The Oakland A's & MLB react to unanimous vote for the team's move to Las Vegas; the LPGA tour reveals 2024 schedule with record prize money; Amazon shares plans for the NFL's first Black Friday game and F1's Las Vegas Grand Prix weekend is underway.
Hello and good morning to you on this Friday, November 17th. I am SBJ senior writer Joe Lemire, once again, filling in on the Morning Buzzcast. The Oakland A's are officially Las Vegas bound, following the formality of a vote from MLB's owners yesterday. The only remaining question had been what the margin of the vote would be, and it turned out to be unanimous. Afterwards, athletics managing partner and owner, John Fisher, said in a statement, "I want to express my gratitude to the owners and commissioner for their thoughtful deliberation and positive votes in favor of our relocation to Las Vegas. Today marks a significant moment for our franchise and it's met with mixed emotions, sadness for this change and excitement for our future. I know this is a hard day for our fans in Oakland. We made sincere efforts to keep our team in Oakland, but unfortunately it did not work out."
Fisher then went on to thank Las Vegas and Nevada for the welcome. MLB Commissioner Rob Manford said at a subsequent news conference, "This is a terrible day for fans in Oakland, I understand that and that's why we've always had a policy of doing everything humanly possible to avoid a relocation and truly believe we did that in this case. I think it's beyond debate that the status quo in Oakland was untenable." Still unresolved, however, where the A's will play for the 2025, '26, and '27 seasons before the new park opens in '28. Among the options under they neglected to mention yesterday, in addition to an Oakland Coliseum lease extension, San Francisco's Oracle Park or the ACE AAA Affiliates Park in Las Vegas was the AAA Ballpark in Sacramento. The athletic reported it was under consideration, although the Giants minor league club that plays there would then have to find its own new home.
The other big news to emerge from the MLB owners meeting was the awarding of the all-star game to Truist Park in Atlanta for 2025. The Midsummer Classic had originally been slated there for 2021 before the league revoked it after Georgia State legislature passed a bill restricting access to the vote. It was subsequently reported in the New York Times bestselling book, the Big Lie, incidentally written by my brother Jonathan Lemire, that in the wake of Georgia voting rights law, several MLB stars, including some of its most prominent Black players like Los Angeles Dodger Star, Mookie Betts, communicated privately, but in no uncertain terms that they would not play in an all-star game held in Atlanta. That was from 2021. Litigation related to those voting laws remains ongoing. Georgia governor Brian Kemp wrote on the social site X "Georgia's voting laws haven't changed, but it's good to see the MLB's misguided understanding of them has." Gerald Griggs, the president of the Georgia NAACP, said in a statement that he was disheartened to see the return of the MLB all-star game.
The next presidential election in 2024 will be less than a year prior to the Atlanta all-star game. As for postseason baseball honors, the BBWA finished handing out its 2023 hardware last night. To no one's surprise, two-way phenom Shohei Ohtani became the first player to be named MVP unanimously a second time. The former Angel superstar is, of course, and I'm sure you've heard this one before, a free agent now. Also expected, was that Braves outfielder Ronald Acuña was named the NLMVP, his selection was also unanimous, the first time in MVP voting history that both winners were undisputed. Sinclair meanwhile said, its collection of RSNs, Diamond Sports Group, is likely to shut down after 2024, a lawyer for the company told Bloomberg News. After that Diamond, which is currently in bankruptcy proceedings would cease operations, which of course would have a giant impact on the MLB, NHL, and NBA teams who have ongoing rights deals will learn much more on this going forward.
Just weeks after FIFA expedited the selection protocol for the 2034 World Cup and announced that Saudi Arabia was the sole bidder for the tournament, the London Times is now reported that Aramco, the Saudi owned oil companies in advanced stages of negotiations to become an official FIFA sponsor. Not only that, the deal is reported to be worth up to $100 million a year, which would make it FIFA's richest sponsorship deal. Saudi Arabia continues its unmatched spending in sports. Its public investment fund has already launched LIV golf and acquired Newcastle United in the Premier League, which is also competing in the Champions League this season. The LPGA tour revealed its 2024 schedule on Thursday with a record $116 million in prize money. The news was shared at the CME Group Tour Championship, the final event of the current season with CME already, having said it would raise its total purse next year to $11 million with 4 million awarded to the winner, the single biggest payday in professional women's sports. CME also announced that it would remain the Tour Championship's title sponsor for 2025 with that same enlarged purse.
Furthermore, ESPN revealed that it agreed to a two-year rights deal with the LPGA to broadcast featured group coverage on plus for eight tournaments. That'll be 18 hole coverage of four groups per day, two in the morning and two in the afternoon. Other than the Majors, the vast majority of LPGA coverage resides only on the golf channel, so this new agreement expands that potential viewer base. The tide of all women's sports is rising now, thanks largely to an influx of corporate sponsorship in media rights. The NWSL, of course, finalized its new media rights cycle last week. The WNBA is next on the horizon with its rights expiring after 2025. But the LPGA news is a reminder that outside of a few of the mega stars in soccer, individual women's sports remains the most lucrative. The WTA prize money list for 2023 has a top five who have earned between 5 million and 10 million this year, and 42 players who have made at least 1 million.
The top end of the LPGA tour is a bit lower, but still strong. The top five in golf made between 2.3 million and 3.3 million. In all, there are 22 players who have earned at least $1 million and those numbers are set to grow next year in light of today's news. The NFL will be playing on Black Friday for the first time this season, and Amazon shared its plans for the game, which will be streamed on Prime video. But unlike the Thursday night football package, this one will be free to everyone with an Amazon account even if they don't have a Prime membership. The on-air talent will resemble the Thursday lineup, but e-commerce leader Amazon was not about to pass up on retail integrations on Black Friday. It shared that special deals and limited quantity product drops from TCL, Dyson, Lego, and Nintendo would be available during the game with new deals appearing before and after the football as well as during each quarter.
Renowned chef David Chang will be on site to check out the MetLife Stadium tailgating scene. Dude Perfect will be hosting a friendly alt cast, and Garth Brooks will headline a post game music special live-streamed from the grand opening of his new bar in Nashville. Lastly, Formula One's inaugural Heineken Silver Las Vegas Grand Prix is this weekend. Our motor sports expert, Adam Stern, is on the scene and will be filing dispatches from the event, which began with an elaborate opening ceremony on Wednesday night and continued with practice sessions on Thursday. F1 has spent a half billion dollars on this race and has made a guarantee to hold this Grand Prix in the city for at least three years.
One more note about Las Vegas, SBJ's Intercollegiate Athletics Forum, presented by Learfield, will be returned there on December 5th and 6th with a stacked lineup. The week before that is Dealmakers in Washington DC where I'll be moderating a pair of sessions as part of an overall can't miss agenda with Josh Harris, Andre Iguodala, Malcolm Jenkins, Ted Leonsis, and four deputy commissioners from the NHL, MLB, MLS and NBA all on one panel. For now, I'm signing off. Thanks for listening and hopefully we'll talk again soon.