Most of an NFL contract is air — the headline number disappears the moment a player gets cut. So we negotiate as if only the guaranteed money exists. Hard money first, signing bonus structure second, and the deal front-loaded so the value is in the bank before anything goes wrong.

NBA money is mostly guaranteed, which moves the work onto optionality — when to extend, when to opt out, how to time the next contract against the cap and a team's flexibility window. We map a player's economics across three contracts, not one, and let that math drive every signature.

MLB is the sport where the money happens late — after six years of service time. The decision that matters is whether to take an early extension or wait it out, and we make that call with the math, not the noise. Done right, a single pre-arb deal can be the difference between generational money and merely good money.

Soccer is the only sport where a contract has a second life — every transfer is a renegotiation in disguise. We treat the buyout clause, the image rights split, and the loan terms as if each one is its own deal, because in five years one of them will be the deal that pays the bills.

In a hard-cap league, structure beats raw AAV. Signing bonuses are the part of the deal protected from the next work stoppage, so we push the bonus skew forward and weigh the no-trade list, term, and team cap calendar against each other instead of chasing the cap-hit headline.

Fighters get paid out of three pools — purse, sponsorship, and PPV — and one of them almost always gets ignored until it's gone. We negotiate the sponsorship calendar with the same intensity as the purse, because for most fighters the longest-paying part of the career is still five fights away.

No team, no salary — the brand portfolio is the paycheck. We treat partnerships the way other sports treat contracts: multi-year, layered exclusivity windows, and equity wherever we can pull it. The goal is a deal book that keeps producing through a swing change, an injury, or a cold year on tour.

Olympic sport pays in four-year waves, and federation rules quietly shape what's possible the rest of the time. We plan against the calendar — locking in sponsorship before the year actually matters, and protecting commercial rights through the rule pages most athletes don't read until they cost them.