The CNBC of Sports Business 💵

Happy Wednesday,

Sid Balaga and Suraj Peramanu have been best friends since before Suraj was born (there's a photo of Sid at Suraj's mom's baby shower somewhere to prove it). They grew up three houses down from each other in Georgia, went to different colleges, and reunited when Suraj was recovering from a knee injury in his basement with nothing to do.

What started as two guys killing time talking about sports business, media, and entertainment turned into The Fourth Quarter, a sports business media company that's now backed by Courtside Ventures and covering the business of sports at a depth nobody else is going.

This week, Jake and I sat down with Sid and Suraj to talk about what they're building, why they raised money, and what they think is missing from sports business media right now.

🎧 [Listen to the full episode]

If you want analyst-grade coverage of enterprise software, AI, or oil and gas, it exists everywhere. Equity research reports, institutional coverage, live financial news, dedicated networks. If you want that same depth for sports business (one of the fastest-growing asset classes in the world, with 15 consecutive weeks of new sports and entertainment funds being announced), it hardly exists.

Now, to be fair, there are plenty of great journalists breaking news, deals, and transactions in the industry, but what has yet to be developed is the next layer of analysis: the ‘why’ behind the deal, the analysis of what it means, the informed take from someone who's been deep in the data.

Suraj came from investment banking, and Sid came from early-stage VC in the sports space. Between them, they've written nearly a hundred articles and spent two years talking to the biggest insiders in sports business. Their argument is that nobody has built the CNBC of sports business yet, and they want to be it.

Naturally, Jake and I pushed back a little bit. The counterargument is that if it needed to exist, it would. But after listening back to the episode, I don’t think that argument holds up here. Sports as an institutional asset class is genuinely new. Private equity only got access to NFL teams recently. The flood of capital coming into the space is still early. And the audience that needs this coverage (investors, operators, team executives, and the consultants and bankers who want to work in the industry) is real, highly specific, and almost completely underserved right now.

The Law of Large Numbers applies here too. A video about the World Surf League going viral on a surf podcast might not reach their core audience, but it brings a few people back to their side of the internet.

1. The most undercapitalized businesses in entertainment are creators.
Suraj made this point, and it's worth reiterating. CAA and TPG just launched a $250 million fund that invests directly in creators.

Creators are lean, strategic, and sitting on distribution that established companies spend years and millions trying to build, and institutional money is starting to take notice.

2. Don't shy away from the creator identity just because you think you're building a media company.
Jake called this out directly during the conversation, and I think he's right. Sid and Suraj kept distancing themselves from the word "creator,” calling themselves analysts, media company founders, anything but. But the vessel that gets them to where they want to go is being good enough on camera that people believe in them first. The big vision only works if the content works. Don't outsmart yourself out of the thing that actually has to happen.

3. Niche audiences have outsized ad value (if you find the right sponsors).
Sid and Suraj aren't chasing broad reach; they’re chasing team executives, investors, and operators. One B2B SaaS deal closed through their audience might be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to the advertiser, far more than a consumer brand could earn by reaching a million casual sports fans. Niche isn't a liability when the people in the niche have serious buying power.

4. Long form feeds short form, but the turnaround has to be fast.
Their current bottleneck: filming Thursday, posting the full show Friday, and still releasing clips the following Wednesday. By then, the news cycle has moved. The next big unlock for them is live streaming and cutting the lag between when something happens and when their take is out in the world. Speed is its own form of credibility in sports and business media.

5. Stop selling t-shirts.
Jake said this, and I'm putting it in because it deserves to be said to every early-stage creator or founder reading this. When you start something, the temptation is to make merch, sell hats, or really do anything to find the quickest path to feeling like you’re making progress. Resist that urge. You're not a t-shirt company. Doing something unrelated but public in your business creates the illusion of motion without actually moving anything. Focus on doing the thing.

Here’s the harsh reality of being a creator:

There's a messy middle that you don't want to exist in for too long. You're either spending so much time with your material that depth is your value proposition, or you're so fast and reactive that being first is your value proposition.

Sid and Suraj are somewhere in the middle right now.

The show isn't live yet, the turnaround is relatively slow, but they have seven months in, a funding partner, and enough runway to figure it out.

What gives me confidence in them is the same thing Jake said at the end; they're going to figure out what works and what doesn't faster than they think. Short-form video feeds (e.g., TikTok’s FYP) are the most meritocratic feedback mechanism that exist. Something performs, or it doesn't, and you adjust. The people who take that feedback honestly and keep showing up are the ones who will get somewhere.

🎧 [Listen to the full episode]

📩 And don’t forget: Bottom of the Ninth is back this Friday with the top three stories in sports and business from the week.

See you then,
Tyler & Jake