NFL Draft in Vegas shows well; historic weekend for women's sports and Inter Miami gets big win on stadium plan.
A big weekend around the NFL Draft and around women's sports. This is your Morning Buzzcast for Friday, April 29th. Good morning, I'm Abe Madkour. We made it to another Friday.
The NFL Draft continues today, Friday, and ends on Saturday. The league has to be happy about round one in Las Vegas on Thursday night. What I watched all looked like the spectacle we thought it would be: great, perfect weather, wonderful visuals of Las Vegas, a setup at Caesars Forum that looked packed with people, very energetic. Yet, it looked like people could walk around, and it was roomy. The first round moved quickly. It showed great on TV, and estimates had about 500,000 fans on site for the draft. Commissioner Goodell, of course, got his fair share of boos, but he also got his fair share of hugs. There were special tributes to the people of Ukraine and the late Dwayne Haskins, so a lot of nice touches during the first round of the draft.
Here's what we found out. The Kansas City Chiefs will host the Chargers in the first Thursday Night Football game on Amazon Prime in 2022. That, of course, is scheduled for week two, September 15th. Commissioner. Roger Goodell announced that at the draft last night. Remember, Amazon has a deal for Prime Video to be the home of Thursday Night Football. They'll have 15 Thursday night games this year. The complete NFL schedule will be announced on May 12th, but the league dropping little teasers to the schedule announcing last night the opening of Amazon Prime's schedule.
In terms of talent representation, Athletes First, the agency represented the most first round picks for the third consecutive year. They had five players selected in the first round. They had eight in 2021. After Athletes First, CAA Sports had four. Klutch Sports Group and WME sports each had three players selected in the first round. VaynerSports and Klutch Sports Group, both had two top 10 picks each. 15 different agencies represented players selected in the first round. Interestingly, that's the same number of agencies as in 2020 and 2021. A hat tip to SBJ's Olivia Green and Liz Mullen for turning around those agency representation data points so quickly for this morning.
Let's move on from the NFL Draft to women's sports because history will be made in women's boxing this weekend. We continue to see the growth of that genre of that sport. For the first time in its 140-year history, two female boxers are headlining at Madison Square Garden as lightweight champion Katie Taylor goes up against Amanda Serrano in the ring on Saturday. The Buzzcast producer, Reggie Walker, says he's all in on that bout, and we'll be watching on Saturday. By most accounts, Taylor and Serrano are the top ranked women pound for pound, and we all know how rare it is for boxing to have a bout between the pound for pound number one and number two. So this fight will be an event. It will be televised by The Zone starting at 7:30. Jake Paul's Most Valuable Promotions is co-promoting the fight with Matchroom Sport. The bout is expected to be a sellout with over 20,000 tickets expected to be sold by the time those two boxers get in the ring. So look for that on Saturday.
A big weekend for women's soccer as the National Women's Soccer League opens its 10th regular season this weekend. You have a league trying to change the narrative from some of the controversy surrounding player mistreatment and issues around its coaches and leadership to focus on the field, to focus on new franchises and a new commissioner. So you have a new commissioner in Jessica Berman, starting her first year coming over from the National Lacrosse League. She joins as the NWSL Board of Governors approved really a landmark collective bargaining agreement with the players. That was in February. That included a significant boost to the league's minimum salary. So you have all the workings of some progress on the business side.
The two big franchise stories you have are new teams, Angel City and San Diego Wave, and both should have strong, promising stars. We have talked about Angel City a lot on the Buzzcast. That should have an especially strong debut. They have a very diverse and celebrity-backed ownership group. It's been a big business hit. The team has sold more than 15,000 season tickets, which is a great number for any team, and has agreements for at least $35 million in sponsorship revenue. Again, those are two very, very strong business metrics. So Angel City FC starting its season on Friday night. The San Diego Wave kick off their season on Sunday. But the NWSL ready to kick off its 10th regular season.
News broke yesterday that the final bidders for Chelsea, they've been thrown a little bit of a curve ball. The three bidders were reportedly told they have to increase their already massive bid for the team, yes, to contribute more than $600 million more to buy the club. They were told that current Chelsea owner or former Chelsea owner, Roman Abramovich, was seeking the additional funds to aid what he was calling one of the biggest charitable donations in British history. So he would use that money as part of the distribution after the sale. This would bring the bids to about $3.7 or $3.8 billion. Remember, the bidders also have to guarantee more than a billion dollars towards stadium renovation and redevelopment. So you can see, the cost to become the new owners of Chelsea is now approaching $5 billion.
All of the bidders reportedly have remained in the race for Chelsea as of Thursday evening, so that implies they are ready to contribute the extra $600 million to their bid. This is just getting to be an incredible amount of money for a franchise. This should wrap up or this could wrap up pretty soon. We should know the winning bidder by some time next week. But more and more intrigue surrounding the bid and the ownership race for Chelsea.
Finally, let's end the Buzzcast with a big night for Inter Miami and owners, David Beckham and Jorge Mas. We talked about this vote yesterday on the Buzzcast. Inter Miami got a big win Thursday night when Miami commissioners voted to approve a lease of 73 acres of city-owned land to Beckham and Mas for a massive mixed-use complex. That'll include an MLS stadium and commercial center that will, of course, be the home venue for Inter Miami. The team was awarded a 99-year lease. They can develop the land. Plans are for a 40,000 seat stadium. That's a big stadium for MLS standards. It'll have a hotel. There will be retail shops. It'll have nearly a 60-acre park. This is a massive development.
This vote was very controversial. It had been delayed four times over several months. Now, there's still some steps to go through. Inter Miami needs commissioners to approve some zoning changes before the project can move forward. A vote on the zoning plan is expected to take place before the end of this year. Don't overlook how big this is. David Beckham has been trying for roughly almost eight years to land a stadium deal in the Miami area. There have been plenty of starts and stops. This is a very big win, and the team is confident the next steps will be approved. They believe a stadium will be completed in late 2024 or early 2025. That'll be a massive shot in the arm for Inter Miami.
That is your Morning Buzzcast for Friday, April 29th. I'm Abe Madkour. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. Stay healthy. Be good to each other. I'll speak to you on Monday.