The NBA's enviable media position; the status of the Senators sale; SC Gamecocks drive interest in women's hoops and the IOC's winter quandary
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This is your Morning Buzzcast for Wednesday, February 15th. Good morning. I'm Abe Madkour. Thanks for listening to the Buzzcast. One story that got a lot of play yesterday was the CNBC report that NBC Universal will make a strong bid to win back NBA broadcast rights during the next round of NBA Media Talks. It's true and it's not a surprise. A number of networks, not just NBC are interested in the NBA and there will be some very competitive bidding.
Commissioner Adam Silver is in a very favorable position, and no formal talks can take place with non-incumbents until Warner Brothers Discovery and Disney waived their negotiating windows, which end in April of 2024. So we're looking at next year. But here's the landscape. Disney certainly wants the NBA in a very strong way. The wild card is Warner Brothers Discovery. NBC would love a package of playoff games on the broadcast network with regular season games on Peacock. I'm sure Fox Sports would at least kick the tires on the NBA, and Apple and Amazon have also expressed interest in the league's rights. Again, bottom line, it will be very competitive, and the NBA is sitting in a great position to land a very, very lucrative media rights deal in 2024. Certainly one of the biggest stories we're keeping our eyes on.
Let's shift to hockey because the bidding on the Ottawa Senators is starting to come more into focus, and Ryan Reynolds, the actor and the owner of Wrexham, will join the Remington Group, a Toronto based real estate development company and one of the largest builders in Ontario. Reynolds will join them as a partner and the group is said to be ready to bid for the Senators. Ryan Reynolds would be the face of the team and would play a key role in the decision making for the future of the club, which of course would be a dream for NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, as the league would love to see the star power of Ryan Reynolds in the NHL.
Now, the sale of the Senators will be an interesting test case for valuations of hockey in Canada. In terms of the price tag for the team, Bettman and the club would love to hit or top the reported $900 million that Fenway Sports Group paid for the Pittsburgh Penguins last year. But remember, these are different teams, different organizations. The Penguins had won Stanley Cups. The Penguins had Sidney Crosby. They have a great arena. They had adjacent land to develop. The Ottawa Senators really don't have that. They need a new arena, they need more stars, they have never won a Stanley Cup, so a serious bidding war is needed for this deal to top that $900 million purchase price. Now, this is a sale many in sports finance are watching quite closely, and Ryan Reynolds is a very interesting wildcard added to the mix. So keep your eye on the sale of the Senators.
Shifting to college sports. My colleague Michael Smith wrote about this in his SBJ college newsletter last night about the power of the University of South Carolina women's basketball brand, which was on full display on Super Bowl Sunday in Columbia. I watched a part of the game which saw the number one ranked South Carolina Gamecocks defeat the number three ranked LSU Tigers, but the game drew an audience of 1.5 million viewers. It was at 2:00 on ESPN, and that viewership number is more than the men's game between Michigan State and Ohio State on CBS. It started at 1:00. So it's a very strong number and the number of 1.5 million viewers for the ESPN game was the best audience for any women's college basketball regular season game since December 30th of 2010. Yes, 2010. That was for a Yukon Stanford matchup, and that's according to my colleague Austin Carp.
LSU South Carolina was the third best college basketball game, men's or women's, all of last week. So a very strong number and two of the five most watched women's regular season basketball games since 2010 have now come this season. So it adds to the conversation in the narrative we continue to have on the Buzzcast, more signs of the growing interest in women's sports, and in college basketball it is certainly being driven by the University of South Carolina Gamecocks.
Let's move on. Here is a great example of the value that video games continue to bring to sports. We know the longtime success of EA's FIFA soccer brand. That will shift because the relationship with FIFA ended, and so EA will rebrand to EA Sports FC, and now EA Sports is close to extending its relationship with one of its longest standing partners, as it's closing on a renewal with the Premier League that would be for 6 years and around $600 million. Yes, nearly $100 million a year. That would see EA be the Premier League's exclusive electronic game licensee. The deal is close to doubling its existing deal. The two have been partners all the way back to 1998, so this is a very close relationship. But this just shows how valuable that intellectual property is to game developers like EA and for the branding around the Premier League, but a very big 6 year reported $600 million deal close to being completed between EA and the Premier League.
I want to shift to baseball because the Milwaukee Brewers could be getting some much needed help from the state of Wisconsin to help fund longterm improvements at American Family Field. The state is looking to provide nearly $300 million from the state's budget surplus and give it to the team for this renovation. That's a pretty good deal, right? Well, in return, the Brewers would extend their current lease from 2030 and agree to stay in Milwaukee through 2043. So the state gets the guarantee the team stays. Before you think this is a generous gift to the team, here's where the details matter. The lease with the team requires the stadium district to pay for improvements and whatever is needed to keep American Family Field to the standards of other MLB ballparks. So that's written in the lease, that's what's happening. This is not a done deal, but these are the early steps to keep the Brewers in Milwaukee and help renovate a ballpark that opened in 2001. Hard to believe that Miller Park opened in 2001. Of course, it's now American Family Field and the Brewers are close to getting some much needed financial help to renovate that ballpark.
I want to touch on the Olympics because one key Olympic insider told me recently that the IOC is running out of locations to host the Winter Games, and it's for various reasons, including climate change. Well now come reports that the IOC is considering coming up with a fixed rotating list of candidates to stage the Winter Games, and that's because they don't have a lot of options. The AP speculated that a list could include Salt Lake City, Vancouver, PyeongChang, and areas like Switzerland or Scandinavia. So most of the rotating hosts would've already hosted an Olympics previously and had most of the venues built. So the bid to watch, and we've talked about this on the Buzzcast, is the next one, 2030. The IOC wants more bidders, and Sweden said recently it is considering a bid for 2030. The IOC has delayed the process of awarding the 2030 games because right now Salt Lake City is the only other known bidder that might consider taking on 2030, although they would prefer to host the 2034 Winter Games as there is some concern of hosting the Summer Games in Los Angeles in '28 and then the Winter Games two years later in Salt Lake City. So keep your eye on whether Stockholm in Sweden make a formal bid to host 2030, and don't be surprised if the IOCs rotating cities for the Winter Games gets a little bit of momentum.
Finally, this struck some as a surprise, but it's been talked about for weeks in some circles. New NCAA President Charlie Baker will not relocate to Indianapolis when he takes over as NCAA president on March 1st. Indianapolis will of course remain the NCAA's headquarters, but Baker plans to remain living in Massachusetts. He plans to travel around the country and meeting different university stakeholders. He certainly plans to spend a lot of time in Indianapolis, also in Washington DC. Sources I have spoken with said Charlie Baker does intend to hire a C level leader and executive to run the Indianapolis office of the NCAA.
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That is your morning Buzzcast for Wednesday, February 15th. I'm Abe Madkour. Thanks for listening to the Buzzcast and thanks for spreading the word on the Buzzcast. Stay healthy, be good to each other. I'll speak to you tomorrow.