Someone's About to Get Screwed

Written by David White | Someone's About to Get Screwed

Professional sports are entering a strange new era. For decades, the relationship between players and owners was clear — players generated the value, owners controlled the teams and the appreciating assets. Collective bargaining was adversarial, but everyone understood which side they were on. That clarity is disappearing, and I'm not sure the frameworks we've built can keep up.

More former players than ever are becoming investors, media executives, franchise stakeholders, venture capital participants, and members of ownership groups. For the first time in a major American league — the NBA — even active players can hold indirect ownership stakes in franchises. That is real progress. Players gaining access to the appreciating asset is not a small thing; it's the thing that has separated owners from players economically for generations.

But it raises a hard question: what happens to solidarity and collective action when the aspiration for many superstar players is to become ownership — not negotiate with ownership?

My friend Byron Auguste once described a phenomenon he calls "above the verticals." His observation is that some people eventually move beyond the categories the rest of us inhabit. They are no longer simply labor or management, athlete or owner, operator or investor. They move above those vertical lanes and transact across industries and professional networks simultaneously, largely unencumbered. Money and opportunities flow differently around them — and around their friends.

That elite room is expanding rapidly in sports. And having spent much of my career inside sports and entertainment, I find that both exciting and unsettling — sometimes in the same breath.

Athletes have been historically excluded from the ownership table. Not by accident — by design. The people who controlled access to capital also controlled who got to participate in long-term wealth creation. When a player retires with their peak earning years behind them and no equity stake in the assets they helped build, that's not a market outcome. That's a power outcome.

So yes — watching more athletes gain access to capital participation, ownership stakes, and generational wealth-building opportunities is genuinely meaningful. It represents real structural change in who gets to accumulate, not just earn.

Collective bargaining depends on adversarial clarity. It depends on understanding whose interests are aligned and which side of the table you are sitting on. That clarity is the foundation of solidarity. And solidarity is the foundation of leverage and power.

When a handful of superstar players are building ownership positions and media empires while the broader player pool is still negotiating salary caps, revenue splits, and healthcare provisions — the solidarity that made those negotiations possible starts to erode. The player who is angling to join an ownership group has different interests than the player who needs the union to protect his third contract. They may still be in the same locker room. They are no longer in the same negotiation.

Without clarity, players get screwed. Not all of them — some will land above the verticals. But most won't, and they'll be negotiating with less leverage than they realize.

The old fight was labor versus ownership. The next one may be over who gets absorbed into ownership — and who gets left behind.

The frameworks governing professional sports were built for a world where labor and ownership were distinct identities. Clear roles, clear interests, clear sides. We are entering something far more complicated. The blurring of those lines isn't inherently bad — but it is inherently consequential. And right now, I'm not sure the players' associations, the leagues, or frankly anyone else has fully reckoned with what it means.

Someone is going to get screwed in this transition. The question is whether the people with the most to lose see it coming early enough to do something about it.

I'd love to hear your perspective on this — join the conversation on LinkedIn.