Cash rules everything around sports: The K-shaped economy widened gaps between haves, have-nots in 2025
- - Cash rules everything around sports: The K-shaped economy widened gaps between haves, have-nots in 2025
Jay Busbee December 23, 2025 at 6:11 AM
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(Davis Long/Yahoo Sports illustration)
The K is coming for sports … and we’re not just talking strikeouts.
If you’ve spent any time perusing financial news lately … first, congrats on an iron constitution, but second, you’ve surely seen the ever-increasing references to a “K-shaped economy.” Briefly put, it’s a way of describing how the rich are getting richer — as in, net worth is moving up and to the right — while the poor are seeing their line decline.
The K-shaped economy lives in sports, too, and for the exact same reason: Money is flowing toward, and consolidating around, a few key teams, programs and individuals in each sport, leaving the others to fend for whatever scraps are left. There have always been haves and have-nots in the sporting universe: the Yankees and the White Sox, the Lakers and the Wizards, Ohio State and Rutgers. But we’re in a new, flush era now … great news for a few, bad news for most.
The infusion of broadcast revenue, franchise buy-in fees, billionaire owners, private-equity infusions, and willing-or-not fan spending — more on that last one in a bit — a tidal wave of wealth is unbalancing entire sports. We’re already seeing the effects on championship chases … and we’re seeing the cracks along the margins, too.
Let’s dive in. Bring your wallet.
College football, golf, Major League Baseball run wild
No sport has demonstrated the delirious, destabilizing effects of torrents of money more than college football. Presented with the opportunity to gorge themselves at the trough of broadcast revenue, programs and conferences happily abandoned longtime rivalries and traditions. Given the opportunity to chase NIL cash through the penalty-free transfer portal, players jumped from program to program looking for the best deal. Seduced by massive contract offers, coaches ditched their prior schools — sometimes even in the middle of playoff runs — and left wreckage in their wake. Programs spent ungodly sums of money on facilities, talent and coaches trying to keep up with the top dogs … and like everyone who got a credit card in college and immediately went hog-wild soon learns, the bill’s coming, and it’s going to be hell to pay.
Wise investments can pay immediate dividends, though. Never has the old cliche “The best team money can buy” been more true than in Chavez Ravine, right now. The back-to-back world champion Los Angeles Dodgers had a 2025 payroll of $321.3 million — more than the entire payrolls of the White Sox, Rays, Marlins and Athletics combined. Yes, money alone can’t win you titles — the Mets had the highest payroll last year, and they were, well, the Mets — but money, and the total lack of a salary cap, sure makes life a lot easier. Hope those small-market teams enjoyed those titles when they had them, they’re likely not coming around again anytime soon.
Over in golf, the sport continues to react to the sudden arrival of Saudi-backed LIV Golf four years back, purses have increased to a degree inconceivable even during prime Tiger Woods era. Scottie Scheffler won his first PGA Tour tournament only in 2022 … and he’s already ranked third on the Tour’s career money list, behind just Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy. New plans for the sport — see if this sounds familiar — would consolidate most of the sport’s prize money among its top stars. Good work if you can get it.
Brittney Sykes of the Washington Mystics holds a "Pay the Players" sign next to Angel Reese of the Chicago Sky following the 2025 WNBA All-Star Game. (Steph Chambers/Getty Images) (Steph Chambers via Getty Images)Labor negotiations dominate the WNBA and, soon, MLB
The bill has come due in the WNBA, which exploded in popularity (and revenue) in 2024, only to have its players demand a more sizable share of the good tidings. The W and its players are currently enmeshed in a labor battle that began with harsh words on both sides of the table, a battle that threatens to undo much of the progress the league has made in recent seasons. At the same time, upstart offseason leagues like Unrivaled and the potential new Project B are luring players with promises of larger paychecks and equity.
Baseball isn’t yet in one of its periodic labor brawls, but it’s coming. The sport’s current collective bargaining agreement expires in less than a year, meaning players and owners are on the clock to find common ground or risk yet another work stoppage. And they must do so in an environment where baseball’s broadcast rights packages are trending more niche and local, less national and lucrative.
Gambling scandals explode even as gambling’s roots spread wide
The barely-checked spread of sports gambling channeled a new gusher of revenue to leagues and media, and in 2025 we started seeing the potential cost of that revenue. In October, several major NBA figures, including Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, were arrested as part of federal investigations into insider-info gambling and illegal poker rings. Two Cleveland Guardians pitchers were arrested in connection with prop betting. College basketball players for both Fresno State and San Jose State had their eligibility revoked for their roles in a prop betting scandal. Sports betting advocates will say that these arrests and identifications are proof that gambling detection systems are working; skeptics might wonder whether these incidents are less outliers, and more harbingers.
(Stefan Milic/Yahoo Sports illustration)Guess who’s paying for all this?
All of the new money flowing through sports has to come from somewhere, and much of it in the coming years will come from you. You’ve already seen how tricky it is to watch, say, the NFL — you need subscriptions to half a dozen different streaming services to be able to keep up with the sport. And you’ve also surely seen how these streaming services tend to raise their rates with disturbing frequency … because where else are you going to go?
The question now facing the sports industry is, how much more will fans pay up? How many more streaming services will they subscribe to in order to follow their favorite sports — like, for example, Formula 1 moving from ESPN to behind the Apple paywall. How many more “donations” must they make to continue to buy seats for their alma mater’s college football games? How many more times will they attend games whose price for a family of four escalates ever higher into the three figures?
With all the tech-enabled access of the 2020s, it’s never been a better time to be a sports fan, but it’s never been a more expensive time, either.
The joy of victory remains
The reason why sports can command these ungodly sums is because of their capacity to awe us, to inspire us, to thrill us. Yes, the Dodgers may be breaking baseball, but their path to a World Series victory was a stunning one, from Freddie Freeman’s 18th-inning walkoff homer in Game 1 to Shohei Ohtani’s three-homer, 10-strikeout gem in Game 4 to Will Smith’s extra-inning homer in Game 7. And yes, golf is addicted to revenue to an unhealthy degree, but Rory McIlroy’s Masters victory to end a decade of frustration and complete a career grand slam was one of the year’s most powerful scenes.
There were so many more. Carlos Alcaraz’s comeback from two sets down to win the French Open, Lando Norris dethroning Max Verstappen from his F1 throne, Alex Ovechkin’s goal to pass Wayne Gretzky on the NHL’s all-time list, Lindsey Vonn’s World Cup victory after seven years away from the sport … all of these and so many more moments, so many more celebrations, so many more titles helped make 2025 a magnificent year for champions and their fans.
Is that joy worth the cost? Over the coming years, we’ll see how many teams, universities and fans stick around to find out.
Source: “AOL Sports”
