What's driving NBC's MLB deal? F1 close to landing Salesforce; Dueling efforts in women's hockey.
Well, you can feel the excitement, the Men's NCAA Basketball Tournament kicks off tonight with the first four from Dayton, Ohio. Both games tonight on TruTV. The Women's Tournament starts tomorrow. Speaking of the Men's Tournament, look for a lot of Nike as Nike continues its supremacy as the top shoe and jersey provider in the men's bracket. Nike and its Jordan brand is outfitting a tournament high 38 teams. Now that is down from 48 teams sponsored in 2021. Both Adidas and Under Armour saw the biggest increase this year locking in at 15 teams each. See the full bracket of the jersey and shoe breakdown on sportsbusinessjournal.com, but Nike and Jordan brand lead the way with 38 teams. And this is your Morning Buzzcast for Tuesday, March 15th. Good morning. I'm Abe Madkour, hope everybody is doing well today.
I mentioned yesterday of the reports of NBC Universal being close to landing a deal to pay a reported $30 million per year for 18 exclusive MLB games for its Peacock service. Our John Ourand broke down the deal last night, which would see the game start as early as 11:00 A.M Eastern Time on Sunday mornings, beginning in May and streamed on Peacock. His point is that the deal illustrates just how much NBC Universal is doing to pump interest and subscribers into Peacock in a very competitive environment. For NBC, the deal represents a low risk, low cost way to get more subscribers for Peacock because NBC executives don't consider baseball fans who generally skew a little bit older as your typical streaming subscriber. So NBC hopes that the deal will lure baseball fans, who wouldn't otherwise have come to Peacock, get them to subscribe to the service and stay with the Peacock service. So NBC Universals' deal with Major League Baseball could be announced as early as this week. And like we said on Monday, this would compliment the Apple's Friday night baseball broadcast with Peacock Sunday morning streaming of MLB games, starting in May.
Staying with baseball, we talked about changes to the game coming out of the new collective bargaining agreement. And the League is taking more steps to implement changes in the future. So here are some rule changes that have been approved to test this year in the minor leagues, all with the eye on bringing them to the major leagues in 2023. So at the minor leagues this summer, you'll see pitch clocks, pitch timers, you'll see larger bases and you'll see automated ball strike technology. So all that will be implemented in certain areas of minor league baseball this summer. And so look for them to be implemented at major league baseball level in 2023, these are all with an eye on improving the pace of play and creating more action, more pace. So again, baby steps at the minor leagues soon to be implemented in the major leagues. We talk about story venues on the buzz cast while Manchester United is considering a plan to rebuild Old Trafford and it could be the biggest redevelopment project in the club's history.
Now remember Old Trafford was originally built in 1910, but the club has asked bidders to submit three different design proposals. And the most ambitious of these proposals is for a complete rebuild of the 74,000 seat stadium. Now, if Manchester United pressed ahead with such a dramatic move, a new larger stadium would have a capacity really to rival Wembley's 90,000 seat facility. Now, one of the biggest headaches around such a proposal is where would the club play their home matches while work was being done on a rebuilt stadium, because such a project could take two to three years? So no timetable was given to any of the proposals, but it does seem Man-U looking hard at a total rebuild of Old Trafford. And remember Old Trafford originally built in 1910. We keep talking about the momentum around Formula 1 and the series is reportedly close to signing a massive deal with US based software company Salesforce.
This would be a five-year sponsorship deal worth $30 million a year. Salesforce hopes to announce the deal before F1's opening race this weekend in Bahrain. Now a deal with Salesforce would follow last week's partnership with Lenovo and would also follow Formula 1's recent huge deal with Oracle. So you're seeing major corporations, mostly technology-focused, attracted to the energy and following of F1, but look for a major deal between F1 and Salesforce before this weekends, opening race. More news on the women's hockey front, the Premier Hockey Federation has on the sports agency Octagon to assist in strategic planning for the league, as well as to advise on overall growth, sponsorship sales and marketing. Interestingly Octagon will also advise the Premier Hockey Federation on its search for a new commissioner. That's interesting because octagon doesn't have a traditional search business or executive recruiting business.
Now, the partnership with Octagon comes after the Premier Hockey Federation's board of governors has decided to invest more than $25 million into the league and its players over the next three years. But there's an interesting competition in women's hockey, because there are more and more reports that the Professional Women's Hockey Player's Association, which is another league, is inching closer and closer to launching a fully structured, fully funded league. Right now, the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association has been more of a series of exhibition games, but they are leaning and moving closer and closer to launching a fully structured league. They've also talked to the NHL about any support of such a league. Now it's unknown if the NHL would put a support behind the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association, and it should be noted. These are two different leagues, Premier Hockey Federation and the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association and the NHL through my sources, has made it very clear to both of them.
They want to see the leagues merge. They want to see one woman's hockey league potentially emerge. So some interesting developments on the front of women's hockey. And yesterday we unveiled the nominees of the 15th annual sports business awards, they'll be held May 18th in New York. All the nominees across all the categories are listed on sportsbusinessjournal.com. Today let's look at the nominees around event of the year, one of the most competitive categories. Remember the eligibility was March 1st, 2021 through the end of February, 2022. So the nominees for event of the year were the 2021 PGA championship, that was in Kiawah Island, the 2022 discover NHL winter classic up in Minneapolis. The other nominee is the Formula 1 race, the United States grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas. A fourth nominee was the MLB at Field of Dreams Game. The fifth nominee was the NASCAR Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum, that race took place in early February.
The sixth nominee was super bowl 56 in Los Angeles, and the seventh nominee was WWE SummerSlam. So a very, very competitive contest here on event of the year. Remember a group of sports industry experts will determine the winner in this category. Remember if you're interested in being one of the judges, let me know. We've had a lot of interest, yesterday I got a number of responses about being interested in being a judge. We are looking for those executives that love to debate the sports business and who are interested in putting in some work because this does take a couple of hours of preparation and review. The Sports Business Awards on May 18th will also include a tribute to Robert Craft who will be presented to Sports Business Journals, lifetime achievement award. So it's going to be a great night in New York, hope you can join us. So that is your morning Buzzcast for Tuesday, March 15th. I'm Abe Madkour, hope everybody has a great day, stay safe, be good to each other. And let's pray for some peace. I'll speak to you tomorrow.