Brent Peus Jr. is the Founder & CEO of Skybox: https://www.skyboxmedia.com/Dominyck Bullard is the CEO of Athletiverse, Inc.: https://athletiverse.io/Matthew Jester is an Investor at CNC Partners: https://www.cncpartners.co/

https://www.skyboxmedia.com/

Dary Stone on the Protect College Sports Act — The Fight to Save College Athletics

Dary Stone has done a little of everything — he's been a lawyer, real estate developer, political operative, chairman of the Texas banking commission, and chairman of the board at Baylor University. Today he's one of the central figures behind the Protect College Sports Act, the bill racing through Congress to put guardrails on a college sports landscape that's become, in his words, professional sports without a commissioner.

In this episode of Under the Number, Brent sits down with Dary for an up-to-the-minute look at the most consequential legislation in the history of college athletics — and why its backers believe this is a one-shot window before the August Senate recess.

We get into:

How the NCAA's NIL loss morphed into an unregulated, uncapped pay-for-play system with no parity and no one in charge

What the bill actually does — transfer rules, eligibility, direct-pay limits, antitrust protection for the NCAA, and the ability to pool media rights

Why pooling media rights (à la the NFL and the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act) could roughly double revenue for universities and protect women's and Olympic sports

The SEC / Big Ten vs. everyone-else dynamic, and why competitive advantage is pulling against the health of the whole system

How Dary and Cody Campbell merged their efforts into the Saving College Sports Board of donors, board chairs, and university presidents

The bipartisan tightrope — unions, the employment question, plaintiffs' attorneys, and why antitrust protection needs 60 votes

Private equity, bridge financing, and real estate plays like Tennessee's Neyland development — and Dary's warning to schools about "selling their souls"

The midnight-phone-call work of Senators Maria Cantwell and Ted Cruz

And to close: Dary's "art of the deal" — why the best deal is picking the right cause

A rare, insider view of a live legislative fight from one of its key pieces of connective tissue.

Under the Number is a Skybox production.

Recorded on July 26 and July 27, 2026.

Brent Peus Jr. is the Founder & CEO of Skybox: https://www.skyboxmedia.com/Dominyck Bullard is the CEO of Athletiverse, Inc.: https://athletiverse.io/Matthew Jester is an Investor at CNC Partners: https://www.cncpartners.co/

https://www.skyboxmedia.com/

Brent Peus Jr. is the Founder & CEO of Skybox: https://www.skyboxmedia.com/

Dominyck Bullard is the CEO of Athletiverse, Inc.: https://athletiverse.io/

Matthew Jester is an Investor at CNC Partners: https://www.cncpartners.co/

Youth sports is a $40B+ market on its way to $70B, and for years it was too fragmented for national brands to touch. Mark Dvoroznak and Carrie Gamper built BASE Sports Group to fix that: one point of contact connecting brands to a network reaching 30 million consumers across 26 sports in 47 states.

Fresh off a $2.5M raise led by Balius Partners, the BASE co-founders join Under the Number to explain why the youth sports family is the most coveted and hardest-to-reach demographic in the country, and how you commercialize it without wrecking the athlete experience.

We get into the case for youth sports as an institutional asset class, why the average 5.5 hours of dwell time at an event is the most underpriced inventory in sports, and how BASE turned that into activations like Invisalign's on-site teeth-scan lead-gen play. Mark and Carrie break down which three categories of brands should be in this space yesterday, why the LA28 Olympic cycle is a grassroots land grab starting now, and what Capitol Hill keeps getting wrong about who actually runs youth sports.

A conversation about fragmentation, data, and the quiet institutionalization of the games our kids play.

In this episode:

• Why BASE raised, and what "building a strong base" actually bought them
• The operator vs. brand education problem, and BASE's two-sided model
• Household income by sport (lacrosse and volleyball lead at $200K+, roughly 2x the national average)
• The Invisalign activation: dwell time as a lead-gen engine
• Doing well by doing good: commercial dollars as a subsidy that lowers the barrier to entry
• NIL vs. the "allure of the scholarship" as the real driver of the travel-sports machine
• The three brand categories that belong here now: CPG, finance, and auto/insurance
• LA28: budget in '26, activate in '27, scale in '28
• Roll-ups, consolidators, and setting the price of the youth sports space

Guests:
Mark Dvoroznak, Co-Founder & CEO of BASE Sports Group
Carrie Gamper, Co-Founder & COO of BASE Sports Group

BASE Sports Group: https://basesportsgroup.com/

Substack: https://underthenumber.substack.com/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4mj9Z1n...

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

Check out Skybox: https://www.skyboxmedia.com

#SportsBusiness #YouthSports #Sponsorships #youth #SportsEconomy #UnderTheNumber

Brent Peus Jr. is the Founder & CEO of Skybox: www.skyboxmedia.com

Dominyck Bullard is the CEO of Athletiverse, Inc.: https://athletiverse.io/

Matthew Jester is an Investor at CNC Partners: https://www.cncpartners.co/

For more than 40 years John Paxson has been a cornerstone of the Chicago Bulls across nearly every role in the game, winning three titles as a clutch point guard in Chicago's first dynasty, hitting the game-winning three that clinched the 1993 Finals, and adding a fourth ring as an assistant coach on the record-setting 1995-96 staff.

He went on to spend seven seasons as a broadcaster before running the front office as general manager, drafting cornerstones like Luol Deng, Joakim Noah, and Derrick Rose and returning the Bulls to playoff contention with the grit and team-first identity that defined his playing days.

Substack: https://underthenumber.substack.com/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4mj9Z1n...Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-number/id1730764733Check out Skybox: https://www.skyboxmedia.com

Ethan Rosenbaum spent his career in media before arriving at a conviction that's now reshaping how golf gets watched: YouTube is the new premium TV, and creators are the network. In this conversation he traces the path that led him to Source Golf, the first premium year-round YouTube golf network, and makes the case for why aggregating creators is a "cable 2.0" moment for sports.

We get into:

· The media career that built his conviction around YouTube and creators
· Why Source Golf is starting with golf, and why the timing works now
· How the YouTube golf boom actually got started
· The "cable 2.0" thesis · packaging fragmented creator inventory into a single television-style media buy
· What it takes to build a network anchored by Bryson DeChambeau, Grant Horvat, and The Bryan Bros

Source Golf sits under Source Media Group and is backed by David Blitzer's Bolt Ventures. The pitch is simple: golf has one of the most valuable audiences in sports, but it has never been buyable at scale. With more than 14 million de-duplicated monthly viewers, an audience that skews 82% aged 18 to 49, and over 100 million hours streamed on U.S. TVs a year, Source Golf is betting the living room screen is where the next era of golf gets won.

Under the Number goes inside the sports economy with the founders, investors, and operators building it. New episodes every week.

Check out Skybox: https://www.skyboxmedia.com/

Substack: https://underthenumber.substack.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@underthenumberpod

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4mj9Z1nJZabBH88AZr2lBp

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-number/id1730764733

#UnderTheNumber #SourceGolf #YouTubeGolf #CreatorEconomy #SportsMedia #SportsBusiness #Golf #BrysonDeChambeau #GrantHorvat #BryanBros #ConnectedTV #SportsEconomy

Paul Rigault is the Co-Founder and CEO of the Døds Diving League, the competitive home of death diving, a freestyle aquatic sport where athletes launch off 33 to 43 foot towers, throw tricks in the air, and land for the biggest possible splash.

What started as a 1970s pool subculture in Oslo is now a professional league pulling divers from over 30 countries, with a first full season on ESPN 2.

I sat down with Paul to understand how you build a sport from scratch. We get into the music-festival production model, the athlete profile that blends traditional divers with skaters and parkour athletes, the host-city funding playbook, and the IP strategy that makes the whole thing look more like UFC than a dive meet. Paul also breaks down the organic distribution engine, the Monster Energy sponsorship base, and the 2027 collegiate tour that could put this on a hundred campuses.

A clinic in turning culture into a category. Watch on Spotify, YouTube and Apple.

→ How a 1970s Oslo pool subculture became a 30-country professional league

→ Why they registered as a culture company instead of a sports company

→ The athlete profile pulled from diving, snowboarding, skate, surf, and parkour

→ The Monster Energy base and the first full season on ESPN 2

→ 17 to 20 million organic views per event and why two-thirds come from athletes

→ Owning the trademark, the federation, and the rankings, and why the model resembles UFC

→ The host-city funding model and the 2027 US collegiate tour

Substack: https://underthenumber.substack.com/

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4mj9Z1nJZabBH88AZr2lBp

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/under-the-number/id1730764733

Check out Skybox: https://www.skyboxmedia.com

#SportsBusiness #ActionSports #DeathDiving #SportsMedia #SportsEconomy #UnderTheNumber