Start your morning with Buzzcast with Abe Madkour: College basketball’s strong run and executives in the news to know
FIFA is expected to select On Location as its primary hospitality sales agency for the 2026 World Cup in North America, multiple sources told SBJ. The global governing body for soccer has chosen the Endeavor-owned firm over fellow RFP finalist Beyond Hospitality, the sources said. FIFA and On Location declined to comment.
Based on a similar World Cup RFP obtained by SBJ, it is believed On Location would also be the hospitality sales agency for the 2027 Women’s World Cup. FIFA is expected to decide among three hosting bids — a joint U.S.-Mexico Bid, a Brazilian bid and a joint bid from Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands — at its annual congress next month in Thailand.
On Location could also be the hospitality provider for the 2025 Club World Cup, an expanded 32-team tournament scheduled to be held in the U.S. next summer.
On Location, which the NFL launched in 2015 to sell hospitality packages for the Super Bowl, brings robust experience operating in North America. It is newer to the global market but now holds the rights for the two largest international sporting events. The company, which Endeavor acquired in 2020, won the hospitality rights in 2021 for the 2024 Paris, 2026 Milan-Cortina and 2028 L.A. Olympic Games. The company’s combined guarantee for the three Olympic Games is $1.3B.
The global network of sub-distributors for specific regions that On Location established for the 2024 Paris Olympics could serve as a model for how it might approach the World Cup.
Beyond Hospitality, launched by Jaime Byrom in 2023 with 30% backing from Qatari consultancy Aspire Katara Hospitality, was the de facto incumbent for the World Cup hospitality rights. Match Hospitality AG, which Byrom founded in 2007, oversaw the FIFA Hospitality Programme for every World Cup since 2010, and Byrom’s relationship with the sport’s global governing body dates to the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.
In its 2022 annual report, FIFA said it expects to generate record revenue of $3.1B from hospitality rights and ticket sales during the 2023-2026 World Cup cycle, most of which would be for the men’s World Cup. The global governing body pointed to the “attractive hospitality features already imbedded in [North America’s] modern stadiums” as a key to the projected 226% increase from $949M during the 2019-2022 cycle.
UConn took down Purdue 75-60 last night in the NCAA men’s national championship game, becoming the first school to repeat as national champions since the Univ. of Florida in 2006-07. With this year’s title, UConn has now won six national championships, all since 1999. That remarkable run of success has shaken the bedrock of a sport defined by tradition, allowing an upstart program to elbow its way into college basketball’s aristocracy. ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla said, “Maybe a traditionalist wouldn’t consider them a blueblood, but in my mind they’re a blueblood program” (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 4/8).
In the modern era, these past two years stand alone in their dominance. It’s significantly harder now to produce title-caliber teams in back-to-back seasons. Players move on, and parity has eliminated dynasties. UConn became the eighth team to win back-to-back championships (N.Y. POST, 4/9).
UConn coach Dan Hurley has now become “both the face of a program he rebuilt and a sport he’s reshaping.” Hurley is running “the most impressive thing going in organized sports” as America “watches in awe or ire or both” (NEW HAVEN REGISTER, 4/9).
In the moments after the Huskies won the title, UConn students stormed out of a “packed” Gampel Pavilion, where a watch party was held, and “began flooding the campus.” Fireworks “were soon set off” and at least one person was arrested “within a half-hour after the game ended.” But the scene on campus “was much more subdued than last year when riots broke out” (NEW HAVEN REGISTER, 4/9).
The audience for the South Carolina-Iowa NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship climbed into football-esque territory on Sunday afternoon, with ABC/ESPN averaging 18.7 million viewers for the title game.
That’s easily a record for any women’s hoops game (and the third straight time an Iowa women’s game with Caitlin Clark has delivered such a record this postseason). South Carolina-Iowa is up 89% from last year’s LSU-Iowa finale (which at the time was a record-setting women’s audience in Nielsen’s People Meter era).
South Carolina-Iowa is higher than every men’s NCAA Championship game dating back to Virginia-Texas Tech in 2019 on CBS (19.6 million). It’s also better than every NBA Finals game dating back to Warriors-Cavaliers Game 5 on ABC in 2017 (24.5 million).
For 2024 to date, the women’s title game would the 24th best telecast on all of TV (for all of 2023, it would have ranked No. 64 overall, topping a number of NFL games).
There was plenty of reaction on social media to the big viewership number:
- Olympic Games Dir of Daily Content Benny Bonsu: “A monumental moment for women’s basketball and a clear signal: Invest in women’s sports.”
- Sports business podcaster Joe Pompliano: “What a MASSIVE month for women’s basketball.”
- Newsmax anchor Greta Van Susteren: “If all these women come back and play again against each other in 5 years, I bet there will be even more viewers…they made the game so fun!”
- Golf Channel contributor Ron Sirak: “Men who once wouldn’t dream of watching women’s sports are now tuning in. Their daughters changed them.”
- Chicago Sun-Times WNBA writer Annie Costabile: “The WNBA’s next media rights deal gonna be a doozy. Needs to be.”
Some other comps:
Maryland lawmakers approved a plan to use $400M in state bonds to rebuild Baltimore’s Pimlico Race Course and “transfer the track to state control” in the waning hours of the state’s legislative session yesterday. The legislation also calls for transferring Pimlico from The Stronach Group, which is the current owner of Pimlico and nearby Laurel Park, to a “newly formed nonprofit that would operate under the state.” The 105-32 vote in the Maryland House sends the bill to Gov. Wes Moore, who “has expressed support for it.” Under the plan, the Preakness would “relocate to Laurel Park in 2026 while the new facility is being built,” before returning to Pimlico, “likely in 2027” (AP, 4/8).
YouTube group Dude Perfect has secured a nine-figure investment from Highmount Capital in “a play to build out their business in new areas, and to expand their core programming.” A source pegged the value of the investment at greater than $100M. In addition to expanding the group’s content output, Dude Perfect “wants to create more live experiences, as well as explore more consumer product opportunities.” Dude Perfect has become one of the most popular YouTube channels, with more than 60 million followers (HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, 4/9). The team’s future has been dubbed “Dude Perfect 2.0” and consists of “plans to open a retail store, to launch a streaming platform, introduce a line of toys and games in Walmart, and even envisions” a $100M theme park (CNBC.com, 4/9).
CAA Evolution served as the exclusive financial advisor to Dude Perfect and King & Spalding acted as its legal advisor. Highmount Capital was represented by Stinson LLP. Dude Perfect has only about 20 employees on its staff, but Tyler Toney, one of the group’s five founders, said that will change after Highmount’s investment. “Up until this point, Dude Perfect has been a very lean-run company for the last 15 years,” Toney said. “We’ve purposely kept it that way because we liked that smaller team, family feel, but we knew that in order for us to take that next step of growth that we would need somebody like (Highmount) that could help take us to that next level.”
David Hawkins, co-founder and General Partner at Highmount Capital, called Dude Perfect’s expertise in family-friendly entertainment a big opportunity. “There’s definitely an open lane. Entertainment that both kids and adults can enjoy together is pretty unique,” he said. “Our goal is not just to maximize short-term profits; we have a long-term structure and we’re going to be partners with these guys for hopefully many decades, to where we’re doing all sorts of stuff from live experiences, to new content, to bringing on new talent over time” (Erik Bacharach, SBJ).
NFL Media for the first time will have a live fantasy football reaction show around the NFL Draft. The league has partnered with the independent podcast “The Fantasy Footballers” to create “The Fantasy Footballers Draft Special,” which will stream exclusively on NFL+ after the first round next Thursday night. Andy Holloway, Jason Moore and Mike Wright will co-host the stream with instant analysis. “The Fantasy Footballers” are represented by WME and Amplify Management.
Women in Sports Tech has announced its seventh cohort of WiST Fellows, the non-profit’s fellowship program pairing college students with some of the biggest companies that touch the sports tech industry.
This year, 19 students will work across 16 places like IBM, USOPC, Warner Bros. Discovery, GameChanger and Zoomph. The intern base spans 18 universities, ranging from undergraduate to doctoral students from Division I through Division III which also features HBCU representation.
“This year’s cohort personifies why we created the WiST Fellowship program in 2018 — to provide potentially life-changing experiences and a network of support for aspirational students at the onset of their professional careers,” said WiST founder & CEO Marilou McFarlane in a statement.
WBD is one of three new WiST partners, along with bicycle manufacturer Specialized and FairPlay Sports Media, for the fellowship program. To date, more than 60 companies have hosted WiST Fellows in the program’s seven-year history, with 84% of fellows currently working in the industry today.
The NWSL’s Red Stars will take on Bay FC on June 8 at Wrigley Field, the first NWSL game to be played at the ballpark. Red Stars Exec Chair Laura Ricketts is also co-owner of the Cubs with her family (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 4/8).
If local and state officials work out a deal for renovations of FedExForum that are expected to cost at least $550M, the Grizzlies “could sign a new 20-year lease,” Tennessee Sen. Brent Taylor said in a video posted to social media yesterday. Taylor posted the video to “update constituents on the ongoing legislative process to come up with the money needed for long-term renovations” to FedExForum (Memphis COMMERCIAL APPEAL, 4/8).
MLS today begins its seventh annual Greener Goals Week of Service, highlighting league-wide activations and raising awareness for environmental issues throughout the soccer community. MLS players will be sporting Adidas One Planet pre-match jerseys in celebration of Earth Week. Titled “One Planet. One Chance.”, the pre-match jerseys are made from recycled materials and come in three distinct colors representing the woods, soil and water (MLS).
“Did any of you notice how much time is spent on cable TV about Caitlin Clark’s prop performance in the first game, and leading into the second game? Is that really what we should be talking about in the middle of a women’s Final Four?” — NCAA President Charlie Baker, on how pervasive prop betting on college athletes has become (AP, 4/8).
“If we get it, we’re probably going to negotiate harder than anybody ever has. We probably would not even sell it to them. We’ll probably just sit on it and make wristbands” — Last Dive Bar co-founder Paul Bailey, on applying to buy the trademark to “Las Vegas Athletics” before the A’s do (S.F. CHRONICLE, 4/8).
GOLFWEEK gets prepared for Masters Week by looking at the tournament’s newest hospitality space under the header, “Map & Flag, Augusta National’s $17,000 per ticket and off-property hospitality venue, is real and spectacular.” The early reviews “are positive” for Map & Flag, Augusta’s newest high-end hospitality venue and “the first and only official Masters hospitality experience outside the gates of Augusta National Golf Club.” One patron, who has been to Berckmans Place (Augusta’s other hospitality venue, located behind the fifth fairway) previously and visited Map & Flag yesterday, described the difference as the latter being “a more chill vibe with less important people.” Another industry veteran who had been to both said “they are meant to be different” and described Map & Flag as “a giant sports bar that is “simple and elegant.”
Also:
ONE SHINING MOMENT 🙌#MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/7x2R9DfyNM
Never know what you're going to see at the ballpark, huh?#ForTheLand pic.twitter.com/I9fqdx5BmV
For the dads out there: we have our first mowing update from the Masters pic.twitter.com/IrBeCDVlzZ
The total eclipse has just begun. 🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑 pic.twitter.com/ihGr5mFzai
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