Beyond the Scoreboard

A nineteen fifty-two Mickey Mantle card sold for twelve point six million dollars in 2022. Around 1960, the story goes, the company that printed it dumped unsold cases off New York. This episode follows the trading card from a free picture in a cigarette pack to a product whose main ingredient is how few exist. Along the way: what the record really says about the Honus Wagner card, the five-dollar contracts that gave Topps a quarter-century monopoly, the antitrust case that opened the market and was then overturned, the overproduction of the late eighties, and the industry's answer, which was to print scarcity on purpose. It ends with one company, Fanatics, holding the licences again.

Hosted by Benjamin Hartenstone. Beyond the Scoreboard is a Narratique original.

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For decades a minor-league baseball owner sold every ticket and hot dog but did not employ a single player. The big-league parent club paid the roster and the coaches; the local owner ran the night out. Benjamin Hartenstone traces that split from Branch Rickey's farm system to the standard contract in baseball's rule book, then follows what happened when the master agreement expired on September thirtieth, twenty twenty: one hundred twenty licensed clubs, dozens of towns moved to college, draft-showcase and partner leagues, a wage law written for ballplayers, the first minor-league union contract, and one private-equity-backed company buying more than a third of the affiliated minors. Who gained, who paid, and what it means from the grandstand.

Hosted by Benjamin Hartenstone. Beyond the Scoreboard is a Narratique original.

Selected research sources:

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 1991 the NFL's commissioner told Congress the leagues did not want their games "used as bait to sell gambling." Thirty years later his league had three official sportsbook partners. This episode traces how that happened: the 1992 federal ban the leagues lobbied for, the Supreme Court's 2018 decision in Murphy v. NCAA, the NBA's failed request for a one percent "integrity fee," and the 2018 NBA and MGM agreement that replaced a mandatory fee with a voluntary sponsorship built on data and branding. We then follow the money to England, where Premier League clubs agreed in 2023 to take betting sponsors off the front of their shirts. A business history, not betting advice, including the documented concerns about problem gambling and integrity.

Hosted by Benjamin Hartenstone. Beyond the Scoreboard is a Narratique original.

Selected research sources:

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For more than a century, a college athlete could not be paid to sign an autograph, appear in an advertisement, or show up in a video game. Then, in about a dozen years, the rule came apart. This episode follows the money and the law: the NCAA's 1906 amateurism bylaw, Ed O'Bannon's 2009 lawsuit and the college video game it ended, California's Fair Pay to Play Act of 2019, the Supreme Court's 2021 decision in NCAA v. Alston, the interim policy that opened the market on July 1, 2021, the rise of booster-funded collectives, and the House settlement approved in 2025. Every rule here carries a date, because the rules kept changing afterward.

Hosted by Benjamin Hartenstone. Beyond the Scoreboard is a Narratique original.

Selected research sources:

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the fall of 1981, Oklahoma and USC played on more than two hundred ABC stations and were paid exactly what The Citadel and Appalachian State received for a game shown on four. That flat fee was the NCAA's television plan at work, and it led two universities to sue. This episode follows the money from the NCAA's 1951 decision to ration televised football, through the Supreme Court's 1984 ruling in NCAA v. Board of Regents, the rise and collapse of the College Football Association, Notre Dame's 1990 NBC contract, the SEC's first championship game, and the launch of the Big Ten Network, to explain why a Midwestern conference wanted schools in Maryland and New Jersey, and later Los Angeles.

Hosted by Benjamin Hartenstone. Beyond the Scoreboard is a Narratique original.

Selected research sources:

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When a city wins the Olympic Games, what it actually wins is a contract. Benjamin Hartenstone opens the International Olympic Committee's own host city contract to find out who finances the Games, who guarantees the overruns, and what the IOC pays in. Then the story of the decade that wrote those terms: Colorado voters handing back the 1976 Winter Games, Montreal's stadium debt that a tobacco tax finally cleared in 2006, and Los Angeles, the only bidder for 1984, refusing to sign a public guarantee and finishing with a reported surplus under Peter Ueberroth. Plus the Oxford Olympics Study's finding that every Games it could measure ran over budget, the collapse in bidders, and the IOC's reforms.

Hosted by Benjamin Hartenstone. Beyond the Scoreboard is a Narratique original.

Selected research sources:

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In August 2017 Neymar's lawyers tried to hand the Spanish league 222 million euros, and the league refused to take it. The payment that followed was made in the player's own name, because in football nobody buys a player. So what is a transfer fee for? Benjamin Hartenstone follows the money from the registration a club really holds, through George Eastham's strike and court case in 1960s England, to Jean-Marc Bosman's five-year fight at the European Court of Justice. Along the way: why fees are paid in instalments, how clubs spread them across their accounts, what a sell-on clause did for Exeter City, and why FIFA makes big transfers pay the small clubs that trained the player.

Hosted by Benjamin Hartenstone. Beyond the Scoreboard is a Narratique original.

Selected research sources:

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In most American leagues the worst team keeps its seat. In English football the bottom three clubs of the Premier League are sent down a division every year, and the television money stays behind. This episode follows the cash. We look at the gap between Premier League and Championship broadcast income, the parachute payments the top league created to soften the fall, and the relegation clauses that clubs write into player contracts. Then we test those tools against the record: Bradford City, Leeds United, Portsmouth and Sunderland. Who is protected, who pays, and why the second tier of English football keeps spending more than it earns.

Hosted by Benjamin Hartenstone. Beyond the Scoreboard is a Narratique original.

Selected research sources:

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In June 2000, the governing body of world motorsport voted to lease the commercial rights to Formula One until the last day of the year 2110. How does a sport end up renting out its business for a century? Benjamin Hartenstone traces the deal back to the 1970s, when small British teams first bargained as a group, through the FISA–FOCA conflict and the first Concorde Agreement of 1981, the centralising of television rights, and a European Commission competition inquiry that ended with the rule-maker leaving commerce altogether. Then the buyers arrive: German media groups, banks, CVC, and Liberty Media in 2017. Along the way, why the host of a Grand Prix pays for the privilege.

Hosted by Benjamin Hartenstone. Beyond the Scoreboard is a Narratique original.

Selected research sources:

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Why does a hot dog cost so much more inside a stadium than outside it, and who actually collects the money? Benjamin Hartenstone follows the concession business from Harry M. Stevens, the scorecard seller who built the first ballpark food empire (and who did not, the record shows, name the hot dog), to the Buffalo brothers who lent owners cash in exchange for decades of exclusive rights, and the federal antitrust case that followed. Then the contract itself: exclusivity, commissions off the top, capital in exchange for time. Finally, Atlanta, where in 2017 the Falcons rewrote the deal, charged two dollars for a hot dog, and reported that fans spent more. With the caveats those numbers deserve.

Hosted by Benjamin Hartenstone. Beyond the Scoreboard is a Narratique original.

Selected research sources:

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.