The business around the World Baseball Classic; Bids due on Senators; ACC eyes Elevate for revenue and fan ideas; NWSL gets in with EA Sports.
The business around the World Baseball Classic; Bids due on Senators; ACC eyes Elevate for revenue and fan ideas; NWSL gets in with EA Sports.
Well, I hope to see many of you at Tech Week this week. The inaugural SBA Tech Awards take place tonight at the Hard Rock Hotel and that will be followed by two days of content, uh, networking and discussions on the state of the sports tech industry On Wednesday and Thursday at the Time Center, there is still time to sign up on our website and I do hope to see you there. And this is your morning Buzz cast for Tuesday, March 7th. Good morning. I'm Abe Madkour. Thanks for listening to the Buzz Cast. The 2023 World Baseball Classic is set to start tonight. There's pool play for the 20 team tournament. It takes place in Taiwan, Tokyo, Miami, and Phoenix. The event will take place over the next two weeks. Finals will be held at Miami's Loan Depot Park on March 21st. This year's tournament is the First World Baseball Classic since 2017.
It's estimated to be its biggest yet. It will include 20 teams up from 16 and early projections are, it will set an attendance record. The previous record of nearly a million total attendees or nearly 24,000 per game was set in 2017. That looks to be broken this year. All games will air on Fox, FS one and FS two. The semi-finals and finals are on FS one and business around the World. Baseball Classic is also encouraging as sponsorship revenue is up more than 30% from 2017, there are 52 sponsors across 10 countries. You'll see a lot of T-Mobile, which will have batting helmet ads for Team U S usa while DirecTV will have Jersey patches on Team usa. But one thing not to look for, don't look for the new MLB rules for 2023 around pitch clock baseball sizes or banning the shift because those rules will not be in place for this tournament.
But the World Baseball Classic set to start tonight. Let's move on to the N Hhl cuz the sale of the Ottawa Senators is moving forward. As the deadline for the first round of bids for the senators was Monday. Yesterday, the Ottawa Sun reports that more than 15 groups were given access to the club's financial information and the n hhl is hoping that a number of strong bids emerge from those groups who were given access to the data. Now the team bankers, Galati, OTOs Sports Partners and the N Hhl office will go through the bids and determine which ones are serious and strong about buying the team and committing to a new arena in the city. And of course, this is all incumbent on the team remaining in Ottawa. We will be watching the sale price of the senators as this is a very interesting test for the strength of an N H L team in Canada.
As many believe the team should go for more than 800 million, but if there is a bidding war and it tops a billion dollars, wow, that would be a huge, huge win and coup for the n hhl. So we're keeping our eye on the sale of the Ottawa Senators. Let's move to college sports. The A ACC is focused heavily on increasing revenue throughout the conference and now comes news that it has brought on Elevate Sports Ventures to advise the a ACC on three primary areas, business intelligence and analytics, revenue optimization and fan experience strategy. So elevates ticketing, arm dynamic pricing Partners will work with the ACC on pricing, sales, and distribution of tickets. Elevates Insight Unit will study the men's and women's basketball tournaments and look at optimizing fan experience, look at revenue opportunities. So this is a nice piece of business for Elevate to get and Elevate has a history with the acc.
IT handled ticket operations and event strategy for the A ACC Football championship game, uh, last December here in Charlotte. But Elevate will look at all areas of the ACC C'S business and look to try to optimize both fan experience and revenue. You know, another big step for the National Women's Soccer League and women's soccer players, as they will now be part of an EA sports FIFA 23 video game. This marks the first time that N W S L players and Marks will be part of an EA video game. All 12 N W S L teams will be in the video game. They will also feature the teams kits and four N W S L stadiums will be part of the game. Bottom line, this shows the growing popularity of women's soccer. It is a big, big business and public, uh, accomplishment for the N W S L and its players in amplifying attention and exposure around the game.
You know, we mentioned this on the buzz cast before, but the business around the Atlanta Braves continues to be hot. Here's an example. The Braves will stop selling season tickets due to such high demand, the first time doing so in franchise history. The Braves are making this move to allow for more just single game or multi game purchases of tickets for fans who maybe are not part of a season ticket package. The Braves last season sold 3.1 million tickets that was fourth most in Major League baseball. They are on pace to eclipse that mark this season. Again, ticket sales around the Braves, the Braves brand. Very, very hot now. So the Braves will stop selling season tickets this year due to high demand. If someone purchases season tickets for 24, they will get on a priority waiting list to potentially get a season ticket for 23.
But it just shows the value, the strength, and the appeal of the Atlantic Braves brand. Right now let's end the buzz class around people. First, the West Coast Conference has a new commissioner as longtime executive and former Big East Executive Associate commissioner Stu Jackson will now lead the West Coast Conference. Taking over from former W C C Commissioner Gloria Navarre, she took the same position. She became commissioner of the Mountain West Conference. Now Stu Jackson has a long history in basketball and in basketball leadership. Of course, he worked at the N B A under the late David Stern for many years. One area that Stu Jackson will focus on is keeping the conference stable as there's been a lot of speculation around Gonzaga and the Big 12. And it would certainly hurt if the top basketball program left the conference as Gonzaga has been one of the high profile programs of the West Coast Conference and the West Coast Conference has a new commissioner in Stu Jackson.
And finally this is becoming too common, but another piece of sad news to end the buzz cast. As longtime sports executive Mike Stevens died unexpectedly last week from cardiac arrest while vacationing in the Caribbean. He was only 62. I know many of you knew Mike Stevens. He worked at the Giants in a leadership position from 2006 to 2019. That's when they won two Super Bowls at the franchise. He was at the Washington Redskins, he was at eBay, he was at the N B A where he worked in the marketing group for nine years and had a role in developing the strategy and business plans for the dream team and the W N B A Mike Stevens was always good to me, very supportive of Sports Business Journal and this is just another in a line of really tough losses. Recently, Mike Stevens dead at 62 survived by his wife of 26 years and two sons.
So that is your morning buzz cast for Tuesday, March 7th. I'm Abe Madkour. Thanks for listening to the Buzz Cast. I'm inviting you to check out our best subscription s bj all access at a special price. Go to our website into our subscribe page and use the code Buzz Cast 19. That's Buzz Cast and the number 19. Use that at checkout to receive your first month of S B J All Access for only $19. This offer ends March 12th. Thanks for listening to the Buzz Cast. I'll be in New York the rest of the week, so managing editor David Albright will bring you the buzz cast Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday until I speak to you again next week.