When the Supreme Court blew open the doors to college athletes getting paid, in June 2021, plenty of people pictured a financing model akin to Buddy Garrity peeling off bills for some blue-chip halfback in Friday Night Lights. Instead, the new college sports economy has turned out to be less small-town boosterism than corporate intermediation, with Learfield, Playfly, JMI Sports, and a handful of other multimedia-rights companies—MMRs, in the parlance of the industry—having inserted themselves between schools, brands, and athletes’ name, image, and likeness rights. That shift crystallized last month, when private equity firm TPG agreed to acquire Learfield in a deal reportedly valuing the “monetization engine” at nearly $2 billion. (Standard disclosure: TPG is an investor in Puck.)