SBJ Morning Buzzcast
SBJ Morning Buzzcast: August 15, 2024
1 more fact about NBC's coverage of the Olympic Games. The Paris Games skewed heavily female. Women accounted for 55% of the viewing for the Paris Games compared to 45% for men. Another interesting nugget from SBJ's Austin Carp. And this is your morning buzzcast for Thursday, August 15th. Good morning. I'm Abe Madcourt. A groundbreaking day in entertainment facilities on Thursday as the Intuit Dome. The new home of the Los Angeles Clippers will officially host its grand opening today, Thursday becoming the latest marquee venue in America. And this one sits right in Inglewood. Now the Intuit Dome is about a mile and a half away from SoFi Stadium, and just over a mile from the key of form right in Inglewood. It is $2 billion privately financed by Steve Ballmer. It will open tonight with Bruno Mars. He will have back to back sold out concerts. The venue will host a number of other concerts, Usher, Olivia Rodrigo. They will be at the Intuit Dome and performing ahead of this upcoming NBA season. The Clippers will officially open their season at Intuit Dome in October, but this much talked about and much anticipated arena opens tonight in Inglewood. The WNBA, it continues to lean in on Caitlyn Clark as next year's WNBA All-Star game will be held in Indianapolis. It will be the first time that that city has hosted the WNBA All-Star game. Remember, the city hosted the NBA All-Star game last February. It's a great city for big marquee events like this. It's compact, it's walkable, it has good hotels, good restaurants. So obviously the Indiana fever and Clark are the story in the W this year, and the All-Star game in that market should get tremendous attention. The fever has a good core of young players. It has led the league in attendance for both home and away games. And they've seen an over 260% jump in attendance from last season. So the game will be held in mid-July at Game Bridge Fieldhouse. And this comes after this year's WNBA All-Star game was held in Phoenix. And I will say this, I spoke to a number of people who attended that game, and each noted the energy and execution around this summer's WNBA All-Star game from the number of sports business leaders who attended to the diversity in the families of the fan base to the level of sponsor activation. So what am I saying? I bring that up because the WNBA All-Star game is turning into a key event for the sports business community to attend. And also this marks another big event for Indy. They will host the 26 Men's Final Four at Lucas Oil Stadium. They will also host the 28 Women's Final Four at Game Bridge. And you add the WNBA All-Star game in 25 next summer to that list, and you see that this city is drawing a number of major sports events. Let's stay with basketball, because the Portland Trailblazers are the fourth NBA team to part with an RSN model. They announced that their upcoming games this season will not air on their local regional sports network, Root Sports. So indications from SBJ's Tom Friend are that the blazers are being pursued by as many as four local over-the-air stations with gray and Sinclair stations, the leading candidates to land the blazers' sources expect the team to finalize a deal within the next, say, 10 days. And a direct-to-consumer option will also be in the mix. So the blazers will join the jazz, the sons, and the pelicans as teams that are leaving their RSNs and largely going local over-the-air. SBJ's Tom Friend reported that the blazers and Root Sports mutually agreed to the split with a year remaining on the blazers' contract. The team received a rights fee estimated to be about $30 million a year. And so for Root Sports, they've already lost the Seattle Kraken, and now they lose the blazers. Only team on that regional sports network are the Mariners, which of course own the network. So the future of this network certainly in question. But for the trail blazers, they're in a pretty good position to make a smooth transition to a new model. They have their own production group, and they already sell their own ad inventory in-house. So they can make that transition so the blazers become the fourth NBA team to move away from the regional sports network model. I've got a question for you. What do you do when you're one of the worst teams in baseball history? Well, in the case of the Chicago White Sox, you actually lower the cost of entry for your fans. Yes, the Chicago White Sox are reducing season ticket prices for next season by an average of 10 percent. The team, well known, is struggling through one of the worst seasons baseball has ever seen. Right now they are 29 and 93. They're on pace for the second worst winning percentage of the modern era. But the team announced on Wednesday a 10 percent reduction in ticket prices and invoices will go out today, Thursday with information on the new packages. Brooks Boyer, the team's chief marketing officer, said feedback from White Sox fans led to the decision to cut ticket prices, as well as the team experiencing a drop in their season ticket base, which is not surprising considering the team's performance. The White Sox have the fourth lowest average attendance just over 18,000 fans per game. That's down about 4,000 fans per game from last year, so the White Sox taking some pretty active steps to try to get more fans back to the ballpark, but certainly the main thing would be winning. Winning helps everything, but the team lowering ticket prices 10 percent for next season. Let's stay with Chicago because I'll be honest, so far, two episodes in, not really feeling the hard knocks featuring the Chicago Bears. There's not enough insight into team building, there's not enough decision making, there's not enough discussion about player personnel for me, and I'm sorry to say, it's a little too soft for me. And the Chicago Sun times picked up this, and then I realized it after watching it again. After previous years showing coaches and players cursing and dropping f-bombs throughout, there has been no cursing in the last two weeks of hard knocks. And someone asked if this is the cleanest version of hard knocks ever recorded. The Chicago Sun times also called the show very family friendly, and I'd agree so far. Two episodes in, not quite feeling it, I'll still watch it, but let me know what you think about two episodes so far of HBO's hard knocks featuring the Chicago Bears. Staying with the NFL, CBS Sports President David Burson met the media on Wednesday and he said the network's ratings for the NFL this season may be impacted by the interest in the presidential election. The NFL saw a strong 7 percent increase in viewership last year, but historically, ratings usually go down in presidential election years. David Burson admitted the election is going to get a lot of attention in the media landscape, and it will have some impact on viewership, but he called the NFL "a rocket ship that is going to continue to drive interest." Hard to believe the NFL just weeks away from kickoff. And here is a very interesting item from Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic. He points out that a team to watch is the World Series defending champion the Texas Rangers. They are falling out of contention for the playoffs, and there are questions whether they will place players, good players on waivers later this month in an attempt to save money. The team is very concerned about its finances, and they are concerned about the uncertainty facing its future local television deal. And Rosenthal paints a scenario where the team could consider waiving four potential free agent pitchers, good players, and that would save the team about $6 million. But putting them just on waivers would be very uncomfortable for both the Rangers and Major League Baseball, the optics of a World Series defending champion just waiving players to save money would not be good. So keep your eye on the Texas Rangers, because it is certainly not a good look to have a salary dump of good players. And as Rosenthal wrote, "If the defending World Series champions turn into waiver wire enthusiasts, the sport has a problem." And finally, I mentioned it a couple times this week, we are about a month away from SBJ's drive conference, September 16th through 19th at the star in Frisco, Texas. If you have never been to the star, you have to see it. We have more than 50 speakers talking about revenue, ticketing, data, and analytics. I hope to see you at SBJ's drive conference in September. If you have any questions or want to register, just let me know. And that is your morning buzzcast. For Thursday, August 15th, I'm Gabe Mancor, stay healthy, be good to each other. I'll speak to you on Friday. [MUSIC]