Sports & Entertainment Beat

Hard to believe that June is just around the corner. Interestingly, June is one of two months with four letters in it (the other being July).

Speaking of four letter words (don’t worry—I’m not about to channel my inner George Carlin. I have a reputation to uphold here!), one four letter word that has not been recently uttered in this space is “NFTs.” That could be because after pandemic-fueled NFT bubble (I guess people were attracted to the fact they did not need hand sanitizer to handle them…) popped, leading valuations into a freefall and spurring a number of high-profile civil and criminal cases to crop up, not the least of which being a pending $1 billion class action lawsuit against Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo arising out of his promotion of NFTs on the cryptocurrency platform Binance. You might think that such a hefty lawsuit might influence Ronaldo to lay low for a little bit. Pelo contrário meus amigos.

Instead, Ronaldo has chosen to double-down and release a new collection of NFTs on Binance. But hey, when you’ve been labeled one of the sexiest men in the world, one of the greatest soccer players of all time and are paid $200 million a year to play soccer in a foreign land, you might have some built-up hubris. Sure, it’s not quite the same confidence booster as being told (mostly by family) that your “Spotlight” was well done in a given week, but I imagine it is up there…Whatever comes of Ronaldo’s decision, I would hope for the sake of him (and his lawyers) that they got a robust indemnification provision in Ronaldo’s deal with Binance.  Otherwise, his defense attorney will be drinking Champagne while his transactional attorney drinks something stronger.  

In any event, if you’ve made it this far, why not double down and see what else is in store this week.  

• • UEFA Champions League Final-bound, German soccer club Dortmund strikes a sponsorship deal with a German arms manufacturer, but don’t expect the deal to be a difference-maker for the club. After all, the sport relies more heavily on legs. 
    
    
  • Range Sports and The New York Mets partner up on a development deal to produce short form off-field content around the players. An exciting development for a team that struggles to produce quality on-field content. 
    
    
  • Sony Music seems poised to bid a king’s ransom of over $1 billion on the song catalog of legendary rock band Queen. Alexa, please play “We Are The Champions.”