The Business of the Big Game
Go beyond the scoreboard to understand the financial machinery that dictates every trade, draft pick, and stadium build in professional sports.
Like Duolingo, but for The Business of the Big Game. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through The Roster as a Portfolio and The Revenue Engine. It assumes you already know the basics.
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Key ideas in The Business of the Big Game
- Dead money is the cap hit from guaranteed bonuses already paid to a released player.
- Backloading lowers the immediate cap hit by deferring costs to future seasons.
- Accelerated signing bonus proration hits the current year's cap immediately upon release.
- The 'win-now' window is funded by consuming future cap space that will eventually run out.
- Identifying the impact of dead money on roster construction
- Understanding the trade-off of backloading contracts
- The rookie scale fixes wages below market value
- Surplus value funds veteran depth
- Restructuring converts salary into guaranteed bonus
- Cap relief by spreading bonus hits
- Recognizing the value of the rookie scale as an arbitrage tool
- Guaranteed money acts as insurance
- Rookie scale as arbitrage
- High guarantees shift leverage
- Contract restructure vs pay cut
- Determining leverage based on contract guarantees
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives The Business of the Big Game the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
How does a team use 'backloading' to fit an expensive superstar into a tight budget this year?
Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.
Where The Business of the Big Game takes you
- 1
The Roster as a Portfolio
- The Salary Cap Playbook
- Trading Talent and Draft Capital
- 2
The Revenue Engine
- Media Rights and Global Reach
- Stadiums as Real Estate Plays
2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
You pick the voice
The Business of the Big Game is taught in the The Professor style: clear, structured, thorough. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start The Business of the Big Game today.
Download Tomo, search The Business of the Big Game, and play your first lesson in under a minute.