Sports & Entertainment Beat

Welcome back to the Spotlight! With next week being Thanksgiving here in these United States, I wanted to take a moment to give thanks for my family, my readers (those first two not being mutually exclusive), my clients, my colleagues and the opportunity to return to this space and share my passion (and ramblings, etc.). With that being said, the Spotlight will return in December. But do not despair, good pilgrims– it will all be gravy. I will be stuffing as many corn-y dad jokes into this course. Some of these jokes may seem canned like cranberry sauce, and to those gibs and giblettes that are uninitiated to the Spotlight, it may seem like I am yammering on but when I am done here, you may just end up wanting seconds. So, don’t be a turkey – grab a fork and dig into this week’s fixins’.

• • The latest professional athlete to launch their own sports and entertainment focused venture capital fund (the straightforwardly-named, Build Your Legacy Ventures) is the Milwaukee Bucks’ superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo. For how exciting it must have been to work on the fund formation documents, it must have been at least equally as nerve-wracking to proofread the spelling.
     
  • NBA Hall of Famer and multi-hyphenate big man Shaquille O’Neal forks over $11 million to settle claims against him arising out of his promotion of NFTs. On a separate but related note, McDonald’s is debuting NFT art on its McCafé coffee cups. My unsolicited advice for any potential endorsement partners is to tread lightly--and for McDonald’s, it’s to bring back the Monopoly game (only this time without the fraud).
     
  • Global apparel and tennis equipment brands FILA and HEAD sign 16(!) year old high school tennis player Anna Frey to NIL deals. Congrats, Anna -- that brings me back to the days when I was (unofficially) sponsored by Yoohoo, Axe Body Spray and angst...

For inquiries and/or unabashed compliments, please feel free to contact me at josh.bloomgarden@foster.com or add me on LinkedIn.