Endeavor sells minor league teams; Eddy Cue meets with MLS BOG; NFL eyes Black Friday game for '23
So if you're planning on going to the U.S. Open Tennis Championships, better get your tickets. In the six hours yesterday, on Tuesday, after Serena Williams announced that she would be stepping away from tennis after the U.S. Open, the tournament sold 13,000 tickets. The Open's opening night is nearly sold out, and tickets for the first two nights, especially, were big sellers. So if you're going to the Open, especially in week one, better grab your tickets soon. I hope to see you there.
And this is your Morning Buzzcast for Wednesday, August 10th. Good morning, I'm Abe Madkour. Let's start with Major League Soccer. It holds its All Star game tonight in Minneapolis at 8:30 P.M. with the game on ESPN. Meanwhile, Apple's big hitter, Eddy Cue, will make a rare appearance and attend MLS's board meeting today, which will be held in St. Paul. Eddy Cue's appearance is significant because it will be the board's first meeting since the league announced its 10 year, $2.5 billion global streaming deal with Apple, and Cue will surely speak to the owners and the board about the league's evolving media landscape. Boy, it would be fun to be a fly on the wall in that meeting.
Let's move on to the NFL. The Cincinnati Bengals made it official and finally agreed to bring on a naming right sponsor. We talked about this on the Buzzcast. More than 20 years after Paul Brown Stadium opened, it will now be known as Paycor Stadium. Paycor is a Cincinnati-based human capital management company. It has been a team sponsor since 2018. Now Paul Brown Stadium, named for the team's founding owner, opened in 2000 and was one of just three NFL stadiums without a naming rights deal. The Bears' Soldier Field and the Packers' Lambeau Field are now the only two left. On the agency side, Excel Sports Management represented Paycor in the transaction and negotiations. The Bengals handled the deal internally, but it had worked with Wasserman on establishing a naming rights valuation before going to the marketplace.
Now as we've talked about before, the Bengals did this long in opposition because it needs to maximize, or the team needs to maximize, revenue in this new era of the NFL, and the team's lease agreement with Hamilton County shows that nearly all the money, if not all, goes directly to the Bengals. So the Bengals surely will benefit with this naming rights deal with Paycor, making it's stadium Paycor Stadium.
Let's shift on to golf. Round one in the courts went to the PGA Tour, as a federal judge denied an effort by three LIV Golf players to compete in this week's FedEx Cup playoffs, giving the PGA Tour an early win against the upstart series. So a judge ruled that the LIV Golf players failed to show they would suffer "irreparable harm" if they were not allowed to play.
The judge added the players' guaranteed pay contracts with LIV Golf made it likely that they would be earning more money than they would've made and could reasonably have expected to make in a reasonable period of time with the PGA Tour. The judge also said that LIV golfers knew going in that they would lose out on PGA Tour participation and compensation by joining LIV Golf. Remember, three LIV golfers were seeking relief to participate in the first leg of the playoffs. It starts this week at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. They claim that they had previously qualified for the playoffs before being suspended by the PGA Tour and should have been granted relief to be able to play, but a judge ruled against them and in favor of the PGA Tour. And I believe this is the start of a steady stream of PGA Tour versus LIV Golf in the courts.
Let's move on. Endeavor is getting out of Minor League Baseball team ownership. As expected, Endeavor agreed to sell its Diamond Baseball Holdings, its ownership of 10 Minor League Baseball teams to private equity firm Silver Lake for $280 million. Silver Lake, of course, has a stake in Endeavor. Endeavor will keep a relationship as it will look to represent Diamond Baseball Holdings on sponsorship, on content, on merchandise, and licensing. Remember, Endeavor saw a great opportunity and great promise of aggregating Minor League Baseball teams across the country, but they immediately faced a conflict of interest issue as Major League Baseball's Players Association expressed concerns over that conflict of interest caused by Endeavor owning teams while also representing pro baseball players through its WME Sports Agency.
We've talked about this on the Buzzcast, but Endeavor's Minor League Baseball team ownership has been a major point of discussion in the industry. The MLBPA notified WME Sports in January that their agents could lose their certification to represent players. So in the end, Endeavor did not want to jeopardize its efforts to represent talent in baseball through WME Sports and agreed to sell the teams to Silver Lake for $280 million. Endeavor said that was about the same price that it cost them to acquire the teams, so they basically were even or were made good in this transaction, but Endeavor getting out of Minor League Baseball ownership and selling Diamond Baseball Holdings to Silver Lake.
One of the hottest sports brands, I believe, is Overtime. It's one of the hottest companies in sports, and it continues to be attractive to investors as it announced a $100 million Series D, and that was led by Liberty Media and by Morgan Stanley's Counterpoint Global Fund, so this is a big investment. Overtime previously raised $80 million in Series C and has $250 million invested in total capital.
So what does Overtime plan to do with the influx of new capital? Well it plans to expand its two sports leagues. Remember, it's launched a basketball league, it's launched a football league. It's also looking to develop its Web3 strategies, including NFTs and it's trading cards, through an arrangement with Topps. So Overtime looks to play in a lot of interesting spaces. Axios reports that the latest round values Overtime, which is a six year old company, at over $500 million. I'll just say there will be many Harvard Business School case studies in the future about the strategy and growth of Overtime, which has become one of the most successful media companies specifically growing through its great use of social media. But Overtime getting $100 million series D, led by Liberty Media and Morgan Stanley.
So as we await official word of the Big Ten's massive media payday and deals with Fox, CBS, and NBC, much of the attention now shifts to the Pac-12 and even the Big 12 and their media talks. Most insiders believe that the Pac-12 is now in far stronger position with ESPN out of the bidding for the Big Ten rights. Many believe that the Pac-12 can benefit from ESPN still having resources, i.e. money, and still having interest in the Pac-12's inventory and windows.
In addition, expect to see an Apple or an Amazon or some other tech player emerge in the mix. SBJ's Michael Smith also reported that if the ACC and the Pac-12 are serious about forming some type of affiliation or merger that results in a coast-to-coast conference, that would also be attractive to Disney and ESPN. So a few intriguing scenarios for the Pac-12 are still out there. Meanwhile, it's good business for the media consultants. Remember, Sports Media Advisors' Doug Perlman is consulting with the Pac-12, and Endeavor's Karen Brodkin and Hillary Mandel are consulting with the Big 12 about its media options. So a lot of dynamic moving pieces among college sports media rights.
And finally, we'll go back to the NFL and an interesting story. The NFL is taking on Black Friday. Yes, SBJ's John Ourand reports that the league will expand its schedule to include a game on Black Friday, most likely starting with the 2023 season. I can imagine it being a prime time affair. Amazon would stream the game. It's possible, Ourand reports, that the league could wait until 2024 to schedule that game, but all signs point to 2023.
Now the idea of staging a Black Friday game gained momentum earlier this year as Amazon negotiated that exclusive Thursday Night Football package for its Prime streaming service, and holding a game the day after Thanksgiving really allows the NFL to own that entire weekend. They'll have a successful Thursday with three games. They can have a Friday, likely prime time, game, and then that leads into a successful slate of Sunday games. So Black Friday does seem to be ready and ripe for a big sports event, especially around the NFL and especially with the connection to Amazon.
So that is your Morning Buzzcast. It's Wednesday, it's August 10th. I'm Abe Madkour. Thanks for listening. Until I speak to you tomorrow, stay healthy, be good to each other. I'll chat with you on Thursday.