fired a guy who gave them 33 years. they're about to pay another guy $60M a year for a show they don't even own.

both moves are the same move.

everyone's calling this cost-cutting. it's not. the payroll isn't shrinking — it's moving. and where it's moving tells you everything about what happened to sports media.

Karl Ravech was an employee. SportsCenter's whole model was that the brand made the person — anchors were interchangeable parts in a machine ESPN owned. ESPN paid salaries and kept all the upside, because being on ESPN was the only way to get famous.

@PatMcAfee is not an employee. look at the actual contract: it's a licensing agreement. he owns the show. he pays his own staff. ESPN doesn't employ its biggest star — it rents him, the same way it rents the NFL.

that's the whole story. ESPN spent 40 years as a star-maker. now it's a star-renter.

and renting is forced, not chosen. the star-making machine ran on two things:

1. scarce distribution. ESPN owned the only beach. want to be famous in sports? you needed their airtime.

2. talent couldn't measure its own drawing power. THAT's where the margin lived. you paid a guy $400K who was worth $4M and nobody could prove otherwise.

social media killed both on the same day. now every personality sees their own numbers in real time and can monetize them directly. every homegrown star either reprices to market or walks — @BillSimmons left and built a company that sold for $200M. Le Batard built his own. Stephen A repriced to $20M.

growing a star at ESPN today is just running R&D for the talent's future company.

so ESPN keeps the only rational portfolio left: rights it doesn't own (paying the NFL with 10% of itself), personalities it doesn't own (McAfee), and cuts everything in between.

the layoffs aren't a strategy change. they're the accounting finally catching up to one.

https://t.co/dJ4fROAiYv

[Front Office Sports @FOS]

Karl Ravech is expected to be laid off by ESPN after more than 30 years at the network, sources told FOS.

Ravech joined ESPN in 1993 and was a longtime host of SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight, plus the network's lead caller for Sunday Night Baseball.

https://t.co/qvbJ9SqFFB