This week, we look at the wonder stadium that will be the new Old Trafford (are they going to call it New Trafford?), how MLB tickets are going nuts, and why Eva Longoria is turning a bit Welsh.

Today we also wrote about the flawed plan to control college athletes’ pay, and in the latest episode of The Deal, Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly talk with Mike McCarley about how he built TMRW Sports and the TGL, and the pitch that got legendary golfer Tiger Woods on board. Plus forget IPOs, given it’s St. Patrick’s Day on Monday there’s an Irish Fan Offering instead. 

As always, send us any feedback, tips or ideas here. If you aren’t yet signed up to receive this newsletter, you can do so here.

Welcome to Necaxa

Hey, it’s Vanessa. I recently chatted with Eva Longoria about her budding sports portfolio and why she thinks the Welcome to Wrexham playbook can work elsewhere.

The 49-year-old actress is part of an investor group that also includes Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. That duo acquired Wales’ Wrexham AFC in 2021 and used the popularity of aforementioned docuseries to build its fanbase. Wrexham’s success led to a massive increase in its valuation (£100 million. Crazy money) and helped boost interest in professional sports ownership, even for small clubs.

Longoria has a stake in Wrexham. She’s also an investor alongside Reynolds and McElhenney in Mexico’s Club Necaxa and Colombia’s Club Deportivo Seguros La Equidad. For the Mexican club, she’s an executive producer with Reynolds and McElhenney on Welcome to Necaxa. It’s slated to air on Hulu in May, she said.

Hulu is “begging us for the final edit,” Longoria said in an interview.

There’s been a boom in the sports docuseries since one done on Formula 1 was credited with boosting the sport’s popularity. Wrexham took the format higher. The series, which also aired on Hulu, has won several Emmy awards and turned the small Welsh town into a tourist attraction, which helped boost the local economy. Longoria sees the same potential with Necaxa.

“You can't do it without the 360 approach,” Longoria said. “The team is only as valuable as the town, which is only as valuable as the fan, which is only as valuable as the players, which is only as valuable as the staff, as a coach.”

Eva Longoria waves to fans before the start of the women's singles tennis match in Mexico. Photographer: Ulises Ruiz/AFP

If the Necaxa series does well, Longoria and her partners might try the same approach in Colombia. Their group acquired La Equidad earlier this year. The club plays in Bogota, the country’s largest city with a population of about 8 million.

This investment into Colombian soccer is just the latest addition to Longoria’s sports portfolio that also includes a pickleball team in Washington and a padel squad in Madrid. In 2020, she was also a founding investor in Angel City FC of the National Women’s Soccer League. Her view on taking stakes in sports teams has changed a lot since then.

“I was like: ‘Here's a donation,”’ said Longoria, who initially thought of it as a way to boost women’s sports. “I didn't think of it as an investment. I thought of it as I want to help create this pilot program. Let's show people this could work.”

Work it did. The team was founded for about $6 million, including a $1 million expansion fee, and was acquired at a valuation of $250 million last year.

ICYMI

• There’s been some hand-wringing over the sale of the Boston Celtics. Yes, they are the NBA champs, but they’ve been losing money and entered this season owing about $940 million to its top five players. Well, there appears to be a bidder in the form of a consortium that includes Bill Chisholm, a private equity executive.

• American automakers will have a bigger presence in Formula 1, with General Motors’ Cadillac team receiving final approval to join the racing circuit in 2026. Ford plans to reenter the competition next year.

• Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays pulled out of a deal for a new stadium, leaving the team’s future in doubt. The club’s home park, Tropicana Field, sustained damage from a hurricane last year. The Rays are playing in the New York Yankees spring training facility in Tampa this season.

• Pitchers in MLB keep getting hurt, and the culprit is a simple one that won’t be slowing down anytime soon. (Wall Street Journal).

Major League Tickets

Hi, it’s Ira. Stubhub released its annual Major League Baseball preview earlier this week. The online ticket seller pulls data from both its StubHub and Viagogo sites to figure out which teams are most in demand.

It comes as no surprise that the defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers, whose roster includes National League MVP and global sensation Shohei Ohtani, top the list.

But the list of top trending teams, as measured by increase in overall sales compared to last year at this point, did pique my interest. Below are the top five, along with the average ticket price from this year and last, which Stubhub was kind enough to provide when I asked: 

The first seems to be a straightforward case of fans in Sacramento being excited to have access to Major League Baseball now that the A’s are camping there ahead of a planned move to Las Vegas, as opposed to fans in Oakland feeling deeply alienated at this time last year. 

The rise for the Mets is clearly the Juan Soto bounce. Site searches and ticket sales both jumped dramatically, according to Stubhub, in the 24 hours after the Mets announced his signing to a record $765 million contract in December. 

The Royals are coming off a surprise run to an American League Division Series appearance against the New York Yankees last season.

The Pirates have the most exciting young pitcher in the game in Paul Skenes and, following his National League Rookie of the Year performance last season, everyone knows it. 

And finally the Red Sox, after three consecutive seasons of mediocrity, seem to be ready to compete again after trading for young lefty ace Garrett Crochet from the White Sox and signing third baseman Alex Bregman in free agency. 

Hi, it’s David. One thing is clear, you can’t fault Jim Ratcliffe for half measures and a lack of ambition.

This week, the Ineos billionaire revealed with some pageantry plans for a new 100,000-seater stadium for Manchester United, the team he owns about a third of. He also held a bunch of interviews where he criticized some of his players, and — although not directly — his fellow shareholders in the club.

(Also this week, we broke the news that Ineos Automotive is recalling more than 7,000 vehicles in the US after customers reported that doors on their SUVs flew open while driving. Not enough grease, apparently.)

The new stadium is quite something. Ratcliffe hired famous architects Foster+Partners to design it. It’s going to cost at least £2 billion. Let’s be honest, just like any building project, it’s going to cost more. 

Manchester United said its new stadium, combined with local regeneration could create 92,000 jobs. It’ll also be somewhere to stay out of the rain for once.  Source: Foster+Partners

Still, it will probably be pretty impressive. Full disclosure, we work in a Fosters+Partners building. It’s very nice. Michael Bloomberg described his collaboration with Foster as one between “a billionaire who wanted to be an architect and an architect who wanted to be a billionaire.”

(However, Fosters+Partners also redesigned Wembley Stadium. Once it was a footballing landmark. Now it looks like a cross between an overambitious out-of-town conference center and the sort of sculptures you get outside of bank headquarters.)

Which makes you wonder, how much will the tickets cost at this new stadium? Ratcliffe has already incurred the ire of fans by raising some ticket prices, even for children. Funding a £2 billion stadium won’t come cheap.

Right now, stadium redevelopment is in vogue. Financiers are generally willing to invest in stadium projects and have got quite comfortable with them, especially if they can ring-fence the risk. It’s real estate, not football. 

A number of recent stadium developments — such as Barcelona’s Spotify Camp Nou — have been fully funded by debt, which might mean Ratcliffe will not be required to put in more money. (It’s unlikely co-owners the Glazers will put in more money.)

If anything, Barcelona's refit of the Nou Camp was riskier, because the team was subject to so many financial restrictions. At one stage, it looked possible it could have massively declined on the field. But it seems to have gone well, and the club is now refinancing part of the debt at lower rates.

United is one of the biggest clubs in the world and attendance this season has held up remarkably, with Old Trafford always at or near capacity. But 100,000 would be the biggest club capacity by a long way in England.

To fill the stadium for every game, with potentially higher prices necessary to pay the interest back, it’s possibly going to another level. Which, to be fair, deserves its own applause. And it will allow Manchester United to offer the best in hospitality, which is all the rage in Premier League stadiums these days.

But who knows how football will look in the 10 years it might take to finish the build. The biggest football match in the world last weekend was a bunch of youtubers with zero footballing talent filling out Wembley, the home of English football, with 90,000 fans. 

And will the Premier League retain its dominance, given all the ructions over financial fair play and the attempts by rival European leagues to claw back popularity. And perhaps the biggest question, if Manchester United continues to perform badly, is there the need for such a massive stadium?

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