Newly realigned college football season gets underway; the NCPA challenges the House settlement; Ohtani’s big week; and DraftKings acquires Simplebet.
Newly realigned college football season gets underway; the NCPA challenges the House settlement; Ohtani’s big week; and DraftKings acquires Simplebet.
Joe Lemire:
Happy Friday, as we lead into this holiday weekend. I mean, yes, it's Labor Day, but I of course was referring to the full-fledged start of the college football season. This is your Morning Buzzcast for Friday, August 30th. I'm SBJ Senior Writer Joe Lemire, bringing you today's headlines.
The Hype Train on this year's college football season started especially early this year, with a long-awaited return of the EA Sports College Football franchise and the anticipation of college football powerhouses such as USC, Texas and Oklahoma, all shuffling around in new conferences. I'll confess, I resorted to Google a few times recently with questions such as, "What conference is such-and-such a university in now?" And judging by the auto-populated replies that Google suggested that I was clearly not alone. So as the on-field action gets underway across this country this weekend, how will USC, Washington and UCLA fair in the Big 10? How about Texas and Oklahoma and the SEC, Stanford Cal and SMU in the ACC, Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado Utah and the Big 12? I couldn't go on, but it would take a while.
There's no shortage of excitement, nevertheless, across the sport. Two weeks ago, for example, StupHub released its college football preview data and reported that sales were up 42% year-over-year. The SEC in Big 10, no surprise, accounted for about three-quarters of those purchases. Our Ben Portnoy wrote a comprehensive take on the ramifications of conference realignment in this week's magazine. And a few highlights worth mentioning, in the past three years, 71 Division 1 universities have changed conferences. And of that number, about half, 35, are football bowl subdivision schools. Here's how important Texas and Oklahoma have been to the Big 12. They ranked first and second in total revenue among public universities in the conference every year since 2012, and at least one school was involved in the top five highest-rated Big 12 football games for each of the past three seasons.
The departures of USC and UCLA, leaving the Pac-12 the year after Texas and OU, created the cascade of Dolano's falling. As former AAC Commissioner, Mike Aresco, told our Ben Portnoy, "That's when I think we cross the Rubicon in terms of what I considered ridiculous realignment." And to be clear, we now have two schools from Cal and Stanford who literally jumped from a conference named for the ocean they border to another conference named for another ocean on the other side of this great expanse of a country. They've gone literally from sea to shining sea. All of this, of course, is taking place against the backdrop of increased professionalism for the college athletes. Although one advocacy group on Thursday publicly opposed terms of the NCAA House Settlement that would allocate $2.8 billion in back damages to former athletes, and create revenue sharing opportunities and $20 billion in future earnings over the next decade.
The National College Players Association its statement a week before an important hearing in the settlement, and deemed that agreement as unjust. The NCPA has root back to 2001 and its executive director, Ramogi Huma, has decried the provision as trying to shut down collectives, cap future payouts, and potentially reduce the overall number of athletic scholarships. One Team Partners, the NFLPA's Group licensing arm, that has worked with thousands of college athletes on Group NIL deals, reportedly reached out to numerous college football players recently to encourage them to join the NCPA. It's unclear what will come of this effort.
Dodgers Superstar Shohei Ohtani had himself quite the week, which admittedly is a pretty evergreen statement. But not only did Ohtani become the fastest player in any season to reach the coveted 40-40 mark of home runs and stolen bases, but he also threw off a mound for the first time in his rehab from Tommy John Surgery. Those were the on-field milestones, but Ohtani also had a pair off the field. His Bobblehead day drew a sold-out crowd to Dodger Stadium, which again, not that surprising, but the line began to form at 5:00 A.M. and 20,000 people were in the queue four hours before first pitch. His dog Decoy, by the way, delivered the first pitch ball to Shohei crouched behind the plate.
And then yesterday, Ohtani agreed to terms with Topps, the now Fanatics-owned trading card company, on a long-term, exclusive partnership. This follows a similar exclusive deal Fanatics struck with LeBron James. It'll be fascinating to track how Fanatics is reimagining what these agreements with star athletes can be, and LeBron James and Shohei Ohtani are certainly two great ones to begin with.
LeBron is said to be the first NBA player to have reached $1 billion in combined salary and endorsements, and he may soon have more company. The Warriors signed Stephen Curry to a one-year extension worth $62.6 million that'll keep him in Golden State through the 2026/27 season. That contract will make him the fourth to surpass a half billion strictly in player salary, following LeBron, Kevin Durant and Paul George. Add in his lucrative Under Armour deal, and the rest of his off-Court earnings, and Curry may well reach that ten-figure mark soon as well.
DraftKings, which already own 15% of micro-betting leader, Simplebet, acquired the remaining 85%, and will integrate those live in-play betting markets into its own offerings. Terms were not officially disclosed in the press release, but JMP Securities published a report saying that DraftKings would pay up to 195 million for the remaining stake. That price tag puts the full valuation of Simplebet at just shy of 230 million in all. One other betting note, ESPN Bet, which is legal in 18 states currently, will launch in New York within the coming weeks. It's a bellwether state for determining whether the sports book can gain more significant market share and capitalize on its marquee four-Letter branding.
Yesterday, I mentioned that Netflix with soon debut a docu-series called Starting Five featuring NBA Stars. And now there's another sports docu-series readying for its premiere from the streamer. This time it's called Mr. McMahon, and it's a deep look at Vince McMahon and how he built the WWE Bill Simmons is an executive producer, as is Director Chris Smith, who helped lead Tiger King. The Netflix announcement did call it an unflinching portrait of McMahon's Legacy, and it will be interesting to see how some of the more controversial issues surrounding McMahon are covered, particularly those that arose late in his career. "McMahon himself sat for 200 hours of interviews," the announcement said, "all prior to his resignation following those sexual misconduct allegations."
Two locations fully embracing facial recognition ticketing. The Tampa Bay Rays are set to launch MLB's Go-Ahead Entry this weekend, down at Tropicana Field. They become the seventh MLB team to have a full-time installation of the facial recognition technology, but they're the first to incentivize usage from fans. Those who are season ticket holders will receive double the normal number of loyalty points they get for checking into a game, whereas single-game ticket buyers will receive an offer of two free tickets to the final home stand of the Tampa Bay Rays season. Bill Walsh, the chief business officer of the Rays, told me recently that this is a good test of the technology in advance of off-season construction. That's when they expect to break ground on the new stadium. And because of the close adjoining locations of that site, ingress into the Tropicana Field next year might become a little thornier than usual. So this might help expedite things. And when paired with evolved security screeners, allows for a pretty quick, seamless way to enter the field.
Also, Wicket, which has been supplying facial recognition ticketing at Mercedes-Benz Stadium since 2022, is now an official technology partner. The Atlanta Falcons have been using that for a few years now.
I hope all of you have a wonderful Labor Day and college football weekend. I, as a proud UVA alum will certainly be rooting on my alma mater against Richmond, although probably not too hard as one of my good friends, an old flag football teammate, no less is a defensive backs coach for the University of Richmond. So Drew, I hope you at least cover our receivers pretty well. Anyway, I'm Joe Lemire, signing off for the Buzzcast. Thanks for listening.