The Pegula Family restructures it's sports holdings, PWHL announces home markets, facility renovation boom continues, and leaders to discuss potential changes to the College Football Playoff format.
Sports Business Journal is taking submissions for our inaugural SBJ Best Places to Work in Sports. Learn more and nominate your organization today on sportsbusinessjournal.com, or just let me know if you have any questions. And this is your Morning Buzzcast for Tuesday, August 29th. Good morning. I'm Abe Madkour. Thanks for listening to the Buzzcast. More changes out of Buffalo, around the Bills and the Sabres, as Pegula Sports and Entertainment is no more. Bills and Sabres owner Terry Pegula will become president of the Sabres, and he disbanded or broke up Pegula Sports and Entertainment, now that operated as a parent company for all of the Pegula family's sports and entertainment holdings. And that has been in place for well over a decade. So what does this mean? It means the two teams, the Bills and the Sabres, will really operate independently, and they will no longer have shared services before they combined marketing and creative, sometimes ticket sales.
Now, this will separate the Bills and the Sabres for the first time, like I said, in just about a decade. So separate staffs focused on their own organization. With this move, they also reduced the size of the operation, as 15 employees of Pegula Sports and Entertainment were reportedly laid off, according to the Buffalo News. Now Terry Pegula becomes president of both teams, and I find that certainly unique. You don't find many team owners with the title of president, let alone the president title for two teams. But he will work closely with Chief Operating Officer John Roth on the business side of the Sabres. General Manager Kevin Adams will run the hockey operations for the Sabres. Remember, last month, John Roth was named COO of the Bills. So now he is COO of the Bills and the Sabres, to me, these organizations are clearly being run by John Roth, who is a longtime financial advisor to Terry Pegula, and certainly Terry Pegula is in the mix day-to-day.
We know the Bills are building a new stadium. There are cost overruns already reported with that construction. The Sabres are in the early stages of planning major upgrades to KeyBank Center. That's the downtown hockey arena. And that building hasn't undergone any really renovation since it opened in 1996, and that project will take a number of years to complete. So the bottom line is, a lot of changes in Buffalo with both the Bills and the Sabres. We all know the great promise that the Bills have for on the field success this season and the expectations around success for the Buffalo Bills, but a lot of changes and a lot of uncertainty in the front office and in the leadership ranks. Let's move on. Women's professional hockey is taking a big step forward as the Professional Women's Hockey League has their inaugural markets, as the six teams competing in its opening season will be based in Boston, New York, Minnesota, Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa.
Now, those are all traditional core hockey markets. Washington, DC, and London, Ontario, were both said to be in the running, but neither ultimately made the final cut. So selecting the markets was a key first step in this league. Remember, this is the league that is backed by Dodgers owner Mark Walter and Billie Jean King Enterprises, a key executive who is behind all of the plans and the formation of the league. That is Dodgers CEO Stan Kasten. He's leading the day-to-day role in forming and shaping this league that will start in January. In fact, the league's business operations are currently based out of Dodger Stadium. Now the PWHL will be operated as a single entity, meaning the league will own all six teams. Now, what's next for the league? Well, first, the league has been interviewing potential general manager candidates for each of the clubs. They expect to announce those hires later this week.
In addition, they will shortly name the site venues in each of those six markets. So again, a lot of sources have asked me about the potential viability of women's hockey. There are a lot of, I would say, different points of view. What's your point of view? Does the PWHL excite you? Regardless their six opening markets, Boston, New York, Minnesota, Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa. Let's shift to facility renovations because we have talked about the big changes coming up at Gillette Stadium for the upcoming season for the Patriots. Well, add the Broncos to that list, as they have rolled out a hundred million dollars' worth of upgrades to Empower Field at Mile High. At a hundred million dollars, this is the single largest capital improvement in the stadium's 22-year history. Hard to believe that building is over two decades old.
The big investment, you guessed it, in a brand-new scoreboard. This scoreboard at Empower Field will be the fifth-largest in the NFL, but that's not all. The team also added new signage for retired numbers. They greatly expanded the Broncos team store. They upgraded 130 suites at Empower Field. They changed everything inside the suites, and that's a major, major project. And as premium spaces become more and more valuable, the Broncos have introduced what they're calling the Breckenridge Bourbon Club. This is an all-inclusive lounge, very high-end, very premium. It'll be open three hours before the game and an hour after the game. So that will be a key revenue driver for the team. All of those elements, part of the $100 million in upgrades to a 22-year-old facility in Denver. Keep your eye on some news in college football this week, as leaders in college football will meet Wednesday to try and hammer out the details of some of the unresolved issues of the 12-team college football playoff before that expanded format arrives next year.
Now, it seems that some college leaders, including SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, they really want to reexamine the previously agreed-upon 12-team model. And the athletic reported that there are mixed feelings about changing the format. The issue to look for is, will they change the selection process? Could they go from automatic qualifiers and designated spots for conference champions to simply taking the 12 highest-ranked teams at the end of the season? I think I know which way Commissioner Sankey is leaning, but look for any changes or insight coming out of Wednesday's meeting, and we'll certainly cover it on the Buzzcast. Recently, at a dinner, a sports team owner told me that they didn't bemoan the size of player contracts. They understood the market for top talent. They understood that was a part of the business. But what really caused this owner sleepless nights was all the extra cost around their organization, specifically the size of coaching staffs, training staffs, and any player personnel staffs, that caused them great concern.
And I thought of that as I read a report on the growing size of college football organizations. For example, at Ohio State, the support staff under football coach Ryan Day has greatly expanded. They have brought on multiple analysts, personnel directors, experts in NIL. Ohio State enters this season with 50 full-time members of their support staff. They have 16 quality control coaches and program assistants. They have six personnel directors, they have coordinators, they have two dietitians, a chief of staff, a physical therapist, a wellbeing director, and there are even other roles that we haven't even mentioned. So as part of this, the school is spending more than $6 million in salaries on support staff. So you start to think about it, and you can understand what this owner was concerned about. That's in addition to the salaries for the coaches. At Ohio State, for example, Ryan Day makes a reported $9.5 million in annual compensation.
So Ohio State Athletic Director Gene Smith, one of the sharpest minds and one of the voices of reason in all of sports, said that staffs have grown because they're allowed to. The NCAA has no cap on the number of support staff or personnel in any division on any program. So it's an arms race, and it will continue to be that way. But certainly, that is one story across sports I'm keeping my eye on. And let's end with this. A shout out to a very influential and a very humble sports leader, Matt Davis. Anheuser-Busch InBev promoted Davis from head of US Sports Marketing and Sponsorships to vice president of partnerships. Matt Davis first joined Anheuser-Busch in 2014. He is highly regarded in sports circles. He's done a number of sponsorships and partnerships across the sports landscape. That means he has relationships with every team, every league, every major property. He was named to SBJ's Forty Under 40 class in 2022. Matt Davis promoted to vice president of partnerships at Anheuser-Busch InBev.
And that is your Morning Buzzcast for Tuesday, August 29th. I'm Abe Madkour. Hope everybody has a great day. Stay healthy, be good to each other. I'll speak to you tomorrow.