Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic’s weekly sports business cheat sheet.Name-dropped today: Victor Wembanyama, Louis Vuitton, Josh D’Amaro, Carlos Alcaraz, Aaron Rai, Jenny Nguyen, Katherine Legge, Caitlin Clark and more. Let’s go:Driving the ConversationWelcome to Wemby’s worldWith his Game 1 performance in the NBA’s West finals, Victor Wembanyama just solidified himself as the premier must-see spectacle in sports. That’s amid a jam-packed sports year including the Winter Olympics and World Cup, no less.His 40-point, 20-rebound conference finals debut Monday — putting him in the “legendary playoff performance” S-tier on his first try — was riveting.Here is a 7-foot-4 “alien” dominating the defending champs (and reigning two-time MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander), complete with an effortless, Steph Curry-style, logo-adjacent 3-pointer in crunch time.The Wemby appeal transcends:He ranked fourth among all NBA players in jersey sales this season — behind Curry, Luka Dončić and Jalen Brunson, but ahead of LeBron, Anthony Edwards and SGA — a rarity among basketball big men.Fans usually see themselves in guards; they can also appreciate 7-4 unicorns. Fans typically gravitate toward U.S.-native players; Wemby is quickly becoming the most exciting French export since champagne.That is good news for NBC over the next two weeks, for ESPN if the Spurs advance to the NBA Finals and for the NBA as it finishes up the first year of its eight-year, $70-some billion TV rights deals. The 22-year-old will anchor the lineup for the next decade.It is great news for Nike, which sponsors him (if no signature shoe just yet); for the holding company LVMH, which signed the hometown hero to its Louis Vuitton brand back in 2024; and for Fanatics, which has an exclusive memorabilia deal with him. (Fascinating data point from The Athletic contributor Ben Burrows, who noted that Wemby is already the athlete with the sixth-most graded cards ever.)Last week, the Spurs announced nine developers selected to oversee a new $1.3 billion stadium and sports district project, which they might as well call La Maison Que Wemby Construite (“The House That Wemby Built”). Earlier this week, the team announced it will play regular-season NBA games in Paris in January, which follows a successful Spurs Week Paris tour last February.From growing the game globally to growing the number of fans who (begrudgingly) will tune in to streaming platforms, the wider sports-industry economic impact of Wemby — let’s call it “Wembanyamics” — is almost as fascinating as the player himself.When the Spurs and Thunder play Game 2 tonight on NBC (8:30 p.m. ET), die-hard NBA fans might be tuning in for the next iteration of what has immediately become the best rivalry in the league, featuring its two best young players. But Monday night felt like a tipping point. Curious casuals will now be tuning in, too, to see the latest Greatest Show in Sports.Get Caught UpBig talkers from the sports business industry:Tottenham relegation cri$i$ reaches endgame: As a reminder, the other Spurs’ financial picture is a bit grim, and that is before any estimated opportunity cost of their possible relegation from the Premier League to the Championship. (Meanwhile: Spare a thought for West Ham, who go down if Spurs stay up.)(On the furthest other end: Arsenal. Here’s the inside story on how the club built itself into championship form.)