Matej Kadak

Kadak Sports Media
All you need to know in Sports Business and Media

[Matej Kadak @MatejKadak]

@LakersLead The Machine

[Matej Kadak @MatejKadak]

Why is Luka Dončić Moving to Los Angeles a Great Move? 💛💜

1️⃣ LA the Biggest Stage in the World
2️⃣ Hollywood = Business & Endorsements
3️⃣ Learning from LeBron
4️⃣ Kobe-Like Legacy
5️⃣ Financial Gains Beyond Salary

Is the league ready for LA Luka?

[Matej Kadak @MatejKadak]

🤔 The Future of Animated Sports

What’s next?

Interactive broadcasts: Customize camera angles or interact with live stats.
VR courtside seats: Watch games with Disney characters beside you.
Gamified features: Play along as you watch.
The possibilities are ENDLESS.

[Matej Kadak @MatejKadak]

🌍 Part of a Bigger Picture

The NBA recently signed an $11-year, $77B media deal with Disney, NBC, & Amazon.

Innovations like "Dunk the Halls" are KEY to:

Expanding global viewership 🌐
Attracting younger, digital-first audiences 📱
Creating new revenue streams 💰

[Matej Kadak @MatejKadak]

🎯 Why Does It Matter?

This wasn’t just holiday fun—it’s a new way to reach fans.

Engages kids & families 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦
Brings casual fans into the NBA ecosystem 🎮
The league isn’t just competing with sports—it’s competing with entertainment.

[Matej Kadak @MatejKadak]

💡 How It Worked

Using Sony's Beyond Sports tech, live player movements became animations in real-time.
The game unfolded on a digital Main Street, USA, blending:
NBA’s fast pace 🏀

Disney’s storytelling
A Simpsons NFL game & Toy Story telecast were cool. But this? Next level.

[Matej Kadak @MatejKadak]

🏀✨ Animated Sports Are Here

This Christmas, the NBA & Disney made history with "Dunk the Halls"—the first-ever fully animated NBA telecast.

Players became Disney characters, dunks became magic, and Main Street, USA turned into a basketball court.👇
https://t.co/x0SrrssNeA

[Matej Kadak @MatejKadak]

🎥 What was "Dunk the Halls"?

The Knicks-Spurs game was reimagined in real-time:

Mikal Bridges morphed into Donald Duck.
Minnie Mouse won a dunk contest against Goofy.
Fans saw a Disneyfied NBA game on their screens.
Not just a broadcast—this was storytelling MAGIC.

[Matej Kadak @MatejKadak]

Are we witnessing the PEAK of the NBA’s dominance? Or is this just the beginning?

Drop your thoughts below—I want to hear your take 👇

[Matej Kadak @MatejKadak]

💰 The Average NBA Team Is Now Worth $4.6 BILLION.

The league is breaking records, inking billion-dollar deals, and setting the stage for global dominance.

How did the NBA become a $100B powerhouse? Here's a deep dive into its explosive growth 🏀👇

[Matej Kadak @MatejKadak]

💡 The NBA’s Growth Playbook

The league is a masterclass in sports business:

Billion-dollar media deals
Global branding
Diversified revenue
But challenges loom:

U.S. market saturation
Recession risks
Competition from other sports
Can it keep growing? 🤔

[BasketNews @BasketNews_com]

EuroLeague prize money for each team for their results in the 2023-24 season 👀💰

1. 🇬🇷 Panathinaikos | €1.75M
2. 🇪🇸 Real Madrid | €0.99M
3. 🇬🇷 Olympiacos | €0.87M
4. 🇹🇷 Fenerbahce | €0.75M
5. 🇲🇨 Monaco | €0.70M
6. 🇪🇸 Barcelona | €0.64M

[Matej Kadak @MatejKadak]

Giving equity to streamers is a genius move!

Gerard Piqué's 7-on-7 football league leverages streamers huge audiences on Twitch, YouTube, and TikTok, transforming fan engagement.

[Joe Pompliano @JoePompliano]

FC Barcelona legend Gerard Pique has raised $65 million for his new soccer league, the Kings League, and everyone should be paying attention to this.

Rather than try to buy his own team, Pique developed an entirely new model.

Pique and his business partners bought an abandoned warehouse in Barcelona.

They then held open tryouts, drawing 11,000 applicants and eventually picking 180 players to enter a draft like in the NFL or the NBA.

The games are 7-on-7 (rather than 11-on-11).

The matches are shorter — 40 minutes vs. 90 minutes — and all of the games are held on Sunday (instead of spreading them throughout the week).

But the real genius is the league's distribution strategy.

Rather than creating a single entity structure where Pique and his partners run all the teams, they strategically picked streamers to partner with on the project.

Each streamer has millions of followers on platforms like Twitch, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, and leveraging this audience has helped the Kings League grow to more than 13 million followers on digital platforms, too.

This streamer ownership model works so well because anyone in the world can watch Kings League matches for free.

That’s right, you don’t need cable TV, a streaming service, or pay-per-view packages.

Instead, the Kings League streams all of its matches for free on Twitch, YouTube, and TikTok, using its own channels while also simulcasting the matches (commercially free) on the streamer’s channels.

This helped the Kings League draw 800,000 viewers on Twitch and YouTube for its first-ever match.

In January 2023, the Kings League amassed 238 million views on TikTok and Twitch, more than every other traditional European football league combined.

And 92,000 people packed Barcelona's Camp Nou in 2023 for the league's championship match, paying anywhere between $10 to $65 to attend.

This is a promising start, but it's also just the beginning.

The Kings League has the chance to do something truly unique because the league's expansion is dependent on language rather than location.

So look for Pique to partner with English streamers, French Streamers, Arabic streamers, Portuguese streamers, Russian streamers, and Japanese streamers.

Each language will have its own league, immediately gaining millions of followers by leveraging the audience of the most popular streamers.

The incentives are aligned because the streamers get equity in the teams, and the global nature of soccer provides virtually unlimited demand.

If you enjoyed this breakdown, follow me (@JoePompliano) for more sports business content!

[Matej Kadak @MatejKadak]

@JoePompliano Giving equity to streamers is a genius move! Leveraging their huge audiences is a brilliant strategy!

[Matej Kadak @MatejKadak]

@EuroLeague This is so good!
It feels like I'm right on the floor.

Do any leagues offer the option to watch games live from a body cam angle?"