In the Media

In sports, wins and losses determine standings. Soon they could help determine something else: a price. A group of financial firms is trying to turn sports results and statistics into something investors can actually trade. The idea starts with indexes that measure the performance of individual teams, creating the foundation for futures, ETFs and potentially an entirely new asset class built around sports. On this episode of Trillions, Eric Balchunas and Vildana Hajric, a cross-asset editor with Bloomberg News, speak with FutureSports co-founder Leigh Taylforth and Head of Index Services Jodie Gunzberg about the financial infrastructure they’re building behind the new crop of sports ETF filings. They explain how to put a price on a team’s performance, why sports might offer investors something different from stocks and bonds, and how businesses could even use the products to hedge their exposure to wins and losses.

Jodie Gunzberg, head of index services at FutureSports, joins Scarlet Fu and Eric Balchunas on “ETF IQ”. They discuss the CME FutureSports Performance Indexes, which measure cumulative team performances by using statistics and turning it into a numerical index value. MLB on Monday joined the NHL in having indexes track each team. Multiple firms have filed to use these indexes as ETFs.

Can your hockey team win a game while its performance index falls? Tim McCourt of CME Group and Rhett Dinsdale of FutureSports Performance Indexes join The Futures Rundown to explain the mechanics behind NHL team performance futures. Explore how these sports futures use official league statistics and performance milestones, how futures prices reflect expectations, and what separates these contracts from traditional sports betting and prediction markets. The discussion covers contract sizes, weekly and monthly expirations, cash settlement, and potential hedging applications for sponsors, venue operators and season ticket holders.