Start your morning with Buzzcastwith Austin Karp: The WNBA stays hot in Phoenix during All-Star weekend; a big day for WBD and its NBA future; Discover becomes title sponsor of the Big Ten Football Championship and Cosm sets plans for Atlanta.
SBJ Morning Buzzcast
SBJ Morning Buzzcast: July 22, 2024
(upbeat music) Rise and shine. This is your morning buzzcast for Monday, July 22nd. I'm Austin Carp. If you remember back in 2016, cable news viewership was through the roof and it put a real dent into sports viewership, particularly in the fall and winter. Those sort of cable news upticks were already creeping in this summer. And after yesterday's news that President Biden will not seek re-election, we could see some serious headwinds for football this fall. Now, the NFL has been on a roll and it was already going to be tough to top last year's regular season viewership, which was the best since 2015. To us in the fact that a lot of Americans are perhaps gonna be keeping on MSNBC, Fox News or CNN a bit longer and the NFL will need to do all it can to keep cranking out great windows, weekend and week out. And it's not just the NFL, college football, the MLB post-season, starts to the NHL and NBA seasons, US Open Tennis, all of those could be facing headwinds this fall. We may even get an early glimpse into numbers around the Olympics, whose Fortnite begins later this week. Does NBC Universal see MSNBC cannibalizing some of its own sports audience? We shall see. If you were able to catch the WNBA All Stars ticking on Team USA on Saturday night, what a great contest and a celebration of everything going on with the league on the rocks. Sold out crowd at Footprint Center and Foot Phoenix, Matt Ispia, playing host Adam Silver, flying in with his daughter, actors Jason Sudakis, Aubrey Plaza in attendance. And let's not forget the best women's basketball town on the planet. My favorite tweets of the night came in the fourth quarter and revolved around Kaylee Clark, dropping her first assist of the night to Angel Reese. Talk about another viral moment for the league on social media. Commissioner Kathy Engelberg, also the league's best attendance in 26 years happening at the halfway mark. As SVJ's longtime research chief David Broaden notes in this week's magazine, the Indiana fever and crowd magnet Clark are on pace to break a single season average attendance record that was set back in 2002 by the Washington mystics. Half of the league's teams are averaging more than 10,000 fans per game at the break, which would also be historic if that pace continues. And the numbers don't stop there. There were our record 24 sponsors activating on the ground at the fan fest in Phoenix. WMBA app usage is up 530%. Lead pass subs up up 360% and the all-star voting this year up an incredible 600%. My colleague Tom Friend notes Engelberg alluded to the pending media rights pack that the WMBA is going to get, which is reported to be 2.2 billion over 11 years with ESPN, NBC and Amazon, with another 60 million or so expected to come from other smaller deals with ION, CBS and perhaps another media outlet. But even though nothing has been thoughtalyzed, Hall of Famer and WMBA all-star coach Cheryl Miller called it a low ball deal. I guess we'll see when the numbers settle there, but the success of this first half of the WMBA is undeniable. A regular season record, 16 games have already drawn over one million viewers on TV and look for Saturday's game to set an all-star viewership record as well. What really stands out to me is also that three of the five best-selling jerseys for the league so far this year are rookies. It really portends well for a bright future for Kathy Engelberg and the WMBA. Now, while the weekend belonged to the WMBA, it's a big day today for the MBA. Warner Brothers Discovery has until the end of Monday to follow up on its claim that it will match Amazon's Seabid for the MBA, which is a lot of streaming. And sources have said that that package has now grown to more than $1.9 billion annually. WBD could entertain the option of also trying to match NBC's reported $2.5 billion beat package as well that has a lot of over-the-air linear TV elements, but that scenario is highly unlikely given that cost. The readers Bill Simmons over the weekend also noted that the cost of trying to match Amazon's bid may be cost prohibitive for WBD and David Zazloff. Simmons noted that Amazon's deal with the MBA now has what might be called a poison pill provision in it in a form of three years of the deal paid upfront and put into escrow. Now, this isn't a big deal for Amazon and it's $2 trillion market cap, but it could be a non-starter for WBD whose market cap is closer to $17 billion, not to mention that the company is loaded with debt and very cash poor. Asking WBD to pony up close to $6 billion in cash right up front doesn't seem likely. So if not a match, does this become illegal in 10-lit? A lot of questions left to be answered and hopefully we'll have a little more certainty on that as we get closer to the end of business today. It's also officially Olympic week. It's finally here. The highly anticipated opening ceremony on the Sen in Eris is set for Friday. Our own Olympic correspondent Rachel Axton is already on the ground and in a magazine piece this week, Axton notes that roughly 100,000 spectators will have paid for tickets on the lower docks along the Sen while another 220,000 will have free access by invitation to the upper docks. Security is expected to be tight for both and French authorities have said that they will use AI to monitor crowd surges. Hospitality plans have largely been determined by which bank of the river spectators are staying on as it will not be possible to cross bridges, some of which are being used for hospitality, entertainment, or broadcast some of the day of the ceremony. GMR Marketing, which has around 20 Olympic clients, says it is communicating logistical and time constraints to its clients and providing alternative hospitality lounges. If those clients don't want to make the lengthy and involved commitment to go watch in person, I can't wait to watch the spectacle on Friday. Little bit of a lightning round to wrap things up this morning. It's also MLS All-Star Week in Columbus, Ohio. Today is going to be a day of service and media day for the MLS and League MX All-Stars. There's also a reception that we'll see Commissioner Don Garber, Columbus Crew Owners D and Jimmy Haslam, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, and more. The game itself is set for Wednesday, lower.com field. My colleague Ben Portenoy reports that Discover is going to be the first title sponsor of the Big Ten Football Championship. That's part of a four year renewal being announced today with the Big Ten and Big Ten Network in the credit card category. Chicago-based Revolution Sports Marketing helped negotiate to deal between the two sides. SBJ's Rob Schaeffer is breaking news this morning that Cosm, the shared reality venue, is bringing its immersive experience to centennial yards. That's the downtown development taking place in Atlanta. This will be the tech company's third such facility in the U.S. Cosm is the first addition to the planned 470,000 square foot entertainment district that centennial yards recently broke ground on. That's going to sit on a seven and a half acre site bordering the Hawks State Farm Arena and the Falcons Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Cosm opened its first location in LA in late June and has already hosted several events. That includes a private showing of UFC 303 and ticketed events for the Copa America third place match in finals. Cosm also has a Dallas spot opening this fall. Xander Schoffley is having one hell of a year. His first major of the PGA Championship in May and now his second of the year with the Open Championship title at Royal Trune over the weekend. Callaway, Avis Rennecar and fashion brand Descente which Schoffley started wearing at the start of the year getting a lot of love for sure. Now Schoffley looks to continue keeping his high profile in Paris where he's going to look to defend a gold medal as part of Team USA. I love what a arena football league did for its final at the American Dream Shopping Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey on Friday. And I've been doing this long enough to remember when that project was going to be called Xanadu going way back. But this was an incredibly creative spot to put a championship game. Lots of love on social media over the weekend for the visuals there. It was a good way to hype the first arena bowl. Since 2019, this league has had a lot of financial issues. Good to see that get back in a creative way. Hey, to see that the A7 form at many is 50% of their non-baseball operation staff that they're going to be out of work starting October 31st. Employees who ticket services, finance, stadium ops, marketing, sales, legal, community relations are going to be especially affected per source, decided by the San Francisco Chronicle. These are head of the Sacramento next season, and likely Las Vegas in the long term. Not a huge surprise, I suppose. The A's are just struggling to draw fans this season, averaging only around 7,700 fans in Oakley. That's below even the 8,000 or so that the single eight beaten dragons are averaging this season today. Finally, be sure to read SBJ's cover piece in the magazine this week, which is a champions profile, a Dodger president and CEO Stan Caston looking back on his storied career in sports business and what lies ahead for the tireless operator. So that is your morning bus cast for Monday, July 22nd. I'm Austin Carr. I hope everyone has a fantastic start to the week. Make good choices out there, and I will speak to you all tomorrow. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)