Saudi Arabia plans further sports investments, the NBA in-season tournament begins to take shape and Apple unveils the livery for its F1 movie.
As the LPGA tour heads to Pebble Beach for the first time for the US Women's Open, the tournament will have the largest prize fund in women's golf history up for grabs. The total purse will be $11 million, and the winner will take home 2 million. Tournament tees off at 10:00 AM Eastern this morning, you can watch on Peacock beginning at 4:00 PM Eastern, followed by USA Network at 6:00 PM Eastern. And something you can see during the coverage is that Rose Zhang has signed a multi-year sponsorship deal with AT&T. Zhang will have the AT&T logo on her golf bag, yardage book, and on her caddy sleeve. Financial terms and the length of the deal were not revealed. Zhang now has eight sponsorships, including Callaway, Adidas, Delta, and Rolex.
Good morning. It's Thursday, July 6th, this is your SBJ Morning Buzzcast. I'm David Albright filling in for Abe Madkour. "Saudi Arabia plans to launch a multi-billion dollar investment company to expand its sports interest, following its power grab in golf and success in English soccer," that's according to the Financial Times. The sports group, which will be part of the country's sovereign wealth fund, the $650 billion public investment fund, will have a war chest to fund its expansion. It's a sign that the Saudis are committed to making further acquisitions, investments, and joint ventures in soccer, tennis, and other sports. The PIF already owns LIV Golf and Premier League club, Newcastle United, and apparently neither of those will fall under the new company, which would be focusing on new opportunities. The company's launch also coincides with the PIF asserting a bigger role in the country's soccer ambitions, which includes strengthening its clubs at home.
The final four of the NBA's new in-season tournament will take place on December 7th and 9th in Las Vegas. According to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski, statistics for it will count for the league's regular season, except for the championship game of the event. And full details on the competition, including groupings, will be unveiled Saturday night in Las Vegas on ESPN's NBA Today. The in-season tournament will debut this year, and details of it were unveiled officially in the league's new collective bargaining agreement that went into effect on Saturday. All teams will participate in the group stage, which will consist of six groups in total, three per conference, and chosen by a random draw based on teams winning percentage the previous season. Each team will play four games in its group, with the six group winners making the knockout stage, along with two wild cards who finished with the best winning percentage and not first in their groups. Knockout stage games will be single elimination through that final on December 9th.
The debut Chicago Street race on Sunday drew NASCAR's best audience of the season outside of the Daytona 500, and the best Cup Series figure for NBC sports in six years. That's just under 4.8 million viewers watched the race. Even with weather issues and a format change, the audience is NBC's best NASCAR figure since it drew 5.6 million back in 2017 for a race from Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The Chicago event, which was NBC's first NASCAR street race, also ranks number eight overall for the network for any NASCAR race under the current media rights deal, which began back in 2015. Chicago marked the most-streamed NASCAR race for NBC digital platforms with an average minute audience of 163,500 viewers. The NBC telecast peaked at 5.4 million viewers from the 9:15 to 9:30 PM Eastern window during the end of the race. After two Cup races this season, NBC is averaging just over 4 million viewers, which is the network's best start since 2017.
Speaking of ratings, the NBA Finals easily led the 10 most-watched English-language telecast of June, sports or otherwise, and all five games of the Nuggets-Heat series rank among the 50 most-watched telecast of the year. Also in the top 10 for June, the weekend telecast from the LA Country Club around the US Open ranked number six and seven. If non-sports telecast in June were included in the top 10, the NBA Finals would still account for the top five, and the final round of the US Open would still be at number six, the rest of the list would be episodes of America's Got Talent and 60 Minutes.
Apple sold sponsorship positions for the new F1 themed movie with Brad Pitt to brands including Expensify, Geico, and EA Sports. And those three US-based companies will now receive broad exposure in what could be a major feature film. Shooting for the movie will happen at a racetrack during an F1 race for the first time this weekend at the Silverstone Circuit in the UK, the site of the British Grand Prix. As a result, F1 and Apple Original Films, early this morning, revealed for the first time the car and paint scheme that will be used in the movie, which will be produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. On the black and gold livery, San Francisco-based expense management software company, Expensify, takes the biggest sponsor positioning on the side pod of the car. Other brands that are getting signage on the car include Geico, which is not currently involved in F1. EA Sports, which is the official video game licensee of F1. Two Mercedes F1 team sponsors in Swiss Watch brand IWC Schaffhausen and Tommy Hilfiger. Official F1 sponsor MSC Cruises, and small kitchen appliance company, SharkNinja.
AMG also has branding, which suggests that Apple has chose to use a Mercedes as its car for the movie. The livery will be used in the movie, and these brands will thus be part of it, sources confirmed to our Adam Stern. It is not known how much the brands paid for the product placement. And that's your SBJ Morning Buzzcast for Thursday. I hope everyone has a great day, and we'll see you back here tomorrow morning.