The Braves become independent, another MLB team is leaving Diamond Sports Group and the TNT brand enters the U.K.
Sports Business Journal is hosting "The Most Important Tech Powering the FIFA Women’s World Cup" webinar on July 19. Register for the webinar here.
The NFL Finance Committee met remotely on Monday and voted informally to recommend approval of Josh Harris' $6.05 billion deal to purchase the Washington Commanders from Daniel Snyder. That's according to the Washington Post. Attorneys for the NFL and Snyder also reached an agreement that resolves the remaining legal issues that had threatened to complicate the approval and closing of the deal, and that clears the way for NFL team owners to vote to ratify the record setting sale during a meeting scheduled for Thursday in Minneapolis.
Good morning. It's Tuesday, July 18th. This is your SBJ Morning Buzzcast. I'm David Albright, filling in for Abe Madkour. The Atlanta Braves ownership structure will change as a result of a vote by Liberty Media stockholders to split off the team as an independent publicly traded company.
The Braves and their real estate development project, The Battery Atlanta, no longer will be a branch of Liberty Media Corp, but instead will comprise the Atlanta Braves Holdings Incorporated, the new standalone public company being split off to Liberty stockholders. Liberty Chair John Malone will own shares of Braves holding stock, representing about 47.5% of the aggregate voting power. Liberty CEO Greg Maffei will be chairman of the new five person board of directors overseeing Braves Holdings. And several current Liberty executives will double as officers of the split off holding company. It looks like Diamond Sports Group will walk away from the Arizona Diamondbacks, sending that team's local media rights to Major League Baseball. A bankruptcy court will make a ruling today, but our John Ourand reports that the team and Diamond owned Bally Sports Arizona were not able to come to terms on a restructured deal. The most interesting part of the hearing has less to do with the rights.
It has to do with what happens to Bally Sports Arizona's position on paid TV systems, considering that the RSN has now lost the D-backs and the Suns. These are the questions the judge will have to answer, "Will DIRECTV and other distributors still have to carry the channel, minus those two teams, at a rebated price? Or will they be allowed to carry MLB's production at the channel position currently occupied by Bally Sports Arizona?" Distributors want to make sure they are not paying twice for the same content. Sources said that distributors are ready to carry MLB's production of D-backs games without interruption. They just aren't sure where exactly they will be in the channel lineups. BT Sport officially becomes TNT Sports today in Great Britain and Ireland, as part of Warner Brothers Discovery's joint venture with BT Group, which was signed late last year.
WBD Sports will make the announcement highlighting its distribution deals, that's BT TV, Sky, and Virgin Media, and rights agreements, including the Premier League, UEFA Champions League, Gallagher Premiership Rugby, UFC, and the WWE with the channel. The channel also will be available to Discovery+ users in that region. The part of this deal that our John Ourand finds particularly interesting is the growth of TNT as WBD's main sports brand internationally. It is already prominent in Latin America and is now making inroads across the pond and will become the company's main sports brand in other countries. That hasn't been the case so far in the US, where TNT, TBS, and Bleacher Report all could lay claim as the dominant brand. Ourand says he expects to see the TNT Sports brand become much more visible in the US now, especially considering that WBD Sports has never been pushed as a consumer brand.
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said there is an urgent need for Congress to enact a national standard for name, image, and likeness and was emphatic in his belief that only Congress can adequately resolve these issues. Sankey said that no state has taken action to enforce its own NIL laws, and the individual states are also preventing the NCAA and conferences from adopting and enforcing the reasonable NIL standards. Sankey said the players he has spoken with throughout the SEC continue to ask for uniformity in NIL policies across the country and that he has yet to have a conversation with an athlete who says that they want to be deemed as an employee of a school or conference. Sankey made his comments at SEC Media Days in Nashville, where he also announced that the event will head to Dallas next summer.
The location at the Omni Hotel aligns with Oklahoma and Texas joining the conference in 2024. It will be the first SEC Media Days with the new membership from the Sooners and Longhorns, and it also will be the first SEC Media Days in Texas. The NCAA announced Monday, it is creating another women's basketball tournament that'll operate like the men's NIT, as an option for 32 teams that do not make the NCAA tournament. The Women's Basketball Invitation Tournament, which will debut in the upcoming season, brings the men's and women's NCAA post-season opportunities to an equal number. An NCAA operated second option for women was one of the key focuses of an external gender equity report on the NCAA. Women's teams that didn't make the NCAA tournament in the past had the opportunity to play in an independently operated NIT, in which teams bid to host games and paid for most of their own travel.
The NCAA said it will come up with a selection committee, host sites, bracketing principles, and a selection process later this summer. Longtime executive producer David Neal will step down from his position as Fox Sports' Executive Producer and Vice President of Production, following this summer's FIFA Women's World Cup, which starts on Thursday. Neal who joined Fox Sports in 2012 has overseen production of five World Cups for Fox. His resume includes a 30 year stint at NBC Sports, where he was executive producer and EVP of NBC Olympics. During his NBC run, Neal produced nine Olympics, four NBA Finals, and two World Series'. Speaking of the Women's World Cup, Wednesday's SBJ Live episode will feature a panel discussion, looking at the most important technology powering the event. At 4:00 PM Eastern, senior executives from Roblox and Globant will join SBJ's Joe Lemire to dive into digital content innovation and delivery, venue technology, ticketing technology, and cybersecurity technology. You can sign up for this free webinar at sportsbusinessjournal.com, and that's your SBJ Morning Buzzcast for Tuesday. I hope everyone has a great day, and we'll see you back here tomorrow morning.