Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic’s weekly sports business cheat sheet. (Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here.)Name-dropped today: Michael Rubin, Karolína Muchová, LeBron James, Fandango, Gianni Infantino, AJ Dybantsa, Neeru and Vinod Khosla, Alexia Putellas, Joe Dean, Shohei Ohtani, Madonna and more. Let’s go:Driving the ConversationFanatics’ plan to own summerFanatics Fest has become such a summer sports institution that it’s hard to believe the gathering only launched two summers ago.What started as a clever live-event marketing demonstration by a company with seismic aspirations has turned into a tentpole sports-business day of the year — part collectibles convention, part celebrity showcase, part sports-exec confab, part flex by CEO Michael Rubin and his multi-pronged conglomerate.Starting tomorrow in New York, taking over the Javits Convention Center for the next couple of days, Fanatics Fest will feature the full weight of one of the most ambitious brands in sports:• Four hundred athletes and celebrities participate (including LeBron, Tom Brady, Serena, Kevin Hart). News might be broken (KD’s trade to the Rockets last year went from Twitter to his Fest panel in real time). Partner leagues crow. Sponsors showcase. Collectors spend.• The event went from 70,000 people in 2024 to an expected 200,000 this weekend, spreading out over 1 million square feet of convention space. They’re paying $240 for four-day passes, roughly $70 for a single-day pass.• Friday, it will host FIFA’s World Cup final news conference. LeBron may or may not have something to say about his future there. Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart will tape a live podcast that might double as a quasi-religious revival. Brady and Novak Djokovic will compete with fans over who can do the most scintillating, WWE-style arena entrance.