hy people are watching Tom Dundon; MLB’s new-look playoffs; How Alabama’s Batt fits as GA Tech AD
We had a great week in New York City at the CAA World Congress of Sports. If you were there, love to hear your feedback, and what a wild weekend in sports. My colleague Reggie and I are just talking about all the great games between Alabama, Tennessee, Chiefs, Bills, Eagles, Cowboys, and of course we will talk baseball. But remember, next week is our Game Changers event, next Wednesday, October 26th at MetLife Stadium. You can register today at sportsbusinessjournal.com. And this is your Morning Buzzcast for Monday, October 17th.
Good morning. I'm Abe Madkour. Thank you for listening to the Buzzcast. I said we'd start with baseball because what a weekend for Commissioner Rob Manfred and Major League Baseball. Last week when Manfred spoke at the World Congress of Sports, he showed the energy of someone pleased with where the sport is and excited about the post-season. Well, he has good reason to be. The only bad news is that the Dodgers, a major ratings and attention draw, are out. But boy, what great stories in Philadelphia, great stories in San Diego. And we'll see the Phillies and the Padres play in the National League Championship Series in a showdown between the National League's two lowest seeded wild card teams. So the league's top four seeds in the National League, the Dodgers, the Braves, the Cardinals, and the Mets will be home while the Phillies and the Padres square off in a best of seven series with the winner, of course, going to the World Series.
So you had the 87 win Phillies beat the 101 win Braves in four games. You had the 89 win Padres pull off the upset of the 111 win Dodgers, which shocked a lot of people. So there's major baseball fever in both Philadelphia and San Diego. Well, in Philadelphia there's both baseball and football fever, but Citizens Bank Park was rocking as the team drew more than 91,000 fans for two games, and those fans really made a difference in the matchup if you watched those games. On the San Diego side, I'm very happy for owner Peter Seidler as this is an owner who has spent a lot of money to compete and to try to win, and the team is winning. And you saw a wild sellout crowd at Petco Park. The energy there as they kept yelling "beat LA" all night was simply incredible.
As Seidler said, "They were partying like crazy." And certainly they were. The Nation League Championship starts Tuesday in San Diego. Meanwhile, let's shift to the American League. You now have the Yankees hosting the Guardians in a deciding game five Monday night, tonight, from Yankee Stadium on TBS. On Saturday night, boy, the Astros and Mariners game was just wild from Seattle. You talk about more pent-up emotion and energy at that ballpark with fans cheering on the Mariners, who of course hadn't been in the post-season in so long. It was finally the 18th inning when the Astros got their run. They won the game, 1-nothing, a three-game sweep.
They're in the ALCS, they're in the American League Championship Series for the sixth straight year. Quite an accomplishment for the Houston Astros. A couple of side notes. The 18 innings matched the most innings in playoff history, and it was the third longest playoff game at six hours and 22 minutes. Boy, what an emotional rollercoaster if you stuck with that game for all six hours. It just shows again the energy and intensity and emotion of playoff baseball. Let's move on. One of the more intriguing and talked about owners in my world in sports is Tom Dundon, the 51 year old.
He owns the Carolina Hurricanes, but it's also his interest in pickleball that has people curious about Dundon. Dundon is a huge fan of the sport. He's an avid pickleball player and he is making financial bets on its growth. And pickleball was a major topic of conversation at the World Congress. Dundon's Capital Partners out of Texas is a partner in the Professional Pickleball Association. It also owns an online retail site, Pickleball Central, and the equipment maker, Pickleball, Inc.
And last week it launched pickleball.com, a website aimed at being the portal for the sport, from finding courts to having player resources and ratings to watching even live coverage of the sport. And while others are looking to leverage the interest in growth in pickleball, all roads lead back to Dundon and his large presence. But it's not just pickleball. Tom Dundon's Hurricanes are one of the best teams in the NHL and he has plans for a massive overhaul of the 23-year old PNC Arena, which includes developing an entertainment district with a concert venue surrounding the facility.
But this is all contingent on extending the team's lease, which runs through 2029. But interestingly, the Hurricanes can buy their way out of that lease as early as 2024, so that's a very interesting wrinkle. Meanwhile, naming rights at PNC Arena are still in play. Now, PNC Arena remains likely to remain the name of the building as the Hurricanes and PNC Bank are halfway through a 90-day extension of the naming rights deal. There's no new agreement, but they are optimistic there will be one. The original 20-year deal was worth $4 million per year. That expired at the end of August. You know Dundon and the team want to see that increased quite significantly.
Any naming rights revenue is divided among the Hurricanes, NC State and the Centennial authorities. So as you can see, there is a lot going on around the Hurricanes, around PNC Arena, and Tom Dundon is in the middle of some of the more interesting developments in the sports business. Insiders say don't discount Dundon's intense focus on pickleball and his interest in continuing to build the Hurricanes. And it's well known in sports circles that he will do it in his own style and he marches to his own drum. So that's a story you're going to want to keep an eye on in sports business.
Let's shift to college sports. A very big hire in college sports as Georgia Tech has found its athletic director and named Alabama's executive deputy athletic director J Batt to lead the Yellow Jackets. J Batt is a very well-regarded leader. He was an SBJ 40 Under 40 honoree in 2021. He's been at Alabama since 2017 and learned under Greg Byrne. He knows pretty much every role and responsibility of an athletic director, including the very important one of fundraising and revenue generation. He has been the leader in Alabama's massive 10 year, $600 million campaign that will eventually remake most of Alabama's athletic facilities.
Now at Georgia Tech, he succeeds former athletic director Todd Stansbury, who was dismissed after six years last month. This was a very quick search, it was done in just over two weeks. So the speed of the search was very impressive. It was done by the school's president, its interim AD and Parker Executive Search. But J Batt is a former North Carolina soccer player and prior to joining Alabama, he was at ECU. He had stints at the University of Maryland, James Madison, William and Mary, and his alma mater, UNC. Now, it's no secret that J Batt will not have much time to get acclimated as he will really need to address football at Georgia Tech as he has a key head coaching decision to make and he really needs to make that team competitive quite quickly. But a big hire by Georgia Tech naming J Batt as its new athletic director.
We know Montreal is often talked about as a possible MLB expansion market. Well, how about the city's interest in the NBA? Now, Montreal has never been floated as a target for an expansion market for the NBA, but the city showed up well on Friday night as the Raptors beat the Celtics in front of a sellout crowd of nearly 22,000 at the Bell Centre in Montreal. This marked the first Raptors game in Montreal since 2018 and it shows the growth of basketball in this market as the game is really making inroads in the traditional hockey marketplace of Montreal. So that's something to keep your eye on as nearly 22,000 fill the Bell Centre for an NBA pre-season game.
And finally, congratulations to New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who married Dr. Dana Blumberg in a surprise wedding in New York on Friday. The two invited guests to a kickoff and a touchdown party in Lower Manhattan, but surprised the guests with a wedding. A crowd of 250 saw Elton John give an hour-long performance while other performers included Meek Mill. Guests included Ari Emanuel from Endeavor, Jon Bon Jovi, Tom Brady, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Fanatics founder Michael Rubin and Casey Wasserman and David Zaslav. So a star-studded crowd of bold-face names all showing up on Friday night to offer their congratulations to Robert Kraft. So that is your Morning Buzzcast for Monday, October 17th. I'm Abe Madkour. Thanks for listening to the Buzzcast. Stay healthy, be good to each other. I'll speak to you tomorrow.