A news day like few others: Major reorg at Tepper Sports; Nets seek new CEO; Brian Flores rocks the NFL and WFT set for a new name.
Abe Madkour: Well, I can't recall a day like yesterday in some time. You had major news breaks throughout the day, and many with long term ramifications from the Tom Brady official retirement to a massive lawsuit by coach Brian Flores against the NFL. It certainly kept all of us here on edge yesterday. So let's get right to it. This is your Morning Buzzcast for Wednesday, February 2nd. Good morning. I'm Abe Madkour. By the time you listen to this, you will likely know the new name of the Washington football team. Yes, today president Jason Wright will introduce the team's new identity, which will be the result of an extensive rebranding review and study that lasted over 18 months. The team is announcing it live on NBC's Today Show at the 8:00 AM half hour, and Craig Melvin will be live from FedEx Field. Now I am not predicting anything and I could be wrong, but most of the signs point to the name Commanders. There were a couple of displays of that name and a chopper pilot from NBC Washington snuck a glimpse of the name on a large banner at FedEx Field last night, according to Politico.
But like I said, I'm not predicting. And you will know the name by the time you likely listen to the Buzzcast and we will have a full recap of the new brand on tomorrow's Buzzcast. Let's move on. I received an email from a colleague yesterday around 10:30 in the morning with one word in the subject line, wow. In the body of the email was news of a major reorg at Tepper Sports & Entertainment right here in my hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina. Tom Glick, who has led the organization since 2018 will leave Tepper Sports & Entertainment and Nick Kelly, president of Tepper Sports' MLS expansion team, Charlotte FC will replace Tom Glick. Meanwhile, Joe LaBue who until now had run ticket operations for the Panthers and Charlotte FC has been named Nick Kelly's replacement as president of Charlotte FC. LaBue will oversee the business side of the MLS team and report to Nick Kelly.
Now Nick Kelly was hired in December 2020 from Anheuser-Busch to run the business ops of the MLS expansion team. But now Nick Kelly will take on a much larger role. He'll oversee the Panthers, Charlotte FC, and Bank of America Stadium. As part of the changes Kristi Coleman, who was the Panthers chief financial officer will become the NFL teams, president and Nicole Tepper, who was owner David Tepper's wife will join the organization in an official capacity as chief administrative officer at Tepper Sports. Nicole Tepper has been heavily involved in the team's philanthropic operations and programs in recent years. Now, why is this significant? Well, anytime you have a change at the top it's news, but Tom Glick was focused on the business and the sales side of the organization. He also helped Tepper Sports land the MLS expansion team. Tom Glick has a deep history and relationship in soccer.
He also added corporate sponsors while generating higher revenue from existing partners. He did some partnerships with the likes of Lowe's, Ally around the Charlotte FC team and Atrium Health. He also oversaw the early development of the plan mixed use headquarters for Tepper Sports & Entertainment in Rock Hill, South Carolina. So there's a lot going on at Tepper Sports & Entertainment. And now a lot of change before Charlotte FC officially launches in just over a month. So Nick Kelly getting a big role, Tom Glick moving on. Then around 3:00 PM came news of another move. This one in the NBA as BSE Global, that's the parent company of the Brooklyn Nets and the Barclay Center announced the resignation of CEO John Abbamondi effective at the end of July. So Abbamondi will continue serving as CEO through the end of the current NBA season, but a search for his replacement as CEO will begin immediately.
Now, John Abbamondi, very well regarded in sports business circles. He joined Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment in 2020. He had a leadership role at MSG. Prior to that, he was at the NBA TMBO office. So John Abbamondi moving on. The bottom line here from both of these moves is that sports team owners have so much more riding on their sports investments. So they can be impatient. And especially on the business side where they feel more comfortable weighing in and certainly ownership reserves the right to make any decisions they want. They are the owners of the team, but it also shows this is a tough, tough business if you're leading the business side of a broad and diverse sports organization. Then around 4:00 PM, we receive word that Brian Flores, the former head coach of the Miami Dolphins is suing the NFL and each of its 32 teams alleging racial discrimination in their hiring practices for black coaches.
And his suit specifically mentioned the New York Giants, the Denver Broncos, and the Dolphins for discriminatory practices. Now some of Brian Flores claims were first, he accuses Dolphins owner, Stephen Ross of telling Flores to tank and offered Flores a $100,000 for each loss ahead of the 2019 season in order to secure a better draft pick. He also accused the Giants of conducting a sham interview with him in order to fulfill the Rooney Rule. He also said he was never taken seriously as a candidate for the Denver Bronco's coaching position when he interviewed there. He claims that Bronco's officials including then general manager, John Elway came to his interview an hour late and acted hungover. The NFL, the Giants, the Dolphins, and the Broncos all deny the accusations. But this is a very bad look for the NFL. It's an explosive issue around the NFL, but let's go back to the bottom line.
The bottom line is this comes on the eve of the Super Bowl. This will dominate much of the coverage around the Super Bowl and questions of league officials around the game next week. This has been an issue the NFL has been facing for some time. Now it will be much more public and amplified. In addition, the allegations against Stephen Ross could be seen as very serious, depending on the evidence. They are not a good look for him at all. This could result in significant penalties against Stephen Ross, including time away from the game and the team. And it could also mean significant penalties against the Dolphins. So much of the buzz last night was that this could impact the coaching future of Brian Flores. And it comes at a time when there are still job openings, but Brian Flores surely knows this could put his future as an NFL coach into jeopardy and into question. He will be on CBS this morning today talking about this lawsuit against the NFL.
Staying with the NFL, the Denver Broncos are officially for sale. Leaders of the team hope to conclude a sale by the start of this 22 season, but that'll be a challenge. It could be done as the last NFL team sale, The Panther sale to David Tepper took about five months. Now the record sale price for an NFL franchise is that 2.275 billion that Tepper paid for the Panthers. The Bronco's final price tag could reach $4 billion or even more. Now, what do you need to know about this? Well, the trustees, including team president, Joe Ellis have hired Steve Greenberg of Allen & Company as their financial advisor and Joe Leccese of Proskauer as their legal advisor. So Allen & Company will vet all prospective buyers. Any interested owner has to prove the ability to pay for 30% of the team in cash. So if the team is worth 3.5 billion, you better have a cool $1 billion in cash, ready to hand over. That's league rules.
And while the NFL owners have final say on who they bring into their ranks, our Ben Fischer reported, the Pat Bowlen trusts has a fiduciary obligation to the Pat Bowlen family to maximize the return of a sale. So the Broncos officially for sale. Like I've said before, this will be one of the biggest stories in sports business. And on a different note, there's been a growing buzz in sports around investment in youth sports. And we saw that again yesterday as high school sports media company PlayOn! Sports, received a significant investment from private equity firm, KKR. Now financial terms were not disclosed, but the investment by KKR was surely pretty beefy. It will support the company's growth. Now PlayOn! Was founded in 2008. It operates a network that provides live and on demand content from high school sporting events, and KKRs investment will add some fuel to the content, the programming, and distribution of that high school sports content.
And I believe you're going to see more and more investments in youth and high school sports going forward. This investment by KKR, which doesn't make investments it does not believe in is surely a sign of that. So a lot going on, as I said. We'll have more on the rebrand of the Washington football team. We'll have more on Brian Flores's lawsuit against the NFL, certainly throughout the day on sportsbusinessjournal.com and more on tomorrow Buzzcast. So that is your Buzzcast for Wednesday today, February 2nd. I'm Abe Madkour. Hope everybody has a great day. Stay healthy, be good to each other. And I'll speak to you tomorrow.