Last March, on the same day the news broke that private equity mogul Bill Chisholm had agreed to pay a then-record-setting $6.1 billion to acquire the Boston Celtics, I happened to find myself in the company of one of the National Football League’s 32 franchise owners. (AFC West, for those wondering…) In light of the day’s news, I asked him whether he thought the Celtics were actually worth all that cash. “I don’t know,” he replied with a smile. “But what I do know is, it’s great for us!”

Sports teams benefit from an enviable supply-demand ratio: a limited number of prestige assets coveted by a small but highly motivated group of buyers, which inevitably drives valuations ever higher. One year after the Waltons bought the Denver Broncos for $4.65 billion, Josh Harris acquired the Washington Commanders for $6.05 billion. Two years later, Chisholm paid even more for an NBA team—and was then outdone by Mark Walter, who snatched the Los Angeles Lakers for a staggering $10 billion valuation.

Back down in the troposphere, a similar phenomenon seems to be playing out in digital media, where a far more modest appetite for a small but promising coterie of prestigious next-generation companies has quietly emerged in the last half-decade. Four years ago, Mathias Döpfner’s Axel Springer bought Politico for $1 billion at a roughly 5x revenue multiple on its hybrid business model. Of course, Döpfner presumably enjoyed the influence of owning a major American news brand enmeshed in the nation’s capital, but Axel was financially lured by Politico’s business-to-business product, Politico Pro, which carries its P&L. Around the same time, The Athletic exited to The New York Times Company for $550 million—an 11x-ish multiple on its pure-play subscriber revenue.

The transaction multiples have been all over the place ever since. Axios sold to Cox Enterprises for a $525 million valuation at a 5.5x multiple on a majority advertising business. Last year, David Ellison paid $150 million for Bari Weiss’s Free Press—a multiple of at least 7.5x for its subscriber-heavy revenue, depending on whose version of the numbers you believe. (A year earlier, a $15 million raise valued The Free Press at just $100 million.) Meanwhile, Substack raised $100 million in a round led by Chernin to achieve a gobsmacking $1.1 billion valuation, which is about 24x estimated revenue of around $45 million. (For what it’s worth, the Chernin guys just let Food52, which had once raised more than $150 million at a $300 million valuation, collapse into bankruptcy.) Last year, Ziff Davis took out The Skimm for decidedly less.

Anyway, earlier this week, Semafor co-founders Justin Smith and Ben Smith whispered into The Wall Street Journal that they’d raised $30 million at a $330 million post-money valuation—a staggering 8x multiple on trailing revenue for the events-driven media company that has now raised approximately $70 million to $75 million to date. It all sounds great, and will certainly extend Justin’s runway and ambition on his quest to build his own Davos.

Indeed, the public disclosure in the Journal was a clever way to signal strength to a political marketplace that’s less experienced with dealmaking—one that might not collectively wonder why a 3-year-old events company needed another cash infusion, or recognize that the largely inside round was led by existing investors who refined their position on the cap stack. As I noted earlier this week, these sorts of raises can make great headlines but inadvertently cause headaches down the line, such as providing constraints for the management team to get in the money while narrowing the field of credible acquirers.

In any event, the flurry of activity has certainly created an atmosphere—the sense of a moment, if not necessarily a moment itself. In truth, the Ellison–Bari deal was very sui generis: A young media mogul with seemingly limitless capital was inheriting a legacy news network and needed someone to run it. But the Semafor raise appears to confirm that we’ve entered a Bari multiple era, which, presumably, is great for those limited prestige assets.

As was the case with the Ellisons, perhaps a future acquirer of Semafor might feel like Ben and Justin could credentialize and revive their own legacy portfolio asset. Antenna’s Theo Kyriakou, who participated in this round and holds many media assets across Europe, might have this in mind. (Small world: Kyriakou is advised by Patrick Steel, the former C.E.O. of Politico who ran the company during its sale process.) After all, Jim VandeHei’s years of experience were invaluable to the Cox team that acquired Axios. And Bill Simmons has a strategic role at Spotify years after the company paid nine figures for The Ringer in 2020. Either way, after a fallow period, an emerging view is dawning on some bankers that the recent activity could spur that small but motivated group of buyers into action. Or so the thinking goes…

So, who might be next? In conversations with media bankers this week, the focus invariably turned to Punchbowl, the high-metabolism, Congress-obsessed media company founded by Politico alumni Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer. In recent months, I’m told, Jake and Anna have been courted by at least four potential investors: Chernin, Stephen Royer’s Shamrock, Jeff Zucker’s RedBird IMI, and even Versant, the Mark Lazarus–led cable business that was recently spun off from NBCUniversal. Presumably, Jake and Anna have had to have some heart-to-heart conversations about where they want their business to go from here, and weigh the pros and cons of ceding control—although I’m told that, at present, they are not selling the business.

Whatever the case, the Punchbowl heat offers a window into the class of potential buyers for the current crop of media startups, with the exception of Peter Chernin, who appears to be winding down his investment vehicle and has decided not to raise a new fund. Then there’s Mathias, who, as one media executive delicately put it, “would hump anything.” In truth, Mathias once coveted the Financial Times and appears to be hunting for more transformative deals. He recently told the Journal that Axel had been looking for acquisition opportunities in U.S. media—and considered TED, TechCrunch, 1440, and more—but didn’t deem them sufficiently compelling.

Then there are the legacy incumbents. Presumably, Punchbowl would fit quite nicely into The New York Times’s increasingly diversified bundle of products. If Justin doesn’t succeed in building his own empire, his sepia-toned fiefdom might transition nicely into the pink hue of the FT, which needs to rethink its own events offering. In a world where Ellison didn’t inherit CBS, it’s not hard to imagine Dow Jones folding in The Free Press. Indeed, Rupert took a look.

Of course, the sports analogy works only up to a point. Sports franchises are underwritten by future cashflows that are locked in and growing. The media business is subject to a whole lot more volatility. And, in some ways, that explains the prevailing mood around the Semafor announcement. Back in the day, the knives were out whenever Vice or BuzzFeed announced a boffo funding round. Now, even Smith player haters were moved by the same feeling: Good for them.