K.C. stories and Draft takeaways; The premise behind Wasserman Ventures; Tony Ressler's grand vision for Atlanta and early schedule highlights from an expanded CFP
We know it's a big sports weekend, but it's a big weekend for baseball as it holds its Mexico series with games Saturday and Sunday. Padres, Giants in Mexico City and while baseball has played a number of games in Mexico, these will be the first to be staged in Mexico City and the first baseball games played outside of Monterey. So a big weekend for baseball as it tries to expand the game globally. And this is your Morning Buzzcast for Friday, April 28th. Good morning. I'm Abe Madkour. Hope everybody is doing well. While the spectacle of the 2023 NFL draft on Thursday night looked great, I watched on ESPN. It was a nice night in Kansas City.
The setup between the Union Station and the National World War I Museum and Memorial, I thought looked great. There was a reported 125,000 fans on site to start this three day celebration with fans of all 32 teams clearly present. Now, Kansas City is the first host site of the draft to also be the reigning Super Bowl champion and the NFL played that up with an appearance by Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelsey and the Vince Lombardi trophy to kick off the draft after being introduced by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Now local reports state that interest was so high that the North Lawn of the World War I Museum was apparently at capacity about 30 minutes before the start of the first round, and security officials were reportedly turning away additional fans, but you couldn't tell that from television. I'm with my producer Reggie Walker. Reggie, you watched it on ABC. I watched it on ESPN. Your takeaway from the presentation?
I thought it was well done. I thought they did an excellent job from a production standpoint, keeping the focus on the players and the game, not making it about other stuff. Great job with a lot of the imagery around the scene there in Kansas City as well. I thought overall well done by ABC.
And it certainly looked pretty spread out. There were fans in different pockets, but a big night for the NFL. A big night for Kansas City. Meanwhile, plenty of hospitality being done as Anheuser-Busch hosted around 200 customers and guests at the draft. Meanwhile, the NFL is entertaining about 1500 VIPs in Kansas City around the draft. Meanwhile, SBJ's, Liz Mullen and Olivia Green broke down the first round and for the fourth consecutive year, the agency Athletes First is representing the most first round draft picks. They have eight this year. They had five last year. So a nice increase for athletes first. CAA Sports, again ranked second to Athletes First representing six picks in the first round, including the first pick, Alabama quarterback, Bryce Young, who went to the Carolina Panthers and is repped by Ed Barry, Jimmy Sexton and Patrick Collins at CAA Sports.
CAA Sports had two of the top five picks. Meanwhile, Athletes First represents CJ Stroud. Klutch Sports Group represents Will Anderson Jr. And Legacy Sports Advisors and MB5 Sports Group represent Anthony Richardson. Meanwhile, Klutch sports groups in the Nicole Lynn rep number three Will Anderson and she also represents Bijan Robertson, who was drafted number eight by the Falcons. So Nicole Lynn represents the most top 10 picks in the first round with two of the top 10. See today's SBJ Daily for a full breakdown of the agents representing the first round picks. Now, we talked yesterday on the Buzzcast about the 17 players invited to attend the first round in Kansas City, sitting in that green room and how the networks reportedly wouldn't focus on them if they dropped down the draft board. Now four of those players did not hear their name called most notably Kentucky Quarterback Will Levis. I can't say I watched the entire first round, so I'm going to turn to my colleague Reggie Walker again. Reggie, how did they treat the players who didn't get picked who were in the green room?
I thought for the most part they were pretty fair. But Will Levis, at least on the ABC side, got a lot of camera time. It had to be awkward and uncomfortable for him. I know that leading up to the draft there was a lot of talk that he may go first and to see him still available at the end of the night and had to be gut-wrenching for him. And you can certainly see that there were a lot of uncomfortable moments towards the later end of the night.
Certainly that is always one of the storylines of the NFL draft. The NFL draft of course continues today, on Friday and on Saturday. So let's move on. But stay with football. I know it's never too early to be making your travel plans and it's hard to believe the college football playoff schedule will be different in just over about 18 months. Yes, we're starting to see a glimpse of what the schedule will be like for a 12 team playoff when it starts in 2024. Yes, just next year. So the first round of the 24 playoff will begin during the third week of December with games taking place on the campuses of the higher seed. The inaugural first round games will feature one game a Friday, December 20th and three games Saturday, December 21st. Then the college football playoff is looking at midweek games for the quarter-finals.
That would be in the first week of January. The semi-final games will take place during the second week of January, but also during the middle part of the week. In order to avoid the NFL and their Wild Card playoff weekend, the national championship for that first CFP expanded playoff will be January 20th, 2025 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. But the schedule starting to come into shape and it's going to be a crazy late December throughout January of football, both college football and professional. Let's shift to the NBA because the NBA has to love its Eastern Conference matchups. I mean, to me it feels like the 1980s and the 1990s. We're talking Sixers, Celtics, Heat, Nicks wow strong. And while the Atlanta Hawks season came to an end last night in the first round of the playoffs, do not take your eye off this organization and what they're doing on the court.
But more importantly off the court. Hawks owner, Tony Wrestler, is moving forward with his partners on a five billion dollar project. It's called Centennial Yards. It will transform downtown Atlanta between State Farm Arena and Mercedes-Benz Stadium into a large mix use development, hotels, restaurants, offices. If you have been to a game at either one of those facilities, you'll recognize this area of land. It's a 50 acre development. It's one of the most talked about projects nationally. And it sits now as mostly parking lots between Mercedes-Benz Stadium and State Farm Arena. But Wrestler and his partners are moving forward. His partners include Shaquille O'Neal and Grant Hill. And the plan is to have this done by the time Atlanta starts hosting World Cup matches in 2026, but a major five billion dollar downtown development project in Atlanta led by Hawks owner, Tony Wrestler. On the Buzzcast we've talked about Major League Soccer's plans to expand by one more team.
And first it was Las Vegas, which was the clear leader to land that team. But we've said how cost increases to that bid, including the development of a new stadium, really slowed momentum around that market. And now this week another report emerged that touches on something we've talked about, that San Diego has now passed Las Vegas as the likely landing spot for the next MLS expansion team. Now if a deal gets done soon, the team could begin play in 2025. It would likely play at San Diego's new Snapdragon Stadium. And the group looking to bring a team to San Diego is led by a London based billionaire, Mohamed Mansour. He would be the majority owner of the club. Insiders say that MLS would like to finalize their market decision by the end of this year, and if Don Garber does make San Diego the next team that would likely put the brakes on any MLS expansion for a little bit.
Although markets like Phoenix and Las Vegas are still very interested in landing an MLS team in the future, but for now, San Diego looking more and more likely as the next market for Major League Soccer. Moving on the sports company, Wasserman has launched Wasserman Ventures, which will serve as the agency's investment arm. And among the areas of interest for possible investment are areas such as AI and fan technology, as well as possibly funding new sports leagues and new events and special events. Wasserman Venture's first investment is in the Circuit Racing international tour.
That is a cycling series founded by racer and Wasserman client, Justin Williams. So the tour will use this investment from Wasserman Ventures to host more races at larger sports venues. So Forbes reports that the size of investment from Wasserman Ventures will be in the range of half a million dollars to up to five million dollars. It's not a normal investment vehicle as the company will not have majority control in all the companies they invest in. But instead, Wasserman Ventures is looking to deploy capital where they believe they can quickly help grow and scale some of these sports operations and they'll receive some equity in them.
So keep your eye, let's keep our eye on other investments they make and what type of technology or sports they are bullish on. But Wasserman Ventures the latest to look at investing in new technology and sports leagues that they believe have real growth potential. Let's finish up the Buzzcast. We will have more on this next week, but we've talked a lot on the Buzzcast about Michael Rubin and Fanatics' efforts to get into sports betting at the CAA World Congress of Sports. Just last week, Rubin said Fanatics would hopefully be live with sports betting in 12 to 15 states by the start of this upcoming NFL season. Well, you'll start to see progress next week as Fanatics plans to launch its first gambling app in Tennessee and Ohio on Monday. We'll have more about that and the onboarding of that during Buzzcast next week, but Fanatics making some plays in sports betting.
And finally, a personal shout out to a longtime listener and great supporter of the Buzzcast. He's a very talented executive as well as Cumulus Media has promoted executive vice president of sales and sports partnerships, Brandon Berman to President of Sales at Westwood One. We know what a big role Westwood One has in sports programming and Brandon Berman has built his career at Westwood One starting 18 years ago from his earliest role as an account executive. And through his talent and hard work, he is now president of sales. He knows the sports business incredibly well. He is very well regarded. So congratulations to Brandon Berman in his new role as President of Sales at Westwood One. And that is your morning Buzzcast for Friday, April 28th. I'm Abe Madkour, thanks for listening to the Buzzcast. Stay healthy, be good to each other. I'll speak to you on Monday.