Reflecting on the 2023 MLB season; Disney acquired full control of Hulu; Portland bows out of WNBA expansion picture; Amazon paints it black (Friday).
Reflecting on the 2023 MLB season; Disney acquired full control of Hulu; Portland bows out of WNBA expansion picture; Amazon paints it black (Friday).
Hello and welcome to S BJ's Morning Buzz Cast. I'm Joe Lair on this Thursday, November 2nd. I look forward to seeing many of you at our Media Innovators conference later today in New York City, but we'll start with baseball where for the first time in its 63 year history, the Texas Rangers are World series champions that spans 11 years as the second incarnation of the Washington Senators, followed by 52 in Texas Rangers shortstop. Corey Seger earned his second World series MVP after also winning the award with the Dodgers in 2020. This caps were remarkable first year for Chris Young as the lead baseball ops decision maker and manager Bruce Bocci in his first season. Since on retiring, his Cooperstown credentials are more than secure. Each World series game has been followed by dreary headlines of dismal national TV ratings. But remember, during the lockout prior to last season, the owners pushed hard for this expanded postseason.
They even wanted the playoffs to swell from 10 teams to 14 instead of the eventual compromise on 12. The thinking there is that the overall inventory of playoff games would generate enough revenue to offset a decline in ratings attributed to a fall classic without a marquee draw. Not everyone loves the current playoff format, but that's the reality for now. Furthermore, a focus on World Series ratings obscures the prevailing impact of the 2023 MLB season. We already knew that baseball fandom has changed in recent years with local popularity remaining robust. While national interest has dwindled a matchup of the Arizona Diamondbacks in Texas, Rangers to wild card teams only furthered that of the 29 US clubs whose local ratings are measured by Nielsen. They collectively showed a 7% increase for the regular season. While our Austin carp shared the team by team breakdown of RSN ratings a few weeks ago, 18 of the 29 clubs showed gains year over year 13 grew by at least 10%, and nine grew by at least 25%.
The top of the list I must point out were the Texas Rangers whose ratings on ballet sports. Southwest grew 99% attendance, meanwhile grew 9.2% across the league as MLB. Welcome more than 70 million fans with the first time since 2017, and that rosy picture can largely be attributed to many of the new rule changes introduced this season Chief among them, of course, the pitch clock, which despite some consternation about how it might sap the energy out of key postseason moments seemed to be a non-factor, this postseason. So while the World Series ratings were far from ideal, the story of the 2023 baseball season is not the reckoning. Some headlines are making it out to be. Instead. 2023 is more testament to baseball's willingness to reinvent itself, to stay relevant. It should be easier to make future changes if needed with this track record and now with the Rangers having claimed this title, only five MLB franchises are still without a World Series win. The Mariners Brewers, Padres, Rockies, and Rays, you guys are on deck. As for media innovators, we'll cover a lot of ground later today from Big Tech
To the RSNs. I have no doubt that this is John Iran's favorite day of the year, and I hope we consider renaming the event for him someday. But for now, we'll hear from top media executives at the nascar, Amazon YouTube, as well as several presidents and CEOs of pro teams. I'll be on stage as well to learn from Anthony Smith, a longtime FL media exec who now leads non-scripted projects for smack productions and entertainment. Among his major current projects are Coach Prime and an upcoming documentary on black quarterbacks. Very much looking forward to the conversation and hopefully many of you will be there or able to tune in online. There'll even be some major media news to discuss with Disney acquiring the final 33% stake of Hulu, for which it will pay Comcast at least 8.6 billion to take full control of the streaming platform. Hulu, which is said to have about 48 million subscribers, will begin an era of so ownership for the first time at its founding in 2007, 21st Century BC Universal, Disney, and Time Warner, all shared ownership and that was sufficiently in the past that many of those corporate names have now changed.
Hulu has carried sports since 2019, launching a memorable Hulu has live sports campaign, which most recently anointed Eagles quarterback, Jalen Hertz, the primary spokesperson following such stars as Tom Brady, Joelle and Bead, and Aaron Judge. To date, Hulu has included not only Disney owned networks such as AC and AC, C networks and Comcast C, but also L Network. We'll all see if any changes are planned going forward. Among the major players in new media is of course Pat McAfee who hosted HL Commissioner Gary Bettman on his show yesterday. Bettman covered a lot of ground in his appearance. It's early in the season of course, but for now the league is on pace to have a record setting here for attendance, especially with the back-to-back stadium series games at MetLife Stadium in February. As a highlight, the four teams in closest proximity will all play in that one Devil's Flyers on February 17th.
In Islanders Rangers the next day, Beman pledged that the HL is going to try to make arrangements to enable its players to compete in the 2026 Winter Olympics. He said expansion isn't on the forefront of what we're thinking about, but he also isn't ruling it out regarding the coyotes that meant emphasized that the team needs a new arena. It's that simple. While adding that the Phoenix market is a place we want to be, it is after all the 11th biggest media market in the country. One other topic was player safety, particularly the idea of a neck guard following the tragic on ice death of Adam Johnson, a former penguins player who was injured in a freak accident while playing in England recently. Several of his former teammates in the NHL are already exploring neck guards for practice, and we'll see what happens from there. Portland, which was once seen as the clear favor to join the Bay Area as the next
Locale to receive AWBA expansion franchise is now reportedly out of the running. The Portland Oregonian shared a copy of a letter commissioner Kathy Engelbert sent to Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, calling the city an ideal destination for ABA franchise, but confirming that such discussions have been deferred, given play and renovations at the Trailblazers home arena. The Moda Center, which the W team would've shared, Portland would've joined the Golden State Warriors owned franchise in starting play in 2025. Portland's other pro women's franchise, the N Wsls Portland Thorns are a major draw averaging just shy of 19,000 fans per match this past season, a 22% gain over the prior year. The WNBA currently has 12 teams, six in each conference for geographic balance. It's worth noting that the addition of Golden State will make it five teams in the Pacific time zone, three in the central and five in the east.
There are a lot of factors that go into choosing new cities, of course, but regional distributions want to keep an eye on. Particularly in light of all the discussion around WNBA travel policies, Southern California is in danger of missing out on the men's FIFA World Cup in 2026. The LA Times cited sources indicating that there's growing belief. The final could be played at the Dallas area at and t Stadium rather than its SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles. The owner of the LA venue, Stan Cranky, could withdraw from possible hosting duties altogether if that happens. Gleaming SoFi Stadium only opened three years ago, but has already hosted a Super Bowl and college football national title game and is in line for opening and closing ceremony duties for the 2028 Olympics. There's obvious appeal for FIFA to want SoFi, the world's most expensive stadium to be heavily involved given the appeal and marketability of Los Angeles.
Not to mention the venue itself, the three prior World Cups hosted in the us the men in 1994, and the women in both 1999 and 2003 all had their finals in the LA area. But at the same time, hosting World Cup matches can often be a monetary loss for owners. Not to mention that cranky would have to tear out some ground level suites to make the field size up to FIFA standards. FIFA delegation visited SoFi again on Tuesday, but thus far, no word has leaked out about how that went. As Amazon prepares for the NFL's first ever Black Friday game, a 3:00 PM Dolphins Jets contest that will be played the day after Thanksgiving. Out in front of the usual prime video paywall, the tech company will lean into the color imagery of the day in an ad campaign featuring the Rolling Stones hit song, paint It Black Prime Videos, US sports marketing lead. Stacey Roseon told our Terry Lefton that the ultimate rock and roll track about Black just worked and hit on the messages we wanted to drive home, and the song crosses generations. The Stones approved it, and they're excited about it. I'll be back with you again tomorrow. Until then, I hope you can get some satisfaction, but remember, you can't always get what you want.