Takeaways from NCAA; Philly's bold sports ambitions and putting a bow on "The Dynasty."
Takeaways from NCAA; Philly's bold sports ambitions and putting a bow on "The Dynasty."
Abe Madkour:
The most anticipated women's basketball tournament starts today, Friday. You have South Carolina on ESPN 2:00 PM Eastern, UConn, Iowa, on ABC on Saturday. This tournament will set records on viewership, attendance, overall coverage, and engagement. Great to see this women's tournament have so much excitement and interest behind it. This is your Morning Buzzcast for Friday, March 22nd. Good morning. I'm Abe Madkour. Thanks for listening to the Buzzcast. I took in some NCAA first round action in Charlotte on Thursday night as Texas overcame a slow start to beat Colorado State in the first game. When you go into an NCAA environment, you are immediately struck by the lack of sponsorship and traditional branding that one would see at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte because of the NCAA rules. So much of that traditional signage is covered up and covered over to protect the NCAA corporate partners. Overall, a very solid showing by fans last night, building was full. There are two more games on Saturday.
Meanwhile, get ready to hear a lot of Ian Eagle, who will be stepping into a new role as the lead announcer for CBS and TNT Sports as coverage of the men's tournament. Eagle has been with CBS since 1998, but now he will be the lead after Jim Nantz worked his final men's tournament last year. Ian Eagle will be paired with Bill Raftery and Grant Hill on CBS's top broadcast team. And this will be the first Men's Final Four since 1991 that Jim Nantz has not called, but few people have the respect and the following of Ian Eagle, and he will be a big hit and a big success in the big chair. Let me know what you think of his work during the men's tournament. Let's move on. We talk about mixed-use development all the time on the Buzzcast, one very anticipated mixed-use development got some significant news as the Phillies will join Comcast Spectacor on a planned $2.5 billion development of the South Philadelphia Sports Complex. You know this area, this area at one time was really just one stadium and parking lots.
Now, you have Wells Fargo Center, which is owned by Comcast Spectacor. You have Citizens Bank Park, which, of course, is the home of the Phillies. So those two organizations that have their facilities diagonally across from each other in this complex will collaborate over the next several years on the vision and direction of this development. This complex will entirely reshape the city's sports environment. It will, of course, feature the games, but there'll be concerts. There'll be a full-live, eat, work, play, shop destination and all spread out across 230 acres. The Eagles, of course, play at Lincoln Financial Field, also a part of the complex. Now they aren't involved yet, but they're engaged in conversations about potentially joining this development project as well. And all of this comes as the 76ers have made clear that their intentions are to build a new arena in center city of Philadelphia by the time their lease expires at Wells Fargo Center in 2031.
So an initial phase of this project would include a 5,000 C concert venue, a 250-key hotel, new retail shops, new restaurants that's scheduled to finish by 2028. Much of this is being underwritten by Comcast Spectacor. It's an incredibly ambitious plan. It fits into what other teams are doing around mixed use, but this is at an even larger scale. If you haven't seen the renderings, I would suggest you check it out because this is going to be a project a lot of people are going to be talking about.
It's been interesting to read the postmortems on The Dynasty. Apple's docuseries on the New England Patriots and their 20-year history of success. And I've heard from many of you who have watched the series, the main takeaway, while most felt it was quite well done, and I certainly did, viewers did have some things to quibble about. And most of the criticism comes from the belief that since The Dynasty was developed by the Kraft group that it potentially was too carefully edited. First, there was the portrayal of Bill Belichick, which many believe was overly negative, but not all agree that the portrayal was negative. Some believe the less than agreeable coach did himself no favors by not commenting more openly during the show. One reviewer called him obstinate, uninformative, and unaccountable. And it was hard to tell if Belichick was "sitting for a documentary or a deposition." But it was striking that former Patriots captains like Devin McCourty and Rodney Harrison criticized the docuseries for its negative portrayal of the franchise. And that certainly wasn't the intent going in.
Devin McCourty went as far as to say he felt kind of duped by being part of the 10-part production. He sat for a lot of interviews, and he didn't think the interviews that he gave were ever presented in the light and the spirit in which it was attended. Rodney Harrison came to the defense of Belichick and he said that he didn't believe Belichick got enough credit or enough respect during the series. Meanwhile, Boston Sports Radio talk show host Michael Felger, who's very popular in the market, called the show gripping, and he did praise much of it, but he added that Belichick "took a hellacious beating" in this series. And another influential Boston Patriots reporter, Phil Perry, said he felt the digs by Robert and Jonathan Kraft during the series at Belichick were pretty apparent.
So some interesting final thoughts on The Dynasty 10-part series. All episodes have dropped. If you haven't watched it, and I know some of Apple TV's numbers are a little lower than other services, but if you haven't watched it, I would suggest it's worth your time. And it shows a lot of the inner workings of the organization and some great interviews, and great footage. And I just think a very interesting historical perspective of how these organizations work. And we'll end with this, I'll just say the relationship between DraftKings and Fanatics, let's just say they aren't very friendly, and there won't be a lot of Final Four watch parties between the two companies. There are pretty strong accusations going back and forth in legal documents over a former DraftKings employee who is now at Fanatics. The former DraftKings executive is accusing the company of trying to smear his reputation and having a long history of aggressively smearing employees.
The former DraftKings executive Michael Hermalyn also alleges in court papers filed on Thursday that more than 180 employees at DraftKings have applied for positions at Fanatics over the last few years. Now, there is a lot to the story, and these are court papers and court filings, but you have two very aggressive companies. One is a longtime player in sports betting, and Fanatics is trying to grow market share in sports betting. They are very competitive. They are led by very strong, competitive territorial leaders. They also want to protect any company strategies and secrets. And so this is led to court. We will see where it goes from here. But I'll just tell you, this dispute has a lot of people talking in the sports business, and it should be one you keep your eye on. And so that is your Morning Buzzcast for Friday, March 22nd. Enjoy your weekend of a lot of great college basketball. I'm Abe Madkour. Thanks for listening to the Buzzcast. Stay healthy, be good to each other. I'll speak to you again on Monday.