Megan Rapinoe’s last dance

Zak Brown, chief executive of McLaren Racing, had a tough start to the Formula One season, with drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri finishing in the bottom four in the first Grand Prix of the year in Bahrain.

But Brown could see that work behind the scenes would take time to pay off on the grid. Within months, Norris and Piastri finished in the top four at Silverstone. Even so, McLaren and their rivals are struggling to catch leader Max Verstappen, who’s driven his Red Bull to a third consecutive driver’s championship.

“Of course they can be caught, it’s not easy,” Brown told me at the FT’s flagship digital event, The Global Boardroom. “We’ve certainly closed the gap.”

More importantly, as F1 prepares for its first Las Vegas race in decades, Brown downplayed concerns that Red Bull’s dominance could push away newcomers to the sport in the US.

“Once a fan, always a fan,” Brown said. “The championship is over but we have Las Vegas coming up and everyone’s going to tune into that. They kinda don’t care if the championship is over or not. We benefit from each race being so unique.”

This week, we look at Megan Rapinoe’s legacy in US football and the spirit of regulation in sport.

Do read on — Samuel Agini, sports business reporter

Rapinoe’s last dance

It’s an explosive week for women’s football in the US.

Tonight, the OL Reign and Gotham FC take to the pitch for the National Women’s Soccer League championship in sunny San Diego. In addition to being a thrilling finish to the 2023 season — New York-based Gotham finished last in the league just a year ago, while Seattle’s Reign hope to avenge last year’s semi-final loss — the match will be the final career fixture for two of the sport’s legends: Megan Rapinoe of OL Reign and Ali Krieger of Gotham FC.

Their swan song comes just as the future for the NWSL is looking brighter than ever. On Thursday, the league announced a new four-year, $240mn domestic media rights package that makes the pro-US game among the most valuable women’s sports properties in the world. 

The rights, which expand from one contract with Paramount’s CBS to four partners including Disney’s ESPN and ABC, Amazon Prime Video, and Scripps’ Ion Television, represent a forty-fold increase in value from the current three-year, $4.5mn contract.

At $60mn in media revenues per year, the terms for the NWSL make the league more valuable than the US women’s pro-basketball league, the WNBA, which range between $40mn-$46mn per year.

In an interview with Scoreboard, NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman said she believes that the new contract reflects a “market correction” for the value of women’s sports. She noted that the WNBA is about to enter its own rights renewal period, with current terms expiring in 2025. “They have been rooting for us and we will be rooting for them”, she said.

Both leagues have seen record viewership growth in recent years. WNBA viewership rose 21 per cent this season, while the NWSL is up 41 per cent year on year, Berman said. Still, Berman said she doesn’t consider any league — women’s or men’s — to be a perfect apples-to-apples comparison in terms of setting its own valuation.

“It’s hard to compare us to the men’s leagues because they’ve been around for 100 years”, she said, but added that she sees some likenesses between the NWSL and both the NBA and the Premier League in terms of, respectively, how the league markets its players as a “lifestyle brand” and, as with English football, concentrates the best competitive talent in the world.

Which brings us back to standouts like Rapinoe. Though hardly the first megawatt American female footballer, Rapinoe charted new territory as one of the most marketable stars in part due to her activism. She was one of the first athletes, male or female, to echo US football star Colin Kaepernick’s protests against police brutality by taking a knee during the national anthem in 2016. Later, at the 2019 women’s World Cup, her outspoken criticism of then-US president Donald Trump made headlines around the world, as she led her team to the championship.

That has translated to her becoming one of the most marketable female athletes (ranked 19th by Forbes last year) with endorsements from Google, Nike, Verizon, Anheuser-Busch, and Victoria’s Secret. Far from leaving the sport poorer, Rapinoe’s retirement coinciding with new lucrative media rights shows women’s football has a new blueprint for growth.

A regulator fit for a King

It’s not every day the King of the United Kingdom talks football. But Charles III has delivered the message that many think is overdue: an independent football regulator will be enshrined in law.

“Legislation will be brought forward to safeguard the future of football clubs for the benefit of communities and fans,” his Majesty said this week.

The new supervisor is the result of years of strife off the pitch. Clubs such as Bury have gone bust. Unscrupulous owners have run other clubs into the ground. The next financial crisis is never far away.

The move marks a paradigm shift for the self-regulating world that is English football, even if Premier League chief Richard Masters has warned that the government must be careful “to avoid damage both to football and to fans”.

The stakes are high for the leader of leagues. The fear is that regulation could threaten a competition whose 20 clubs generated revenues of €6.4bn in 2021-22 financial year, almost double its nearest group of rivals in Spain, according to Deloitte.

English football’s new regulator won’t be set up immediately but UK culture minister Sir John Whittingdale wants the government create it before the next general election, due by January 2025.

Beyond the need to monitor and strengthen club finances, the issue is one of power and governance.

It’s often the case in sport that the competition organiser also wields regulatory powers. Growth and regulation can come with conflicting incentives.

A governing body that also runs competitions isn’t exactly incentivised to sit back when a rival comes along.

Just take the upcoming ruling by the EU Court of Justice on the case of the European Super League.

The breakaway project — still backed by Real Madrid — collapsed in rapid fashion in April 2021, killing elite clubs’ hopes of a new cash cow styled on closed American leagues.

At least Uefa’s Champions League brings together the best sides in Europe based on their domestic performances, meaning the winner is an undisputed champion.

But the challenge lives on because proponents of the ESL believe that Uefa, which doubles up as governing body and operator of the Champions League, operates a monopoly.

It’s not easy to resolve the problem. Allowing just any group of clubs to form their own competition could lead to fragmentation; yet others contend that it’s uncompetitive to prevent clubs from trying something new.

The question is whether competition organisers should make the decisions that govern sport or if those powers should be granted to an independent supervisor.

While most football fans agree that breakaway competitions aren’t for the common good, English football’s regulatory experiment is a test of what happens when the league is forced to exist with a higher power.

Highlights

• DraftKings discussed a bid for William Hill owner 888 over the summer, the FT revealed this week. The US betting group, which did not approach 888 directly, held talks with some of the struggling UK gambling operator’s top shareholders, the FT revealed.

• Afghanistan’s historic victories over England and arch-rivals Pakistan at the Cricket World Cup in India have cemented the team’s status as the underdog success story of the tournament, cheering fans in the Taliban-ruled country.

• Manchester United investors have been left in the dark as chemicals billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe looks to buy a stake in the English football club, according to its biggest minority shareholder.

• Paris is putting its faith in a giant tank to clean up the Seine in time for Olympic swimmers and triathletes ahead of the 2024 Games. The underground construction, which is as big as 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools, is set for completion in spring at a cost of around €90mn.

Transfer Market

• The owner of football media website Goal.com has hired a new chief executive for North America, betting on the region’s growth ahead of the 2026 World Cup, which is taking place in Canada, Mexico and the US. Jason Wagenheim joins Footballco from media company Bustle Digital Group.

Final Whistle

Another tough week for Manchester United supporters. The club had built a commanding two-goal lead away at Copenhagen only to implode once again. Even after Marcus Rashford’s red card and losing the lead, United looked to have won it through a second-half Bruno Fernandes penalty.

The Danes had other ideas, equalised and then smashed in a winner. The 4-3 loss leaves United bottom of their Champions League group and fighting against the odds to qualify for the knockout rounds.

One fan was not amused and took out his frustrations on a fluffy leopard. Feel his pain here.