Let’s skip the small talk,

This week, we interviewed former college basketball player and founder of ShotTracker, Davyeon Ross. He gave his perspective on the current investing landscape of sports and spoke on his experience working with mentors/investors David Stern and Magic Johnson.

In other news, recent headlines claimed that Pat McAfee is negotiating a deal with ESPN that could see him paid over $60 million/year for the Pat McAfee Show. His bigger deal this year, though, might be his investment in PB&J snack brand Jams.

We’ve got a packed slate on this week’s edition of Backstage. Let’s get into it.

LINEUP
1. Headlines this week 🗞️
2. McAfee Jams with JJ 🥪
3. Founder’s Perspective: ShotTracker 🏀
4. VIP World Cup Tickets ⚽️
5. Company of the Week Presented by OPTYO: Wholesome Bakery 🍪

NEWS

🚨Headlines of the Week🚨

  1. Pat McAfee invests in Jams, joining as a co-owner alongside JJ Watt, Alex Morgan, Caleb Williams, Micah Parsons and CJ Stroud.

  2. AJ Dybantsa (#1 pick in NBA draft) drops new Nike logo, owns entirety of intellectual property.

  3. Tracy McGrady is reviving the ABCD basketball camp, purchasing an 80% stake from Sonny Vaccaro.

  4. Ole Miss star RB Kewan Lacy has signed a new NIL partnership with QCollar to help promote brain health and athlete safety.

  5. Pau Gasol is proposing a €55 million investment in Liga F, Spain's top women's football division, via Gasol16 Ventures.

  6. Derrick White has been named the first-ever President of Basketball Strategy at University of Colorado Boulder.

  7. Esports legend Yousef Abdelfattah, AKA FaZe Apex, joins YCombinator.

A&A IN DEPTH

McAfee Jams with JJ

via SBJ

Pat McAfee has joined frozen PB&J brand Jams as a co-owner. Rather than offering his likeness to the brand for cash, he is taking equity and becoming the distribution, with a hand in creative and a daily audience in sports media.

Alex Morgan, C.J. Stroud, Micah Parsons, Caleb Williams and J.J. Watt all hold stakes in Jams, alongside the poppi co-founders. Watt recently joined McAfee on The Pat McAfee show to welcome him to the team.

Jams launched in July 2025. Less than a year later, it sits in more than 3,000 Walmart stores and 950 Target stores. In May it became the official PB&J of the NFL Players Association, with licensed access to active player names and likenesses.

The product is built to take share. 10 grams of protein, no seed oils, no high-fructose corn syrup, aimed straight at Smucker's Uncrustables, which NFL locker rooms reportedly run through roughly 80,000 of a year.

Founder Connor Blakley is 26 and dropped out of high school at 17.

The open question is whether the cap table converts to shelf velocity; star investors move attention, but the product will rank itself in the category based on quality.

FOUNDER SPOTLIGHT

From the Founder’s Perspective: ShotTracker

We sat down with Davyeon Ross, former college basketball player and co-founder and CEO of ShotTracker, the court-side tracking system of AI driven video, stats, and analytic tools that is now pushing toward coverage across most of D1 and pro and women’s sports.

His career advice for young athletes was blunt: go where you can play. Reps build understanding, on and off the court. He credits a childhood in Trinidad and Tobago where his parents put him in everything, from music to sports, which turned out to matter as much as anything technical.

Ross pointed to his connections to Magic Johnson and former NBA commissioner David Stern, investors in the company. He spoke on their value beyond capital; Stern as a mentor and Magic as entrepreneurial inspiration. They both showed him how to “see around corners”; spotting what others missed, including the early read that venture money was flowing toward software far faster than hardware.

He returned again and again to a set of “Stern-isms”: "Failure is an orphan, success has a thousand fathers.” And his favorite description of Stern’s mentorship: "pure caring wrapped in vinegar."

Ross calls himself an ownership guy by nature. He's watched people do great things for companies without ever getting a share of the upside, and his takeaway is to control your own destiny even when that path isn't glamorous. That takes a specific kind of person, he says, one willing to put ego aside in what he called a "minute rice society" where everyone wants the payoff now. His shorthand for it: "know thyself."

What Ross felt was most important to him as a co-founder and CEO of the company was his framing on betting on people: you can always improve the numbers, but grit to work through the hard stretches is the part you can't coach. He described the CEO as the coach or the captain. Not necessarily the best player, but the one setting the standard. He closed on a line worth keeping: "if you're a tomato, you'll never be salsa". His point was about staying adaptable and expanding what you build. 

ShotTracker, he noted, builds beyond tracking shots with a wide variety of products across scouting solutions and data driven fan & revenue tools as well.

If you are a founder building in sports, tech, or wellness, OPTYO helps sports, fitness, and wellness brands grow their online presence by improving how they market and reach customers. Reply to this email and we can connect you with Andre.

MOST VALUABLE PLATFORM

VIP World Cup Tickets

The Athletes & Assets™ app is coming soon…

Our friends at FIFA have offered up to 4 complementary VIP World Cup tickets, all matches available, for Athletes & Assets™ subscribers. Reach out to us for access, this isn’t an opportunity you want to miss.

COMPANY OF THE WEEK

Company of the Week Presented by OPTYO: Wholesome Bakery

Wholesome Bakery is a healthy cookie brand using whole grains, whole sugars, and whole fats. They have been in the market since 2025 with over 500 locations/doors found all over the Bay Area, So-Cal, the Midwest, Hawaii and soon launching in PNW, Utah and the East Coast.

The brand recently inked a deal with MLS star Keaton Parks, and founder Mandy Harper is looking to work with more athletes that can support the brand strategy and/or content engine.


Want to get in front of ~9,500 of the most influential athletes and investors in Sports & Entertainment? Reply to this email and tell us why we should work together.



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