MLB nears opening day and Marlins the latest to land jersey patch; John Mara's stinging rebuke of Thursday Night flex and one brand says how naming rights worked for it
Sports Business Journal's largest event of the year is coming to LA Live, April 18th and 19th. The CAA World Congress of Sports brings together the entire sports industry. You can view the entire speaker lineup and register for the World Congress of Sports at world congress of sports.com. If you have any questions, let me know, but I certainly look forward to seeing you there. And this is your morning buzz cast for Wednesday, March 29th. Good morning, I'm Abe Madkour. Hope you're doing well. Baseball opening day on Thursday, tomorrow, a full slate of games. And when you talk about baseball this year, you have to talk about something we've talked about with the NBA and that is how much Jersey patch inventory there is out in both the NBA and Major League baseball and even the NHL, for example, more supply than demand.
And there are questions about jersey patch pricing, jersey patch placement, and even the size of the patch. And in baseball, you have only seen a handful of deals done so far. But the latest to announce a deal, the Miami Marlins have brought on their first jersey patch sponsor in ADT. They are based in Boca Raton. The security company's Blue Octagon logo will be worn on the sleeves of the Marlins jerseys as part of a multi-year deal. These are all three year deals for the jersey patch. But ADT will also do a bigger deal with the Marlins, with signage and other inventory at Loan Depot Park. The Marlins sold the patch themselves. They did not use a third party agency. The Marlins began shopping the patch last spring, and that shows you how long some of these deals can take to close. The Marlins will debut the new patch tomorrow on Opening Day.
Let's move on to the NFL. You know, we hinted at it earlier in the week, but N F L owners voted not to move forward on flexible scheduling for Thursday night football. But, but, but they did agree to change the rules and allow teams to play a maximum of two short week games. What this means is some teams could play on Thursday night multiple times during the season, while other teams might be shut out from any national appearances on Thursday night, as the league said, the N F L is trying to make it so their national windows are for clubs that are playing the best football and they wanna put their best teams in the best windows for national exposure.
You know what stood out to me was the public ranker over the potential move of flexing Thursday night football. And the most outspoken was New York Giants owner, John Mara, who called the idea abusive and not just abusive for the players, but for the fans. He acknowledged that the measure had a lot of support and will likely be approved in the future. But he lamented the policy change, which he said would be incredibly disruptive to fans. And he was even quoted as saying quote, can we please give some consideration to the people who are coming to our games end quote. Knowing John Mara, as long as I have, I believe he means it. And good for him to use his voice here in a rare pushback against the league. John Mara also said he was frustrated that the idea of a flexible schedule for Thursday night football was presented to owners at the league meetings last week, really with little advance warning. And he went so far as to saying he believed the league was just trying to push it through. That's a strong comment that you rarely see.
Commissioner Roger Goodell pushed back on that assertion and he said the practice he did not believe was abusive at all. He stressed that the league isn't prioritizing a partner like Amazon over the health and safety of players. SBJ's Ben Fisher reported that sources inside the room said there was a very spirited discussion among owners who understand the importance of making sure Amazon gets a great schedule, but they also felt 15 days notification was insufficient for such a big change for coaches, players, employees, and fans. So right now, no Thursday Night Football flex schedule, but likely enough support to get this passed in the future.
Also, as the meetings concluded, ESPN reported that two groups bidding to purchase the Washington Commanders have each submitted a fully financed bid at the 6 billion asking price that Dan Snyder had been seeking. So if either bid is accepted, of course that deal would break the record sale for a franchise, which was set in August when the Walton Penner Group bought the Denver Broncos for $4.65 billion. As an aside, there was a brilliant timeline on espn.com of Dan Snyder's ownership of the team. And as I was reading it last night, it was startling to see it all just laid out in print month after month, year after year, just how poorly this team has been led and performed under Dan Snyder's leadership and stewardship. It was one terrible and head scratching move after another. Really remarkable. If you get a chance to look at the timeline, do check it out.
Let's move on to an interesting story around brand sponsorship of sports. Remember when Michigan-based Acrisure bought the naming rights for the Pittsburgh Steelers stadium? And I think even on the bus gas, we had to ask ourselves what the company did. We weren't alone. Acrisure is a financial tech insurance company and their CEO Greg Williams said this week, the company has already received major benefits from the 15 year deal it signed last July when it renamed the facility, which was known as Heinz Field ever since it opened. So Williams said he anticipated some of the initial pushback to the naming rights, but the naming rights deal had already paid off for Acrisure. As before there was little name recognition. Virtually nobody knew what Acrisure was or did a survey six months after the deal in early January showed a pretty significant boost in consumer sentiment as 84% of respondents in the Pennsylvania market had a positive opinion of the brand. And after securing naming rights in both Pittsburgh and a facility in California, Acrisure said that data showed that 5% of households nationally actually know what Acrisure does. So the company CEO said it's very pleased with the naming rights and he expects the company to continue to grow largely through increased brand recognition, largely driven by these naming rights deals. So Acrisure could be a positive case study in the benefits of naming rights.
Let's move to tennis because the Professional Tennis Players Association, which was started by Novak Djokovic, is looking to do commercial deals around tennis players and they have brought on an agency to help them do that. CSM will seek out commercial partnerships for the Professional Tennis Players Association and its for-profit arm Winners Alliance. So the PTPA, which is of course the Pro Tennis Players Association, signed its first licensing deal with fanatics last week. A deal that will produce trading cards featuring tennis players that have opted into this group licensing pool. Many believe this type of deal could result in more than a $100 million going to the players over the span of this deal. So now this agency, CSM, will look for other commercial partners, uh, as tennis players look to build and amplify their off the court earnings. And they really now for the first time, have a dedicated association and now an agency working on their behalf. So what am I looking for? Well, it'll be interesting to see the commercial marketplace and just how it responds to these assets. And are they interested in doing deals with tennis players? Do they find them commercially viable and attractive? That's what I'll be looking for here as CSM looks to sell commercial partnerships around professional tennis players.
And finally, let's end the buzzcast with this, a hat tip and kudos to the owners of the WNBA's Seattle Storm who broke ground on construction of the team's new practice facility. What's the big deal? You may say? Well, this is a big deal because the storm will become the first WNBA team with its own training facility that will also serve as a team headquarters. So a real investment by ownership in the franchise. The facility is scheduled to be completed before the start of the '24 WNBA season. So congratulations to ownership of the storm for making such an important investment in the franchise. And so that is your morning buzzcast for Wednesday, March 29th. I'm Abe Madkour. Thanks for listening to the buzzcast. Thanks for spreading the word on the buzzcast. Stay healthy, be good to each other. I'll speak to you tomorrow.