Sure, the best professional athletes pull in salaries to match. But to find the real money in sports, you need to look someplace else: endorsements. 

In this episode of "Binge Sesh," hosts Matt Brennan and Kareem Maddox draw inspiration from Nike cofounder Phil Knight's pursuit of Magic Johnson in "Winning Time." With help from the HBO series' executive producer Rodney Barnes and industry insiders, we explore the origin, development and explosion of athlete endorsement deals, from a $6.6-million baseball card to social media "microinfluencers" and more.

For the podcast transcript, photos and links to much more, visit the episode page on latimes.com.