Mets sign Juan Soto, WNBA expansion draft: YF Sports Report

What a week to be a New York Mets fan! Sources told ESPN the team from Queens signed Juan Soto from the Yankees to a 15-year, $765 million contract, which is the most expensive deal in league history. This would break the record for most expensive contract, a record previously held by the Los Angeles Dodgers after they signed Shohei Ohtani last season for $700 million over the course of 10 years. On this week’s episode of Yahoo Finance Sports Report, host Joe Pompliano gets into all the finer details of this massive contract negotiation and why this is such a big deal for the New York Mets. Pompliano is also joined by Jess Smith, president of the Golden State Valkyries, to discuss what it’s like building a professional sports team from the ground up, the WNBA expansion draft that took place earlier this week, and what the league needs to do to take the next step to continue its growth. “It’s everything,” Smith says. “The media deal is a huge component of the continued visibility, produced games, etc. We’re going to see these athletes. Their individual likeness is just continuing to grow exponentially on top of the talent that’s going to be coming into the league for the foreseeable future as people are already watching and taking note of the next potential draftees coming into the WNBA and taking the court against legacy players people have been watching for many years. But most importantly, it’s consumers. Consumers are the ones who have pushed this growth.” Yahoo Finance Sports Report with Joe Pompliano, a vodcast brought to you by Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports, looks beyond the latest sports business headlines, analyzes all the need-to-know news - the teams, trades, and billion dollar deals - so you and your portfolio will win BIG. Questions? Fan mail? Email us at [email protected]. Yahoo Finance Sports Report is developed and produced by Lauren Pokedoff.